Tyan K8SRE S2891
The
Tyan K8SRE is the latest server based Opteron board from a well-known motherboard manufacturer, Tyan. The K8SRE features Nvidia's nForce
TM Professional 2200 core logic solution. For more information on the nForce Professional chipset, check out Derek Wilson's
excellent coverage.
Overall, the Tyan board performed well in our tests. We did, however, have some compatibility issues with our Crucial memory on this board. Some minor BIOS tweaks managed to get us up and running, and stable. We'd recommend that you adhere to memory that is officially supported by Tyan to avoid any compatibility issues - our memory was not on the recommended list.
1Ghz HyperTransport Support
According to AMD, the 252 supports a 1GHz HyperTransport bus frequency. The Tyan board sets the HyperTransport bus frequency automatically to 800MHz, which is what we used for our tests. We did, however, manually forced the HyperTransport frequency to 1GHz using nVidia's nTune and there was no difference in performance in any of our tests.
Test Software Configuration
Windows 2003 was configured with /3GB and /PAE switches in the boot.ini to support the 8GB of memory used for our tests. SQL Server Enterprise was set to use AWE extensions and a maximum memory limit was set at 6144MB.
Test hardware configuration
Intel Xeon System
3.6 GHz Nocona 1MB L2
3.6 GHz Nocona 2MB L2
Intel SE7620AF2 Motherboard
8GB Crucial PC2-3200 DDR2 Memory
Windows 2003 Enterprise Server (32 Bit)
8 x 36GB 15,000RPM Ultra320 SCSI drives in RAID-0
LSI Logic 320-2 SCSI Raid Controller
AMD Configuration
Opteron 250
Opteron 252
Tyan K8SRE S2891 Motherboard
8GB Crucial DDR-3200 Memory
Windows 2003 Enterprise Server (32 Bit)
8 x 36GB 15,000RPM Ultra320 SCSI drives in RAID-0
LSI Logic 320-2 SCSI Raid Controller
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semo - Tuesday, February 15, 2005 - link
is it possible to have a dual proc setup without using registered memory?Proton - Tuesday, February 15, 2005 - link
"We did a revamp of the tool itself, which is more performant on high volume queries."Performant?
Please read this article...
http://msdn.microsoft.com/msdnmag/issues/05/03/Edi...
"More recently, we've seen the word "performant" start its crawl into the everyday vocabulary of devspace. It is used to mean "highly performing." It's also not a word. When something provides information, it's informative. It's not "informant." The word "performant," if it existed, would be a noun—not an adjective. But it doesn't exist, so if you do see it in print, remember that it's not really there.'
ceefka - Tuesday, February 15, 2005 - link
#15 Jason, let me rephrase that#10: "However compact"... That would do it more justice ;-)I didn't thank you for the effort you and Ross put into this, did I? Your article came out together with the announcements of AMD. Hot stuff! How much time/sleep did you really have?
Viditor - Tuesday, February 15, 2005 - link
"What memory timings?"Good question...
"is it dual vs Dual or single vs single"
single vs single, 32bit
prd00 - Tuesday, February 15, 2005 - link
Wait... I think I miss something here.. is it dual vs Dual or single vs single?Zebo - Tuesday, February 15, 2005 - link
What memory timings?Viditor - Tuesday, February 15, 2005 - link
"I don't know if it fixes the IOMMU issue or not"As far as we know, it doesn't. The Smithfield is a desktop part, so that is to be expected...large quantities of memory aren't yet necessary for the desktop.
"Now this is interesting. Somewhere were Intel comes out on top by a big margin"
(grin) Only the most diehard AMD fan would deny Xeon's capabilities...
For a 1 or 2 CPU server that is used for low-end database serving or webserving, the new Xeon is excellent in 32bit (the CPU of choice)!
As the next few months grind ahead, we will see quite a few scenarios on review sites. My own suppositions are that
1. In a 1 or 2 single core Opteron system there is almost no bandwidth constraint. This is evidenced by the lack of change with the 25% HT increase to 1GHz. That said, we might see significant changes in 4 and 8 way systems, especially as dual cores come on-line.
2. We still have no reviews of these two platforms in 64bit using >4GB of ram. I suspect that Opteron will be much more effective there...
3. When Intel releases their mp Xeon Nocona, I suspect that 4 and 8 way Opteron systems will blow their doors off...my rationale is that the 1GHz HT links and AMD's MOESI cache protocol gives them a huge advantage in scaling processors.
Staples - Tuesday, February 15, 2005 - link
Now this is interesting. Somewhere were Intel comes out on top by a big margin.fitten - Monday, February 14, 2005 - link
BTW... there is a new chipset (or some new chipsets) being released soon along with the Smithdale CPU. I don't know if it fixes the IOMMU issue or not, but it might be worth a look...Viditor - Monday, February 14, 2005 - link
"no mention in any of the access scenarios is described as 32bit..."Oops...yes it does.
"Some devices, such as a large majority of PCI cards cannot directly access memory above the 4GB point"