Dual CPU?

[Kadence]

The top benchmarks on the PassMark list belong to Dual CPU Xeons. There's a bunch of Dual CPUs on there, though they all seem to be Xeons or AMDs.

I don't think I'd ever do this, but out of curiosity, how is this done? Do you need two motherboards? How do you make the CPUs work together? And so on.

 

[GuitarDaddy]

Multiple socket server motherboards running server class CPU's (Xeon=Intel, Opteron=AMD) they make dual and quad socket motherboards and with an addon card you can put 4 more on a quad and have 8x CPU's in one box or rack.

 

[Kadence]

I've found that this could be done with an Intel motherboard called a Skulltrail. What other ways is this possible?

 

[aigomorla]

Originally posted by: Kadence
The top benchmarks on the PassMark list belong to Dual CPU Xeons. There's a bunch of Dual CPUs on there, though they all seem to be Xeons or AMDs.

I don't think I'd ever do this, but out of curiosity, how is this done? Do you need two motherboards? How do you make the CPUs work together? And so on.

skulltrail is a enthusiest version of dual cpu boards.

AMD also had one as well, they called it a quad FX.

Most cases, dual cpu systems are called SMP systems.

http://i125.photobucket.com/al...aigomorla/IMG_1112.jpg

The board is special and has 2 cpu sockets as shown.

Some boards can even support 4 cpu at once. Those are uber expensive systems.

 

[Drsignguy]

Refer back to GuitarDaddy's post, I Bold the part you may have missed.

Originally posted by: Kadence
I've found that this could be done with an Intel motherboard called a Skulltrail. What other ways is this possible?

Originally posted by: GuitarDaddy
Multiple socket server motherboards running server class CPU's (Xeon=Intel, Opteron=AMD) they make dual and quad socket motherboards and with an addon card you can put 4 more on a quad and have 8x CPU's in one box or rack.

 

[Kadence]

Well I'm afraid that didn't offer any specific direction to go in

A search for 'smp motherboard' however eventually led me to the E7505, which I believe is the type of motherboard in question. Available for sale in surprisingly little places however, so information seems scarce.

Any other boards like this one? Any quad boards?

 

[dawp]

most dual and quad socket motherboards are used in servers or workstations and tend to be in the $5000+ range systems, usually require ECC and registered memory, which is not cheap. here's a quad socket for amd thou it currently out of stock.and here's dual socket intel.

 

[Lonyo]

Just go to somewhere like Newegg, go to their server motherboards section and search for boards which are listed under socket type as Dual <something> or Quad <something>.

 

[heyheybooboo]

AT Motherboard Thread: Are there AMD dual-quad motherboards?

There is linkage.

There are multiple AMD/Intel options available - primarily from Tyan and SuperMicro.

A quick example:

Tyan Thunder S2915-E: $440

2 x AMD Opteron Quad Core 2350 2.0GHz OEM: $560

2x2Gb Kingston 667mhz Ecc DDR2 RAM: $125

You will need an EPS power supply ($150), an E-ATX case (12" x 13" mobos - CoolerMaster makes some reasonable ones), an SMP-aware OS (XP Pro will work - need 64-bit to fully utilize 4Gb+ of RAM) and two of those really cool Opty copper-heatpipe HSFs you have laying around.

Server/workstation platforms are not really for gamers if that is where you are headed. But if you want to crunch 24/7 for months at a time it's the way to go. (Note: I've heard rumors - not tried myself - that you can flash the bios of certain Radeon video cards with a corresponding FireGL bios and enable CrossFire on server/workstation motherboards. RV770-based FireGL video cards should arrive in a month or so ... )

In the meantime, you can use those 8 cores and 16GHz of power to transcode your p0rn

 

[foges]

umm... 2 cpus x 4 cores x 2.0 GHz = 16GHz, 1.6THz would have been cool though

 

[heyheybooboo]

Originally posted by: foges
umm... 2 cpus x 4 cores x 2.0 GHz = 16GHz, 1.6THz would have been cool though

I can only dream - lol.

I'll correct it ...

 

[NXIL]

A search for 'smp motherboard' however eventually led me to the E7505, which I believe is the type of motherboard in question. Available for sale in surprisingly little places however, so information seems scarce.

e7505 is a chipset that motherboard makers use to make a dual CPU motherboard; it's an old and obsolete one.

the Intel 5000X and 5400 dual CPU chipsets are the most current.

Any other boards like this one? Any quad boards?

Newegg has about 150 on sale:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/...er=RATING&Pagesize=100

The Apple Macintosh Pro uses an Intel 5000X chipset and dual Xeon CPUs for eight core goodness:

http://www.apple.com/macpro/technology/processor.html

Runs OSX or Windows just fine. But, those are generally built for folks using them to crunch video/music files professionally, sort of overkill for the home user, though I would really really like one.

So, dual CPU: very cool in a figurative sense, but literally hot (put out a lot of heat), needs large power supply, they usually need special memory (ECC or FB-DIMM), since they need more memory to keep all those CPUs and cores fed.

For further reading: 2CPU.com, "for everything SMP".

HTH

NXIL

 

[Kadence]

Thanks for the terrific info heyheybooboo and NXIL.

Originally posted by: heyheybooboo
Server/workstation platforms are not really for gamers if that is where you are headed.

I'm not really a PC gamer, I'd be using it for business, and web-surfing purposes. Any PC games I play are years old anyway.

However I really wouldn't mind much putting down $5K dual- or quad- CPU computer if it was worth it. Too bad a dual-CPU quad-core desktop pretty much means that 6.75+ cores are sitting 100% idle almost all the time :frown: I liked the days when Murphy's Law meant processors actually got faster, rather than just cheaper...

I'm probably going to end up spending around $2K on a computer, when I actually wanted to spend quite a bit more. I suppose I should be pleased, but I'm not Just can't justify spending for nonsense like DDR3 memory, or for a 3Ghz processor when a 2.66 or 2.83 costs 1/3rd or 1/5th as much. If spending closer to $5K meant something like a 50%-100% increase in performance rather than a barely noticeable one, I'd probably jump at it.

 

[Nathelion]

www.2cpu.com is a good resource for this

Im currently running a 2x Opteron quad/core at 2 GHz with 16 GB of RAM. Its more for shits and giggles than any particular degree of usefulness, although it does allow me to excel at F@H hehe. It won't be very overclockable and is generally a bad idea for a gaming rig though.

 

[dawp]

what apps are you going to use this for anyways? from the way it sounds, it looks like a single socket quad core is more fitting. Really, a multi socket system is more for file serving and scientific/engineering/graphics type of use.

 

[zsdersw]

"Business and web-surfing" and "years old" games is easily handled by one mid-range dual-core CPU, let alone a single quad.. or 2 dual-core CPUs or 2 quad-core CPUs.