Dual Motherboards, which to get???

[cheuyungphat]

ThePrIsMcAURA,

I would hold off buying the via motherboard for a bit. I have seen so many mememory benchmarks that demonstrate the lack in ability for the via chipset in this area. Its not a "poor" board, just not really a "great" performer. Right now I am using (albeit - old Epox KP6-BS with two PII (yes...pentium II's) 300's clocked to 450. These are slot one cpu's and I have a ball! For "funsies" I can throw 12 windows of MS media player up on the screen-each playing a separate .avi file, play a favorite cd, surf the web and play a game all without a hicup - try that with a single cpu! (and I am using old cpu's! . I posted this link from www.2cpu.com that VERIFIES the ability of the intel 815E chipset as being SMP (dual processor) capable!!! EVERYONE always believed that the 815E (BX replacement for intel) was not SMP capable...well now I guess it is. A dual motherboard with this chipset would probably out-perform the Via chipsets to some degree (just read about the differences between Via and 815E from various sites). I will post the link about the dual 815E below. What I am anxious for is the Dual AMD chipset (760 I believe). A thunderbird dualie??? Mean machine. I have seen many rendering benchmarks that show how the Athlon kicks some major boo-taa--tee with regards to 3d rendering. Ill even post a link comparing Mac's G4 cpu to Athlon to Intel for rendering. Good luck with your decision...just don't be too anxious to pick something up right away as something better may be right around the corner... Take care!

Whoops! I missed your post about the Asus P2B-DS - very nice board, but...it only has 4pci slots...not a problem if you don't have a lot of pci cards. The new 815E boards should be able to overclock better (voltage adjustment hopefully). I believe -from reading the posts @2cpu.com that only the Asus board has the 1/4 pci clock divider (so you can make it to 133 fsb without the pci cards pooping out - especially the creative labs live audio board). Then again you shouldn't really be too concerned with overclocking if you are going to be doing video work - you don't wanna drop frames due to instability. Geeze! Decisions...Decisions...Decisions!!! Good luck!

Dual Processor Capable 815E Chipset:

Mac G4 vs. Pentium III vs. Athlon:

 

[Kwad Guy]

cheuyungphat is right: The VIA dual proc chipsets are problematic,
to be charitable. Instability is only one issue. Another is that
they don't even seem to be faster than the BX chipsets--even
comparing 133FSB chips on the VIA vs. comparable 100FSB chips
on the BX. Don't get carried away in the "this is newer so it
must be better" currents...

I know a number of people who upgraded from a Tyan Tiger 100 to
a Tiger 133 (and who subsequently had to upgrade AGAIN when Tyan
recalled the first batch of 133s) and are miserable that they did.
They all complain of increased instability and incompatibility with
the new boards. I know one guy who sold his 100, bought the 133,
replaced the 133 after the recall, then sold the 133 and bought
another 100!!

Anyway, as cheuyungphat says, the future horizon is uncertain, but
one thing that is close to certain: No board you can currently
buy (BX, VIA, whatever) is going to support the cutting edge
in a year or two...That's just the way it is (baby)...

That said, if you are looking to get into a SMP system cheaply
and without headaches, I'd go with the Tyan Tiger 100. It won't
(reliably) support 133FSB, but it's extremely solid as a 100FSB
platform. And it'll support up to 800Mhz PIII (100FSB) chips.
(A correction to a posting above: You don't need registered
memory on the Tiger 100, although it'll accept registered memory.
I believe you may need to buy registered memory if you want to
use 256Mb DIMMS...).

If you want to include on-board SCSI, you have a few options,
including the Tyan Thunder. Personally, if you aren't planning
on overclocking, I think the best band-for-the-buck can be
had by buying a used Intel N440BX. These can be had for around
$225-250, support PIII Katmai processors (if you get a later
board revision, make sure you do), and have on-board dual
channel ultra-wide SCSI, Intel Pro100+ ethernet, and video.
The video is server quality, which is to say, not acceptable for
serious modeling/graphics purposes. There's no AGP slot, so you
would need to use a PCI video card. There are 4 PCI slots, 1 ISA
slot, and 4 DIMM slots (up to 128Mb unregistered per DIMM or 256Mb
registered DIMMS). This board is super stable and very fast.
Only real downside is you're stuck with 2X PIII 600Mhz processors
at the top end. Oh, and no overclocking (this is a genuine
Intel-We-Don't-Need-No-Stinking-Overclockers product). That isn't
as swell as 2xPIII 800Mhz, but in MANY environments the
difference would be nearly inperceptable. But that's your own judgement call. What I'm trying to say is that you can get a
board with a lot of terrific features for a few hundred dollars
less. And you can put those few hundred towards the next generation
upgrade which you will certainly "need" in the next year or two.

Whatever,

Kwad

 

[xyvyx]

Intel boards are certainly great (esp. good power supply sections..)

If you want fast CPUs, support for lots of RAM & the latest/greatest design, you might want to go for one of their OR840 boards. Their 820 chipset has had (as I'm sure we're all too familiar) "issues", but the 840 has been quietly doing it's job. Of course, that locks you into using expensive RDRAM (bleh!), but if you're only concerned about performance, maybe that's a non-issue.

I believe Dell's Precision workstation 420 series is based on this Intel OR840 board, which I'd call a good sign. I was really lusting after one of those systems until I decided I wanted to stick with cheaper 100Mhz SDRAM; that's when I got the Thunderbolt.

Anyway, here's a link:
(which Intel sure has hidden well..)
http://developer.intel.com/design/wrkstn/OR840/index.htm

Of course, I'm not sure if we're helping you decide on anything, but the Asus, Tyan (Tiger 100,Thunderbolt) & Intel options will all get you most of what you're looking for.


I say go for the OR840 (or just buy a Dell 420 , get 512MB of RDRAM, an Ultra160 RAID controller, and a bunch of 10k or 15k RPM drives in a raid-10 array! woohoo!

Cheers!

-Chris

 

[Kwad Guy]

Psst...Overstock.com has the Tyan Tiger 100 OEM boards back
in stock for $89/each shipped. At this price, there's no
competition for a cheap dual processor board.

Note that the Tyan boards Overstock has have been flashed to the
latest BIOS and support dual PIII up to 850Mhz. In essence, these
are the same as the standard revision "F" boards, but with one
fewer PCI slot. Note that there are a lot of Gateway OEM Tyan
Tiger 100 boards out there. You do NOT want one of the Gateway
boards, as those only support up to 600Mhz PIII.

Anyway, FWIW...

I already have two systems based on Tiger 100s up and running
(from Overstock Tigers) and am considering buying a third board.

Of course, I could just choose to spend more time with my
Intel SC450NX/Cabrillo 4-way Xeon (4xPIII 550Mhz/512K), 1Gb
memory system If only I could figure out how to make it more
quiet...Servers sound like jet engines...grrr...

kwad

 

[ThePrIsMcAURA]

Thanks for those replies guys.
I apologise immensely for the lateness of mine. I have been searching high and low for the ASUS board but it had been discontinued for about 4 months now and no-one seems to have any left in stock let alone get one.

I have met quite a few owners of the Asus P2B-D and DS boards and they say they have had them for about 1 year and they love them.
Very stable and some got theirs quite cheap compared to those super expensive serverworks boards.
I have seen the other similiar boards to the Asus like the Epox and Iwill which are a little cheaper but I have had no problems with Asus so i'll pretty much stick with them. I am also going to get a Asus Geforce 2 MX with dual monitor output and probably slockets 370 later on to support the new cpus.

I checked into the Tyan boards and I have to get those order from the eastern states of Australia. I am in Perth Australia.
Too much a pain in the butt to order stuff over from 3 states away.

Thanks for the info, hopefully i'll be able to get this board within the next 2 weeks from somewhere.