Optimizing my new God Box - Dual Opteron 246 w/AGP

redpriest_

Senior member
Oct 30, 1999
223
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I have a dual Opteron 246 on an Arima RIOWORKS HDAMB motherboard. She's outfitted with 4 GB of Registered PC2700 ECC DDR RAM, and an nVidia GeForce FX 5900 Ultra. In 3dMark 2001SE 330 I get about 16000 3dmarks. I have a Radeon 9800 PRO that I could drop in, would this increase this score? What scores have you guys been getting on comparable systems? This thing crunches everything *fast*. You know those crummy SiSoft Sandra scores that you've seen for Opteron where the Opteron's SSE performance is barely better than the FPU in the Whetstone benchmark? On my Opteron, I get about 5000 fpu whetstones and 8500 SSE2 whetstones. The 2.0 ghz model is better than the 1.8 ghz model that was being showcased on it.

Let me know which benchmarks you'd like to see....
 

mechBgon

Super Moderator<br>Elite Member
Oct 31, 1999
30,699
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I have a requested benchmark, if you have an original Unreal Tournament Disc 1 CD around, and WinZip 8.1 installed:

  • defrag your system drive
  • make a New Folder on the system drive
  • copy the entire contents of UT Disc 1 into the New Folder
  • reboot the system (to get the data out of your system's cache)
  • right-click the New Folder, WinZip > Add to Zip File...
  • select Maximum compression level (important)
  • start timing as you click the Add button, and stop when the progress bar disappears
 

Electrode

Diamond Member
May 4, 2001
6,063
2
81
Looks like I'm no longer the only one here with a dual Opteron box... :)

BTW, make sure to flash the BIOS on that motherboard. Mine came with a very rough beta BIOS that caused all kinds of problems, I believe it was version 0.27. BIOS updates, drivers, manuals and the like are available here. :)

Also, if any of you are starving for pics, I took a few while building my rig. :D
 

bjc112

Lifer
Dec 23, 2000
11,460
0
76
Originally posted by: redpriest_
I have a dual Opteron 246 on an Arima RIOWORKS HDAMB motherboard. She's outfitted with 4 GB of Registered PC2700 ECC DDR RAM, and an nVidia GeForce FX 5900 Ultra. In 3dMark 2001SE 330 I get about 16000 3dmarks. I have a Radeon 9800 PRO that I could drop in, would this increase this score? What scores have you guys been getting on comparable systems? This thing crunches everything *fast*. You know those crummy SiSoft Sandra scores that you've seen for Opteron where the Opteron's SSE performance is barely better than the FPU in the Whetstone benchmark? On my Opteron, I get about 5000 fpu whetstones and 8500 SSE2 whetstones. The 2.0 ghz model is better than the 1.8 ghz model that was being showcased on it.

Let me know which benchmarks you'd like to see....


Take some screen shots of Sandra in the CPU/Multimedia bench, compare to 3200+, 3.2c and Dual 3.0/3.2's

:D

Only thing, 16K seems a tad low for a 5900 and or 9800... ( you have both?!?! Throw that money around ;) )


 

dannybin1742

Platinum Member
Jan 16, 2002
2,335
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but if you noticed on the reviews on the net, the opterons don't score super high on 3dmark- who cares, its just a benchmark


i'm drooling over that system- are there any ocing options?

and how much did you spend? $6k?
 

Peter D

Diamond Member
Oct 28, 2002
3,603
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for opterons you have to use ECC/Registered ram i believe, for the Athlon 64's regular DDR is fine
 

yodayoda

Platinum Member
Jan 8, 2001
2,958
0
86
Originally posted by: redpriest_
I have a dual Opteron 246 on an Arima RIOWORKS HDAMB motherboard. She's outfitted with 4 GB of Registered PC2700 ECC DDR RAM, and an nVidia GeForce FX 5900 Ultra. In 3dMark 2001SE 330 I get about 16000 3dmarks. I have a Radeon 9800 PRO that I could drop in, would this increase this score? What scores have you guys been getting on comparable systems? This thing crunches everything *fast*. You know those crummy SiSoft Sandra scores that you've seen for Opteron where the Opteron's SSE performance is barely better than the FPU in the Whetstone benchmark? On my Opteron, I get about 5000 fpu whetstones and 8500 SSE2 whetstones. The 2.0 ghz model is better than the 1.8 ghz model that was being showcased on it.

Let me know which benchmarks you'd like to see....

holy crap, how much did that rig set up back? the CPUs are near a grand each, and the board and the ram and the video cards... yikes. you much be walking around with a priapism or something. ok, where did you purchase the board--i can't find a rioworks in retail anywhere?
 

Electrode

Diamond Member
May 4, 2001
6,063
2
81
Maybe I'll answer a few questions, since I have the same board and he seems to have disappeared off the face of the planet.

dannybin1742: No OC options, but I'm holding out hope that a future BIOS will add some.
yodayoda: Here.
 

mechBgon

Super Moderator<br>Elite Member
Oct 31, 1999
30,699
1
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Electrode, any chance you could do my UT WinZip compression benchie? :D
 

Electrode

Diamond Member
May 4, 2001
6,063
2
81
Test rig:
Dual AMD Opteron 240
2 GB PC2100 Registered ECC
Accelertech Typhoon64 motherboard (a.k.a. Rioworks/Arima HDAMB)
Western Digital 80 GB hard drive w/ 2 MB cache
Filesystem: ReiserFS 3.6
OS: SuSE Linux 8.2 Professional for x86-64 Beta 9

WinZip 8.1: 3 minutes, 44.534 seconds.

Notes:
* This is a 32-bit application with unknown optimizations, probably nothing beyond a few MMX hacks.
* I ran it using Wine.
* I included the "copying zip file" stage in the measurement. This took roughly 3 seconds.
* Timing was done somewhat by hand. I entered "time yes > /dev/null" on my laptop and hit "enter" on the laptop and clicked "add" on the test machine at the same time, and hit ctrl-c on the laptop when the test was complete.

InfoZip 2.3: 3 minutes, 27.684 seconds

Notes:
* This is a 64-bit application with SSE2 optimizations.
* CFLAGS used to compile it: -O3 -mfpmath=sse -mieee-fp -mmmx -msse -msse2 -m3dnow -m64 -fforce-addr -fomit-frame-pointer -fmerge-constants -maccumulate-outgoing-args
* Test command: time zip -r9 utcd1.zip utcd1
 

mechBgon

Super Moderator<br>Elite Member
Oct 31, 1999
30,699
1
0
Thanks Electrode! :cool: I admit I'm a little underwhelmed, since 3:27 is about the same compression time as my AthlonXP 1700+ on nForce :( but that's sort of apples-&-oranges due to the different OS (Win2000 here).
 

mrgoblin

Golden Member
Jul 28, 2003
1,075
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Keep in min that they are using pc 2700 registered ram. Once we start to see corsair xms series registered dimms, thest scores will go waay up.
 

Remedy

Diamond Member
Dec 1, 1999
3,981
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Originally posted by: mrgoblin
Keep in min that they are using pc 2700 registered ram. Once we start to see corsair xms series registered dimms, thest scores will go waay up.

Corsair can't help your benchmarks or performance. If you mean PC3200 R/ECC DRAM. Then, that's a different story. The most you're going to gain is 10% performance increase at the most since it's hardly starving for bandwidth. PC3200 R/ECC is already out, and the gain is pretty minor. So people don't assume corsair or any other dram is going to boost bargraphs off the charts.
 

Megatomic

Lifer
Nov 9, 2000
20,128
6
81
Here's a question for either redpriest_ or Electrode (or both if they both desire to answer): what is your subjective opinion of the relative noisiness of your dual Opteron system? And what system are you comparing it to subjectively? Also, where do you have the computer case relative to your ears?

Thanks guys.
 

Shimmishim

Elite Member
Feb 19, 2001
7,504
0
76
no need to post sisoft sandra pics or anything...

what we want would be some real life ap comparisons...

and yes... 16K on 3dmark2k1 is pretty low... but then again that's another synthetic benchmark...


try some divx encoding and compare it to your old barton or tbred you used to have...

 

Electrode

Diamond Member
May 4, 2001
6,063
2
81
Megatomic: That is an impossible question to ask, as noise has nothing to do with the CPUs. The fans that come with the retail boxed heatsinks are 3000 RPM 70x10mm Delta's, probably not very loud.

Shimmishim: What kind of "real life ap comparisons" do you want to see? Remember that I'm running Linux and don't really feel like installing Windows just to run a benchmark. :)
 

redpriest_

Senior member
Oct 30, 1999
223
0
0
Sorry guys for not replying earlier; was busy.

Yeah, the 16000 3dmark score is kinda low. I'm using the 8.1.0.0 version of the AMD AGP driver; any lower than that (the one publicly available on the AMD site) and you don't have multiprocessor AGP support. (It defaults to AGP "PCI" mode and that kills your score). You can download the 8.1.0.0 version from the rioworks site.

Electrode, I'm using a the .9A BETA BIOS, it's dated August 21, 2003. I kindly asked the reps over at rioworks for an updated BIOS, and they zipped one up and sent it to me (It was literally dated the day before). If you want it, I can shoot you an email with it attached -- send me a pm with your email addy. It contains performance improvements and bug fixes, specifically:

Ver0.97 release 07/29/2003 Checksum:050EB87A
1. Change SMBIOS Entry Point address back to 1MB above for running 3DMARK on
ATI FIREGX1Z1 Card
2. Support AC97 Audio in Linux

Ver0.98 release 08/14/2003 Checksum:050FBEBE
1. Fix performance low issue on Linux

Ver0.9A release 08/21/2003 Checksum:050EFF65
1. Add "AGP Data Transfer Mode" Setup Option

You have to flash the BIOS very specifically -- a buddy of mine with the same rig screwed his system over because he didn't flash the system in accordance with the instructions in the BIOS (doh).

This is a BOXX Opteron M4 workstation -- you can buy it from their site. A rig with my setup will set you back $5000 or so, but it *is* a god box. The memory is 2.5 cas latency registered corsair memory.

Like Electrode said, the BIOS options are pretty bare - no voltage/memory/clock settings to tweak.

Let me know if you have any other questions. I'll try doing the UT2003 benchmarks, but I wrecked the first two CDs (I have cd errors when I try to install or copy =(( - trying to see if I can work around that issue using an install I already made on one of my comps). Maybe I'll do the third CD =)

Regards.
 

Megatomic

Lifer
Nov 9, 2000
20,128
6
81
Originally posted by: Electrode
Megatomic: That is an impossible question to ask, as noise has nothing to do with the CPUs. The fans that come with the retail boxed heatsinks are 3000 RPM 70x10mm Delta's, probably not very loud.
Of course I meant the fans, thanks for answering anyways. I got to play with a dual Opteron at the AMD Tech Tour 2003 event I attended and with the top off of the machine it was pretty loud IMHO. The fans in that system were really whiny and that is a turn off for me. In a server room it wouldn't matter, but when it is on my desk I tend to care a bit.

How about your subjective opinion on overall system responsiveness in 64 bit mode Electrode? Have you run the same rig on a 32 bit OS as well? How did it compare overall?

Thanks again.