Suggest a dual board?

[Remedy]

Cola, your thinking 10years into the future while we're trying to look at whats coming in the next 6 months. Now about the Tyan dual AMD board, to me the MSRP on that board looks to be somewhere in the 400 to 600 dollar range. Now in the specs it says server management software. I pretty much doubt we will want to pay that much for a board thats not even ATX spec'd. From what i understand its aimed at the 1U server market. No need to drop 1U server class board in your living Room. Just wait for the watered down board without all those accessories. These duallies should cost 175 to 225max watered down without the features that were listed.

 

[mechBgon]

It's worth noting what BurntKooshie mentioned here

I hope everyone realizes the expense that Dual EV6 bus motherboards will cost. We're used to 4 and 6 layer PCB boards for Athlon boards. Well, with dual EV6, expect that to climb a little bit. So not only will the boards be larger because of the extra chip, they'll be more expensive due to the extra layers of PCB as well. These won't be as cheap as BP6's.

Sounds like a dual-EV6 bus is not going to be quite as simple in implementation as what we've seen in the past.

 

[Remedy]

LOL it figures! this how they get us back from lowering the CPU prices all that time eh. Payback from AMD is becoming a bitch now!:disgust:

 

[BigDady92]

when i went to pricewatch for the ecs board it came with the raid controller onboard. it was around 100 with s/h from some company i dunno. check pricewatch.com for the details.

 

[CocaCola5]

This may sound absurd but I don't think dual systems are as attractive in the server environment as they used to be. Today, the real systems that are selling well are at a minimum quad processor systems, even 8 and 16 processor systems are now the norm. So a dual system is not at all as esoteric as it used to be. A dual system is probably more appropriate for a workstation/highend pc than a backbone type server. I think as corporation migrate to larger systems, the dual systems have no where to go but down to the desktop.

 

[Remedy]

<< This may sound absurd but I don't think dual systems are as attractive in the server environment as they used to be >>





Cola, do you know what these forums are running off? Yeah take a guess or go look at anands server farm. I can only disagree with every reply you made.

READ Since when did backbones only use

 

[CocaCola5]

I am not saying dual systems are slow, however, if they are to run fast in a server environment, they must be constantly upgraded because they only have two processors, which is what Anand does. Most corporate/institution buyers require that their box be run for many years without having to upgrade(because they require near 100% uptime and they are usually very lazy) so they tend to buy systems that have atleast four processors to meet their long term needs. I know for a fact that most name brand systems selling today are all mostly four or eight processor systems. A dual system can be just as fast as a four way system but you have to have the fastest server chip in it all the time.

 

[Remedy]

Yeah well obiviously this is not aimed at corprate type servers that utilize 4 way and 8way pro's. This Tyan board seems to be aimed at entry level and lower mid level server market.

 

[badguy]

I think at present time the best choice of dual CPU board still goes to intel, a dual PIII board will BX or GX chipset is affordable.

 

[Remedy]

badguy thats what i've been tryin to tell him since the beginning of thread if you check my first reply i link a good choice(its not bx or gx though) thats so cheap TheVrolok can't go wrong.

 

[ToBeMe]

The MSI 694D ProAiR is a VERY good board!

 

[BigDady92]

If you can hunker down the cash and still need a server board then go with the ServerWorks chipset. The via is a fine chipset for the avg home user or SOHO. Goto eb@y and buy a slot one if you don't got the neccessary cash they are cheap enough and you could probably come up with a matched processor set with the deal. Since everyone is evac'n to socket370 those boards are coming up more and more.

 

[UKnowWhat]

Guys &amp; Gals, I just bought the D6VAA and my first experience is not pleasant.

1) You cannot install CD-ROMs drive in any slot but the top 2 slots, because the CD-ROM drive just barely misses the 2 capacitors at the top right end of the board. You have to pay extra caution when buying case because you might not have enough clearance to install CD drive. My case is a mid tower case with slim power 300w supply (very small foot print)

2) Check sum error during first power up. Have to clear the CMOS to get it up.

3) When AGP slot selected as first initialization, it won't take the ATI Rage 128 (1x AGP) doesn't matter what I try. I have to remove my Matrox 400G from another computer to test the board and Matrox powers up just fine.

4) After tinkering with BIOS set-up (no overclocking, just fast SDRAM set-up, fast AGP read/write etc), the system locks up. When I hit insert during the next power up, it seems the motherboard somehow flashed the bios (I think) because when hitting delete during power up, I get a blank menu. Their board is shipped with flash bios jumper enable so watch out. If I continue holding the insert key during pwr up, I can get thru to Window start up message so I can go to command prompt (Window is dead) to reflash the bios. Next experience is the dumb bastard at their website provide BIOS updgrade with .BIN but with this D6VAA BIOS upgrade, they put it up as a TAR (200k -> 256k what is the saving?) and that TAR file doesn't even work. Talk about quality control. I could not even flash the bios thru dos prompt so I quit tinkering with it.

5) My conclusion? RMA for another board from CDR Express on Monday. Good luck for the next D6VAA's purchaser.

 

[Remedy]

Are you even using the latest BIOS update that is out?

 

[UKnowWhat]

As a follow-thru of my last post:

I finally succeeded to flash the bios with the newest update from their website. The system is up &amp; running on Win98 but Win2000 Prof (dual boot) reported in-accessible boot sector. Message said to remove any IDE controllers just installed (VIA IDE controllers that is). Well ... at least one is working.

 

[Remedy]

Which VIA drivers are you using cause i think i got an similar error before? i went threw all the VIA drivers and finnaly cambe back to 4.25. Doesn't that board have the Highpoint IDE controller on it? If so then get the newest drivers for that too.

 

[UKnowWhat]

I have 4.25a installed but it doesn't help. W2K complains in-accessible boot error and ask to remove all recendtly installed hard drives &amp; controllers. If I remove all hard drives &amp; controllers installed then how the hell W2k can install a new driver for it? Am I missing something?

 

[Remedy]

LOL, i know how you feel man, but if your board has the Highpoint controller are you not using it?

 

[UKnowWhat]

What is HighPoint Controller? Is it the hot swap IDE controller? If it is then I don't have it. Just a regular 33/66/100 IDE. I am researching the solution to my problem and it seems to me I am not the only one. There is a barrage of posts on microsoft.public.win2000.* about this problem and it seems to me that Microsoft did it again. The worst thing I can do is to re-install W2k to see if I still have the same problem. The drive is still accessible from C and appeared to have no damage. The F6 to load driver during setup doesn't seem to work because VIA assumes I run from set up while MS looks for something else. Well ... I will let you guys know of my saga later when I fixed this problem.

 

[Remedy]

Ok i think i get what your saying now from what i understand Win2k doesn't support ATA100 so possible solution would be to try and boot the drive as UDMA 5 from the BIOS, if that doesn't work then man i'll help you dig harder.

 

[UKnowWhat]

I reinstalled W2K prof on top of the old one and everything works.

 

[Remedy]

GREAT Can you run some benchies and post a link or send me the pics of the benchies over icq or my mail i want to you reevaluate that board now that your experience is looking better.

 

[UKnowWhat]

Sure. What do you want me to do? Here is the spec of this system

1) 866Mhz P3 Single CPU (Not Dual CPU yet)- Not overclocking anything yet due to the problem I described earlier with the motherboard.
2) Win98/Win2k Dual Boot - (Have not make Linux TurboStation boot up yet)
3) 128M CL3 Kingston (Yes I know. This is the Value Ram I got from Kingston)
4) 7200RPM UDMA 66 13G Maxtor &amp; 30G Quantumn FireBall LM Plus
5) Matrox 400G Video Card

Regards

 

[Remedy]

Cool you got Turbonixstation? That's exactly what i plan on dual booting. I just want to see some UT and Q3a benchies from you if you don't mind.