Xeon vs. Itanium 2

[thecoolnessrune]

Now in all honesty, I would probably get an Opteron over a Xeon, but for simplicity, lets say I had a choice between a Xeon and an Itanium 2. Besides the fact that the Itanium 2 is larger, costs a butload more, ad has 9MB of cache what is the difference? Why cost so much more than a 3.4 Xeon when the Itanium 2 only has a max of 1.6 Ghz. Also, do they resemble SPARCS? You know, the SPARC systems with 72 1.3Ghz processors that only cost $3,200,000 US?


EDIT: Also, where do Pentium 4s and especially Athlon MPs fit in? Athlon MPs look so small, why use them in a server when you could use a P4, A64, or low power Xeon. Or just a Athlon XP?

 

[RichUK]

you need to do some research, intanium is made for the top level servers for server farms/clusters etc. for instance a Web farm, refers to either a Web site that runs off of more than one server or an ISP that provides Web hosting services using multiple servers.

Also they do not run on the x86 architecture/instructions as do the rest, although they can emulate the code with very poor results, this particular chip has applications specially designed for its type of computations (even an Micorsoft 64bit OS), unless you are into to high volume specialised server throughput, then you do not need to worry much on this CPU.


With regards to the other procs you have mentioned, they are all geared to work in a desktop/workstation environment, except the Opterons and the Xeons which were designed specifically for low to mid range server workload environment, once again AMD's architecture reins over Intel in this department, both these chips (opteron and Xeon) were designed to work in parallelism, although the Opteron has the ability to communicate via its HT links with 8 other processors, where as i believe the Xeon only worked as a pair ..

Then you have the Pentium Athlon range of procs, which are geared towards workstation and home pc use.

 

[dguy6789]

As stated above, Itanium 2 cpus are designed for very specific and high end tasks. They are likely not something you would be interested in unless you run some kind of huge server or computer cluster that does stuff.


The Pentium 4 and the Athlon 64 are desktop processors. They are designed for the average computer user. The Athlon 64 is 64 bit capable, and recent Pentium 4 models are 64 bit capable as well. They are very good at things like multimedia, games, business applications, and any other general desktop application you may want to run. If you want a general do everything PC, then an Athlon 64 or Pentium 4 is what you want.

The Athlon XP was the line of processors AMD produced before they launched the Athlon 64. The Athlon XP has no place in the high performance desktop environment, and is only useful as a budget processor nowadays.

The Opteron and Xeon processors are for business class servers. You would use them for things like web servers, data servers, and pretty much anything that would require a machine doing many intensive tasks simultaneously. The Opteron is exactly identical in design to the Athlon 64, with the key differences being that it runs on socket 940(Athlon 64s now come on socket 754 or socket 939), is multiprocessor capable, and that it requires registered memory. The Xeon I am not too informed on(correct me if I am mistaken), but I believe it is also identical to the Pentium 4 except it is multiprocessor capable and uses a different socket.

The Athlon MP is based off the Athlon XP architecture. It is practically 100% identical and even runs on the same socket. They are so identical, that you can take an Athlon XP and with a simple modification, make it be detected as an Athlon MP. The Athlon MP processor was AMD's product for the business server market, but was replaced and made obsolete a few years ago by the Opteron. The only reason you may want an Athlon MP system nowadays is if you need a very low cost server system. The reason is, the Athlon MPs top out at the 2800+ rating(2.13Ghz Barton). This is very capable today and can handle anything thrown at it, but as time goes on the processor will show it's age in not being 64 bit compatible, and non upgradable. Add to this the fact that the motherboards only support PC2100 DDR and AGP 4X. The Athlon MP platform is a dead end in terms of upgradability.

Hope that helps you.

 

[thecoolnessrune]

yes it does. So if I wanted this server to run the following games as dedicated on LAN on one server:

Battlefield 2 64 players

Joint Operations 64 players

UTK4 32 Players running maybe 4 instances of itself each running a different game type

Can this even be done by one server? If so, what kind of processor/memory would that require? And would I need to use SCSI drives?

EDIT: The reason i bring this up is because my bros 2.8Ghz P4 can run a Dedicated 32 player bot-match with only 15% normal 28% peak usage. So I thought with enough processors (Like 2 or maybe even 4 Dual core opterons) this kind of performance could be reached.

 

[dguy6789]

This can be done by a single server. Another question, do you want to run all 3 of those games and their servers all at the same time(BF2+JO+4 instances of UT2k4=6 game servers at once)?

Depending on your answer to the above question, we can get into what kind of cpu you would need and the right motherboard and harddrives. Also what would your budget limit be on one of these systems?

 

[thecoolnessrune]

yes that is what i intend to do. That way I could serve a wide variety of LAN parties all the time . Also since everything rolls into one network (or at least I think it would have to) should I invest in a Fiber card?

 

[dguy6789]

No need for fiber optics. A 10/100 mbps setup should suffice I believe, and if it doesnt, you can get a gigabit network.

Gigabit cards are around 10-15 bucks:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16833130103

You can get a gigabit router here:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16833127158

I have not really done much in terms of dedicated game servers, but I can point you in the right direction. On average with just one of these games, how much processor % do they take when you are running a dedicated server on one? Also, do you plan on using the server pc for other things while it is hosting games?

 

[thecoolnessrune]

all the games take around 20-30% on my bros 2.8Ghz P4 with 800Mhz FSB. I think its the memory that's going to take the biggest hit. Probably gonna need a lot and fast stuff. I wonder if you can overclock Opterons? :evil:

EDIT: That's 20-30% PER single dedicated game. Thats not everything together lol. Also, for instances like UTK4, thats running a full 32 player bot match.

 

[dguy6789]

You can overclock Opterons, but there really wouldn't be a need to. I reccomend you get an Athlon 64 X2 system, or an Opteron system.

Your best bet would be to get two of these:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16819103553

this mainboard:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16813151148

memory like this: (maybe two or four sticks depending on your ram usage)

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16820141197

That would give you a high end workstation that could host all of those games easy and have room for more. Each opteron is dual core, so you would have 4 1.8Ghz Opteron cores working for your system.

If you need any info on a power supply or case(that mainboard will NOT fit in an ordinary case) just let me know.

Also if this is a bit too expensive, you could go for an Athlon 64 X2 based system and still be pretty well off.

 

[thecoolnessrune]

wow thanks abunch dguy. this helps

And yes I would like a power supply with ALOT of juice. (redundacy isn't really necessary) and a nice case with alot of air ability. Another question, because opterons are supposed to be able to run in 1U cases, aren't they ONLY heatsinked with a big copper one? In other words, it relies completely on case cooling?

 

[dguy6789]

Remember, setting up a pc like that is a tad different than a normal one. There are some very tight powersupply requirements, case size requirements, and OS requirements.

To help you a bit more here are some things I would use with a pc like that:

For a case, you want one that supports E ATX form factor, and is made of aluminum(so that it is light weight and doesn't rust) such as the one here:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16811112508

Sorry it is a bit pricey for a case, but the one that is around $70 has dissapeared from the site.

Power supply:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16817194001

That case and that power supply would work perfectly in conjunction with dual opteron 265s and that mainboard.

If there is anything else you need help picking out for your pc, just let me know.

 

[thecoolnessrune]

Wow man, you help ALOT! This stuff looks perfect. And don't really worry about price, after all this, prce just isn't much of an issue. Also, I want to display the stats of this (all the server statistics, cpu usage, stuff like that) on a big projector running at 1280x1024 (maybe higher) would the integrated graphics work or do I need a graphics card, and if so what would work? (referring to compliance with the MOBO)?

PS

Would SCSI drives be necessary?

 

[dguy6789]

That motherboard does not have integrated graphics I am afraid. Will this server be doing any gaming itself? Also, what kind of connectors does your projector have to connect something to it?

You would not need scsi drives. This would probably suit you as far as your harddrive needs are:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16822145066

Only thing I would worry about is that the motherboard has only one ide port. So you could have a maxium of two IDE devices. So as long as you don't need more than one CD/DVD drive and one harddrive you will be fine.

 

[thecoolnessrune]

Harddrive looks good. I'm thinking one with either DVI and maybe even HDMI. I do realise however that no card supports this so dont worry about that.

 

[dguy6789]

Just about any card out nowadays can be found with DVI so that is easy. Just make sure the card you get uses PCIe x16 for the connector and not agp.

Also if you are planning on doing some serious gaming on the machine, it does support Nvidia's SLI.

 

[thecoolnessrune]

Don't plan on gaming with it, but I believe this about completes it. Thank you so much for your help.

Happy Browsing!

 

[dguy6789]

No problem, this forum is quite good for getting the info you need on just about anything computer related. Hope everything goes smoothly with your new system.

 

[thecoolnessrune]

I'm sure it will.

 

[Fox5]

Originally posted by: thecoolnessrune
Now in all honesty, I would probably get an Opteron over a Xeon, but for simplicity, lets say I had a choice between a Xeon and an Itanium 2. Besides the fact that the Itanium 2 is larger, costs a butload more, ad has 9MB of cache what is the difference? Why cost so much more than a 3.4 Xeon when the Itanium 2 only has a max of 1.6 Ghz. Also, do they resemble SPARCS? You know, the SPARC systems with 72 1.3Ghz processors that only cost $3,200,000 US?


EDIT: Also, where do Pentium 4s and especially Athlon MPs fit in? Athlon MPs look so small, why use them in a server when you could use a P4, A64, or low power Xeon. Or just a Athlon XP?

Itanium hasn't really shown itself to have an advantage, over then it's a very scalable architecture like SPARC.
For 1 to 16 cores, Opteron appears to easily be the best choice in terms of performance, price, and price per performance.

Athlon MPs were AMD's first try to get into the server market that never really went anywhere, I believe they're discontinued now. They were also hurt by the fact that they never got the same kind of chipset support as the Athlon XPs did.

The Xeon and Athlon MPs are strictly low end solutions, while Opteron can be low end or mid end, and SPARC and Itanium are med end to high end.(theoretically I guess you could scale an opteron cluster to high end, but there haven't been too many attempts at it, most go for Power or Itanium I think, not sure how performance would compare but I think the opteron starts to lose its price advantage as other parts of the infrastructure cost far more)

Opterons aren't too different from athlon 64s, except for the multiprocessor support and the memory bus scales with the number of processors.
The Xeon's memory bus doesn't scale, and is only designed for 1 cpu operation so Xeons aren't that good for multicpu systems.(I think the max is 4 Xeons in a system) I think Xeons have more cache than Pentium 4s, but generally a slower FSB, maybe because multiple cpus trying to access a high speed memory bus made for 1 cpu causes too much garbage.(the athlon xp/mp bus is actually designed for multiple cpus, but doesn't scale like the opteron and isn't as fast as the xeon)

yes it does. So if I wanted this server to run the following games as dedicated on LAN on one server:

Lol, you wouldn't even want to consider Itanium for running game servers.
BTW, a single X2 processor with 2 to 4GB of ram may be enough for your needs, and significantly cheaper than opteron.

If you wanted to make sure you had enough power to run all that you wanted, you could get 4 dual core opterons for 8 total processors, just note that each opteron will be very expensive and requires its own ram.
You don't need SCSI drives, but RAID with SATA drives may be a good idea.
Are you sure wherever this server is running would have enough bandwidth? You may want multiple internet connections or a single super one to handle all those.

And any recent motherboard should have at least 1 gigabit ethernet port, possibly multiple.

It'd also be cheaper to get multiple athlon x2 systems than an opteron system with multiple cpus since opteron prices are so freaking high.