Zacate - Did I just not do my homework?

[Necc]

Ithink you expected too much from zacate, also change that HDD and report back.

 

[yh125d]

Surprised you're having trouble, I have a E350 laptop and have been very pleased with it. The only thing I've come across that it cant do is 1080p uncompressed .m2ts files (havent tried compressed 1080p, all I tried was a 45gb BR rip, which I never expected it to do). 720p content has been fine, except a few YT vids being a bit choppy


For overall use and browsing it's been if anything, faster than I expected I reformatted and installed W7 prem, and the install took like 45 minutes so not sure why yours was so slow.

 

[LOL_Wut_Axel]

After a few days of runtime, finalization of the software configurations, and letting things settle... here's what I've got.

#1 - Zacate itself is just fine for running WHS. After letting things settle and cache for a few days, the OS itself is running fairly peachy.

#2 - I'm going to laugh inside at anyone else that suggests getting a SSD for this machine. I want a file server, not a desktop gaming rig.

#3 - There does seem to be an issue with disk speed. Now before you all go saying "I told you so...", I'm still not discounting AMD's AHCI drivers for this. Something in general seems overall flaky, and I've not once had issues with WD Scorpio Blue's with speed (let's just say I know what to expect from them). I think overall speed may be better once I get a hardware controller for storage, but again, that doesn't "fix" the boot drive.

#4 - Watching server loads, etc, Zacate is more than capable for what I intend to throw at it. CPU usage more or less stays low. Occasionally it'll spike to 60-70%, but it's still fine for my purposes. There is no reason that the CPU itself shouldn't be considered powerful enough for a file server or WHS. If you want it as a general purpose server on the other hand, that's another story.

At this point I'm satisfied. If I had more time to play around and not push this thing into service, I'd play with various drive configurations, etc. But right now, it works. I'm satisfied.

Good to hear your problems have lessened. Since this is for a file server, though, I'd still recommend you return that WD Caviar Blue if you can and get a Seagate Momentus or a Samsung Spinpoint. The Caviars automatically put the HDD to sleep every 8 seconds, but really, you're only saving around the 1W ballpark doing that. The bad thing is it reduces system responsiveness since the HDD takes around 3 seconds to completely wake up from it.

Going with either of these solves the HDD sleep issue--just remember to set HDD sleep to off in the Windows Control Panel--and will also give you faster access times and read/write speeds. Add it all up and it should definitely make the system more responsive.

 

[LOL_Wut_Axel]

Surprised you're having trouble, I have a E350 laptop and have been very pleased with it. The only thing I've come across that it cant do is 1080p uncompressed .m2ts files (havent tried compressed 1080p, all I tried was a 45gb BR rip, which I never expected it to do). 720p content has been fine, except a few YT vids being a bit choppy


For overall use and browsing it's been if anything, faster than I expected I reformatted and installed W7 prem, and the install took like 45 minutes so not sure why yours was so slow.

It should be able to handle all those just fine with no hiccups. Remember to download the latest Catalyst drivers and version of Flash. You should also enable hardware acceleration on whichever browser you're using. :thumbsup:

 

[Idontcare]

I don't think anyone is really saying that, hope people didn't get that impression from my post at least. My example was just illustrating how much of a bottleneck those 5400RPM notebook drives can be. A 500GB 7200RPM 3.5" HDD would probably make the system much more responsive, not like you'd need to go out and spend a ton of money on an SSD. Those 5400RPM notebook drives are just painfully slow to run an OS on. I mean sure the E-350 is no powerhouse either, but I'm pretty confident the drive is the main bottleneck in OP's system right now, not the CPU.

I'd also think Zacate should be more than adequate for file serving, you don't really need a ton of CPU power for that do you?

I hope you didn't take it personal, I really wasn't directing my commentary at anyone in particular in the thread. It was just more of a general perception I was getting from the thread overall and I was amused at the relative cost ratios of the proposed solutions to the OP's $100 cheap-box problems.

It is kinda ironic on a personal level because I'm looking at putting my $400 G2 160GB SSD into a $500 DELL laptop D: just to speed up the slow-as-ass response times of the laptop.

 

[Arkadrel]

Earlier this week I picked up an Asrock E350M1 off one of the forums, and 8gb of ram from one of the newegg "We make ram manufacturers cry" sales, with the intention of putting up a WHS2011 server. The idea was a storage server to make it easier for my wife to get to her gobs of photos, and a light multipurpose server for things I see fit (like moving a Terraria dedicated server off my desktop).

Yesterday the ram came in, so I was finally able to get the ball rolling. It took me a good 3 hours or so to get WHS installed, which seemed inordinately long. The OS install itself is a pain in the ass, but that's not the topic for here.

When it's all said and done, yes, I understand it's a low power 1.6GHz cpu, but it is a dual. I simply expect a bit more performance out of it. Things got a good bit better once I installed the AHCI drivers (in itself a chore just to find), as hard drive access to that point was abysmal. But it still doesn't feel quite right. Is the CPU really that underpowered? I'd have figured it was essentially a modern Athlon II x2 cpu with a lower clock, but even that shouldn't have this much of an issue with essentially Win2k8 R2.

Are my expectations out of line?

--- EDIT ---
Putting the system spec here so it's easier to find:

Asrock E350M1
8GB GSkill DDR3-1333
Boot drive: 2.5" WD Scorpio Blue 320GB
GigE Ethernet to the switch, rest of network is wireless

Solution:

Overclock it
http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?266200-GIGABYTE-E350N-USB3-who-is-your-daddy


Once you overclock it,
it should be fast enough for small stuff

Uses upwards of 48watts during full load (because of overclock).

FYI guys, CPU-z is wrong about the multiplier.
The CPU here is running at x8 multiplier.

awwww.... so not really running 2.3ghz, oh well.

 

[sangyup81]

If you're not going to overclock it then please undervolt it. The tweaker in me would be pleased =D

 

[frostedflakes]

I hope you didn't take it personal, I really wasn't directing my commentary at anyone in particular in the thread. It was just more of a general perception I was getting from the thread overall and I was amused at the relative cost ratios of the proposed solutions to the OP's $100 cheap-box problems.

It is kinda ironic on a personal level because I'm looking at putting my $400 G2 160GB SSD into a $500 DELL laptop D: just to speed up the slow-as-ass response times of the laptop.

No worries, didn't take it personal at all. Just wanted to clarify the message of my original post in case any misunderstood it.

And yeah, it does seem kind of silly to spend $150 on an SSD for a $350 ultraportable, for example (I'm guilty of this). But the performance improvement for general usage is so huge, and SSDs do tend to have other advantages for notebooks that could help justify the cost (lower power consumption, more resistant to heat, shock, and vibration, etc.). And 2.5" HDDs are more expensive per GB than 3.5" drives, so that cost discrepancy isn't as big when choosing between a 2.5" HDD and SSD as it is when choosing between a 3.5" HDD and SSD on a desktop. But for a budget desktop I definitely don't think it makes sense to spend that kind of coin on an SSD, a 7200RPM 3.5" drive would make more sense if OP was ever looking to replace the 2.5" Scorpio Blue. Or if his case can't fit a 3.5" drive, a 7200RPM 2.5" drive instead.

 

[cebalrai]

What? Overclock a Zacate file sever?

:thumbsdown:


I wouldn't buy an E-350 right now. The E-450 should be out any day now, packing a tiny clock speed increase, Turbo Boost, support for faster RAM, and a better graphics core. Yes please!!

 

[toyota]

What? Overclock a Zacate file sever?

:thumbsdown:


I wouldn't buy an E-350 right now. The E-450 should be out any day now, packing a tiny clock speed increase, Turbo Boost, support for faster RAM, and a better graphics core. Yes please!!

it may not be out for several more weeks. the E-450 will be at 1.65 and the turbo is for the graphics core. its hardly worth waiting for.

 

[cebalrai]

it may not be out for several more weeks. the E-450 will be at 1.65 and the turbo is for the graphics core. its hardly worth waiting for.

Ah you're right. For people like me who enjoy playing older games though, an E-450 box for $350 sounds perfect.

It's out on a few laptops now so hopefully it wont be too long.

 

[86waterpumper]

If these things will overclock to 2300 then why isn't amd selling them at faster stock speeds? This is one thing I cannot understand with the atoms too. My lenovo idepad has the single core atom and it will o/c easily to 2ghz and run rock stable. If this can work in a small netbook then why on earth would a atom or zacate system like this designed with a bigger fan and to run in a case with alot more airspace be clocked so low? I know it's a power saving deal, but 48 watts under full load is still great and it could still idle probably at least at 20 watts..

 

[toyota]

If these things will overclock to 2300 then why isn't amd selling them at faster stock speeds? This is one thing I cannot understand with the atoms too. My lenovo idepad has the single core atom and it will o/c easily to 2ghz and run rock stable. If this can work in a small netbook then why on earth would a atom or zacate system like this designed with a bigger fan and to run in a case with alot more airspace be clocked so low? I know it's a power saving deal, but 48 watts under full load is still great and it could still idle probably at least at 20 watts..

because it was made for a certain tdp and form factor.

 

[86waterpumper]

Right. The form factor in this case is already huge compared to a netbook it wouldn't have to change. Get a zotac board or soemthing and you can run a i5 or i7 now on the same form factor so I dont' think that's a issue at all. I don't know how much power consumption would change if you didn't raise the voltage. My ideapad will o/c to 2ghz on stock voltage. I guess I will do some tests with my netbook and my kill a watt and see how much more wattage it consumes at load o/c compared to stock. I got excited about zacate at first until I found out the clockspeeds were so low. After all atoms have been out years at those kind of clocks obviously 1 core though. We are in the latter part of 2011. A 1 something ghz cpu belongs in something like a tablet or phone, not trying to run windows

 

[podspi]

If these things will overclock to 2300 then why isn't amd selling them at faster stock speeds? This is one thing I cannot understand with the atoms too. My lenovo idepad has the single core atom and it will o/c easily to 2ghz and run rock stable. If this can work in a small netbook then why on earth would a atom or zacate system like this designed with a bigger fan and to run in a case with alot more airspace be clocked so low? I know it's a power saving deal, but 48 watts under full load is still great and it could still idle probably at least at 20 watts..

Power usage and longevity. If you ship at a faster speed, more will be DOA or die after a certain amount of usage, which increases warranty costs, customer dissatisfaction, etc.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Zacate has a fairly steep vcore ramp even at stock speeds. 1.03v for 800Mhz, 1.3-something v for 1.6Ghz.

For 2.3Ghz, you would probably need 1.6-1.7v.

Not worth it.

 

[SunnyD]

Honestly, after reading what people wrote, I did set my expectations a little too high. I bought into the hype... I was expecting that Zacate was K10 performance in an Atom power envelope. At least that's what I inferred from the fervor pitch from a few months ago and then tuned it out.

Thankfully, I know enough about the system setup and how the OS works, so once I had the little nuances under control, I realized the server itself - as a whole - is working exactly as it should. It's not like I'm going to be running heavy database apps or whatnot on it. I'm not entirely sure if I'll even be doing much video streaming off it (one of the things WHS is intended for) - which is what the CPU power is needed for. With all that out of the way, as I said, there still seems to be some overall bottleneck in the storage subsystem, but it's manageable at this point. I haven't migrated over to a faster boot drive, because frankly there's no real need.

I was a bit disappointed, yet again because I didn't do my homework, that the E350M1 (and most Zacate boards in general) don't support RAID even though the chipset itself is capable. I will be getting a hardware RAID card and throwing in several 1TB drives for the actually "storage" part of the system in the near future. So as I said, the WD being the boot drive is really a non-issue for me at this point. It won't be part of the storage pool in the long term.

Other than that, I still do have some concerns about the AHCI driver not being nearly as capable as Intel's solutions. AMD has always had week storage drivers, and I think Zacate exacerbates that somewhat being a slower setup in general. But it gets the job done regardless. The system is up and running, and most importantly STABLE for the time being. I'm satisfied.

 

[86waterpumper]

Zacate has a fairly steep vcore ramp even at stock speeds. 1.03v for 800Mhz

wow really?...that is just sad. My six year old T7200 core2duo in my dell computer at work uses .95 for 1000mhz...

My athlon II htpc computer at home also uses .95 for 800mhz. I guess it's the video though eating the extra...

Still a 2500k system with hd3000 and four cores can also idle at .95 at 1600mhz heh

 

[yh125d]

wow really?...that is just sad. My six year old T7200 core2duo in my dell computer at work uses .95 for 1000mhz...

My athlon II htpc computer at home also uses .95 for 800mhz.

Drastically different architectures, not even remotely comparable. GTX480 only gets like 700mhz out of 1v

 

[86waterpumper]

Alright fair enough, but it's alot closer comparision than a graphics card...

The point is, we are not going forwards but backwards in terms of voltage requirements with zacate. Ok how about this for a comparison?

LLano also uses above 1 volt to idle at 800mhz, while sandy bridge uses .95 for 1600....both of these are 32nm cpus with graphics onboard. So my point is, amd needs to get the idle and load voltage down on both zacate and llano. Why should a zacate require 1.3 volts to do 1600mhz that is nuts any way you cut it. Heck I ran my old phenom 965be @ 1.3 volts @ load (3400mhz)

 

[86waterpumper]

sorry double post

 

[Idontcare]

Alright fair enough, but it's alot closer comparision than a graphics card...

The point is, we are not going forwards but backwards in terms of voltage requirements with zacate. Ok how about this for a comparison?

LLano also uses above 1 volt to idle at 800mhz, while sandy bridge uses .95 for 1600....both of these are 32nm cpus with graphics onboard. So my point is, amd needs to get the idle and load voltage down on both zacate and llano. Why should a zacate require 1.3 volts to do 1600mhz that is nuts any way you cut it.

Yep, this is where there's just no way getting around the quality of the transistors themselves (Idrive, Ioff, etc) when it comes to the limiting capabilities of a given microarchitecture.

Even a SB on GloFo's 32nm SOI is going to have a higher min-voltage, etc, than it does on Intel's process tech. That's part of what having a few extra billion R&D dollars per year gets you after four years of node development.

 

[yh125d]

Alright fair enough, but it's alot closer comparision than a graphics card...

Not really. All three are very different architectures and it's a fools errand to judge any of them on voltage alone. You might as well be complaining that a 775mHz 960 shader 6850 isn't way faster than a 772mhz/512 shader GTX580. They're not even remotely comparable in that metric.

The point is, we are not going forwards but backwards in terms of voltage requirements with zacate. Ok how about this for a comparison?

LLano also uses above 1 volt to idle at 800mhz, while sandy bridge uses .95 for 1600....both of these are 32nm cpus with graphics onboard. So my point is, amd needs to get the idle and load voltage down on both zacate and llano. Why should a zacate require 1.3 volts to do 1600mhz that is nuts any way you cut it. Heck I ran my old phenom 965be @ 1.3 volts @ load (3400mhz)

And yet an A8-3850 uses 10w less at idle than a 2500k. Simply put, calling a low power/mobile 40nm/380m xtor chip bad because a 32nm quad core desktop chip with 1b xtors needs less voltage to run a certain frequency is moronic.

 

[86waterpumper]

My 2500k system with only a ssd drive hooked up right now idles @ 35watts. This is with a z68 mboard even. I have seen plenty charts online of the a8-3850 and in none do i see even 35 idle watts let alone 25... I see numbers ranging from 42 to 55. Plenty of people @ silent pc are getting like 11 watts idle with a i3 2100 and h61 systems when running a pico. I fail to see how the comparison is moronic.

 

[Hacp]

Honestly, after reading what people wrote, I did set my expectations a little too high. I bought into the hype... I was expecting that Zacate was K10 performance in an Atom power envelope. At least that's what I inferred from the fervor pitch from a few months ago and then tuned it out.

Thankfully, I know enough about the system setup and how the OS works, so once I had the little nuances under control, I realized the server itself - as a whole - is working exactly as it should. It's not like I'm going to be running heavy database apps or whatnot on it. I'm not entirely sure if I'll even be doing much video streaming off it (one of the things WHS is intended for) - which is what the CPU power is needed for. With all that out of the way, as I said, there still seems to be some overall bottleneck in the storage subsystem, but it's manageable at this point. I haven't migrated over to a faster boot drive, because frankly there's no real need.

I was a bit disappointed, yet again because I didn't do my homework, that the E350M1 (and most Zacate boards in general) don't support RAID even though the chipset itself is capable. I will be getting a hardware RAID card and throwing in several 1TB drives for the actually "storage" part of the system in the near future. So as I said, the WD being the boot drive is really a non-issue for me at this point. It won't be part of the storage pool in the long term.

Other than that, I still do have some concerns about the AHCI driver not being nearly as capable as Intel's solutions. AMD has always had week storage drivers, and I think Zacate exacerbates that somewhat being a slower setup in general. But it gets the job done regardless. The system is up and running, and most importantly STABLE for the time being. I'm satisfied.

I do agree with you one one thing. AMD does have some shitty SATA drivers. My bad experiences on using amd mobos with SSDs kinda makes me shy away from them.