[conspire] Re: Last Year's Supercomputer

[Edmund J. Biow]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Mark S Bilk" <mark at cosmicpenguin.com>
To: <conspire at linuxmafia.com>
Sent: Wednesday, June 18, 2003 9:36 PM
Subject: Re: [conspire] Re: Last Year's Supercomputer
 > >> > Asus tech support says that running RAM faster than the CPU actually
 > >> > slows down performance....
 > No -- the original bargain motherboard that I had intended to get,
 > ECS K7S5A-Pro, supports only 266MHz (FSB/DDR) CPU and memory.
 > Then someone told me about the FIC AU13 Pro motherboard, using the
 > superior nVidia nForce2 chipset, which, among other things, will
 > run pairs of memory sticks in parallel, effectively doubling the
 > transfer rate (probably the same as described below for Pentium 4).


The benchmarks I've seen indicate that the boost you get from the dual 
channel thingy is fairly marginal (2-4% in real life situations).
http://www.digit-life.com/articles2/nforce2-1vs2channels/

The Socket A Via KT400 chipset without the dual memory channels looks 
like it hangs pretty tough with the Nforce2 in most things and the 
boards seem to average $15-20 less.

 > However, I decided to go with the somewhat more expensive Asus
 > A7N8X Deluxe, which uses the same chipset, because it's rated for
 > 400MHz (FSB/DDR) CPU and memory, even though the processor I chose
 > has only a 333MHz FSB bus, since I figured the FIC board might be
 > running closer to its margins than the Asus, and I've been pleased
 > in the past with Asus design and workmanship.  I didn't believe FIC
 > when they told me they had never tried a 400MHz CPU in the board;
 > I think they did (why wouldn't they?) and it didn't work.

An excellent choice, IMO (& I suspect I'm the bloke who recommended the 
cheapie FIC AU 13 mobo with the retail Athlon XP2200+ for $140 from 
Fry's). The Asus A7N8X is maybe the most popular board out there in the 
hardware enthusiast community.  Various stripes of Epox Nforce2 boards 
are well beloved by the overclocking crowd.  The Nforce2 that I'm 
looking at now is the $90 delivered Shuttle MN31N with built in dual 
monitor GeForce4 MX video & very high quality "Sound Storm" on board 
audio, plus 6 USB 2.0 ports, onboard Firewire IEEE 1394 & built in LAN.  
It only has 3 PCI slots & only supports up to 333 FSB, but what can I 
say, I'm a cheap SOB, as witnessed by my recent prestigious award on 
this forum.
http://www.newegg.com/app/viewproduct.asp?DEPA=&submit=Go&description=MN31N
 
 > >The lingo used in memory is also kind of tricky. A 333MHz FSB really 
has
 > >a clock speed of 166MHz, but since DDR (or "double data rate") memory
 > >uses both the rising edge and the trailing edge of the clock signal to
 > >trigger memory transfers, it has an effective transfer rate of 333MHz.
 > >
 > >Where it gets really tricky, and perhaps even deceptive, is the memory
 > >speeds used with Pentium 4s. Using the same speed of memory they get
 > >another doubling of the transfer rate (I'm not sure why, but it may be
 > >because it simply uses pairs of DIMMS to increase the bandwidth.) So the
 > >P4s and their motherboards make speed claims of 533 or 800MHz, when it's
 > >really a 133 or 200MHz clock being multiplied by four.
 >
 > So then is my system only 16% ((400 - 333)/400) slower in actual
 > CPU bus and memory rate, than an "800MHz" P4?

All these artificial benchmarks really don't tally well with real-world 
performance, I'm afraid.  According to the benches I've seen the latest 
"800 MHz" Intel dual memory channel PIV motherboard chipsets 
(Canterwood, Granite Bay, Springdale) own the Socket A competition in 
terms of memory performance (see 
http://www.aceshardware.com/read.jsp?id=55000278), but when you actually 
compare system performance, the difference just doesn't seem very 
important.  For instance, one site compared the latest & greatest 
hyperthreaded PIV 3.06 GHz in a  i875P/ "Canterwood" chipset board with 
dual DDR 400 running at 400 MHz to your new board with a Barton 3200 & 
the same memory, but running at 333 FSB.  The result?  The AMD rig is 
better at AutoCAD, while the Intel set up bested it in 7 out of 10 games.
 http://www.aceshardware.com/read.jsp?id=55000284
Also see: http://www.motherboards.org/articlesd/hardware-reviews/1249_1.html

It is worth remembering that the Athlon CPU actually runs at 2.2 GHz, 
about 72% of the clock speed of the P4 3.2 & gobbles 60.4 to 76.8 watts 
compared to 81 to 105 watts for the Intel chip.  More watts translates 
into more heat, which in turn means a more expensive power supply & more 
noise to cool the sucker down, remember. 

One benchmark that is most reflective of what most non-gamers actually 
do with their computers is the SYSmark Office Productivity 2002 (which 
uses a bunch of real world MS Office applications, browsers, Winzip, 
McAfee AV, Netscape 6, voice recognition, etc.)  In this, and similar 
test like the Business Winmark, etc. the Athlons have always bested the 
Pentium IV.  In fact, the Athlon Barton XP3000+ (2167 MHz) beats the PIV 
3.2 GHz in the SYSmark using your board vs. a Intel D850EMV2 - Intel 
850E Chipset with extremely expensive RAMBUS  PC1066 Samsung RIMMs.
http://www.anandtech.com/cpu/showdoc.html?i=1783&p=11
Or look at this comparison with the similar Business Winstone 2002, 
where the  AMD Athlon XP 3000+ (2.167GHz) Barton
 gets 39.9 vs. 33.6 for the Intel Pentium 4 3.00GHz (875P-800MHz):
http://www.anandtech.com/cpu/showdoc.html?i=1810&p=6

But it is in terms of bang for the buck that AMD solutions absolutely 
dominate competing Intel products.  The mid to low range AMD processors 
are MUCH cheaper than Intel CPUs that offer anything like comparable 
performance.  For instance an Athlon XP1700+ goes for about $42 and 
performs better than a Pentium IV-M 2 GHz that costs 3-4x as much 
(depending upon architecture).  Oh, & as and experiment I put that 
processor on my 2 year old Epox KT266A motherboard the day before 
yesterday and simply increased the FSB from 133 to 166 in the BIOS.  It 
was stable and cool (42c after cranking 3 SETI units in 10 hours with a 
quiet $6 SVC GC 68 fan) & out-benches a PIV 2.4GHz that costs 4x as much 
and even at default speed does about as well at the Business Winstone 
2002 as a  Intel Pentium 4 2.80GHz (875P-533MHz) costing $268.

And the fact that I can even still find CPUs to upgrade my older boards 
is another reason I generally go for AMD systems, even if Intel is 
frequently (not always) the performance leader.  Intel keeps switching 
its architecture around in order to force you to upgrade motherboards 
every time you hang a new processor on the system.  They abandoned the 
Socket 7 for the proprietary Slot 1 CPU when they introduced the Pentium 
II (233 MHz).  They didn't want anyone else to be able to make boards 
for their processors (AMD rarely makes motherboards, & then generally 
only when other companies aren't making motherboards for their 
processors because they are being overtly intimidated by Intel).  AMD 
continued to support the Socket 7 right up to the K6-2 550 MHz (& you 
can still get a K6-2 500 for $18 delivered).  Intel saw that it was 
losing out some sales to these "Super Socket 7" rigs, so it introduced a 
Celeron (a Pentium with the cache purposely crippled) to compete at that 
price point, but introduced a new architecture (Socket 370) so folks 
wouldn't buy a Celery and wait for PII-PIII prices to fall (which, by 
the way, they never did, because Intel simply stops producing older CPUs 
rather AMD's practice of continuing to crank them out at a lower price 
point, so you can buy a AMD Duron 950 for $28 delivered, but would have 
to pony up $200 if you wanted to upgrade your old Slot 1 board to a PIII 
800 MHz).  In the mean time I've just about lost track of all the 
squirrelly changes that Intel has made to its chipsets in the interests 
of market segmentation or forcing you to upgrade boards (Coppermine, 
Tualatin, Socket 423, Socket 478, probably some others) while AMD has 
kept its several year old Socket A design, so you could still run a 
Duron 600 on the latest Nvidia2 board.  (AMD will soon be moving to the 
32-bit Opteron for servers, so they had to introduce a new Socket 940 
form factor.)

As a result of all this the majority of the hobbyiest-gamer-hardware 
enthusiast folks tend to go AMD, while Intel is stalwart among corporate 
ass-coverers & big system builders like Dell who rely on the power of 
the "Intel Inside" brand recognition to crank up sales.  

If money is absolutely no object, by all means buy Intel.  The popular 
arstechnica site, for instance, recommends for its $10,000 (hardware 
only price) "Godbox" a pair of  Intel Xeon 3.06GHz 533mhz FSB retail 
boxes ($707 each) on a $392 Supermicro X5DAE board.  However for their 
"Hot Rod" (best bang for buck power system) they recommend something 
remarkably close to what Mark ended up with, an Epox Nforce2 EP-8RDA+ 
for $85 and an OEM Athlon XP2500+ with 512 MB of PC2700.  Total hardware 
system cost with $114 speakers & $280 monitor: $1258.  The "Budget" 
system recommendation is also very good in my opinion, an Asus A7N266-VM 
(Nforce 220 chipset) with an OEM XP1900+.  System cost exclusive of 
monitor & extra video card (the built in Geforce2 MX graphics is 
excellent unless you are a hardcore gamer): $400.

Ed