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[crspyjohn]

Stable C2D Board - ANY size - Needs working lan

I need a stable C2D board that works with linux and lan. I was thinking of a Intel G965 board but I heard that chipset isn't supported in linux?

Building a mid tower for a colo.

[CNSERVERS]

Intel S3000AH
I use this one seems pretty good

[qps]

http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?t=536878

specifically

http://www.intel.com/products/mother...gzis/index.htm

We have quite a few of them in service and they work great.

[bewshy]

I have been using 2 of the Asus P5M2/SAS boards with Xeon 3050's. These also support C2D which the Xeon 3000 series is anyways. These boards have been great and I haven't had any problems with Red Hat Enterprise.

The onboard LSI 1068 PCI-X 8 port SAS provides 2 "mini-SAS" connectors with 4 drives a connector. I have 4 WD RE drives on each motherboard with 4 more drive spaces to spare.


Click here for P5M2/SAS Specs

P5M2/SAS Specifications Processor
1 * Dual-Core Intel® Xeon® processor 3000 sequence, FSB 533 / 800 / 1066MHz EM64T 4M L2 cache

Chipset
Intel® 3000 MCH + Intel® ICH7R + Intel® 6702 PXH 64-bit PCI Hub

Memory
4 * Dual Channel ECC / Non ECC Unbuffered DDR2 533 / 667, Max. up to 8GB

Expansion
1 * PCI 32bit/ 33MHz
2 * PCI-X 133 / 100MHz
1 * PCI-E x16 ( x 8 link)
1 * SODIMM socket for ASMB3-SOL

LAN Chip
2 * Broadcom® BCM5721 PCI-E Gb LAN

Form Factor
ATX, 12" * 9.6"

[cwl@apaqdigital]

Originally Posted by crspyjohn

Stable C2D Board - ANY size - Needs working lan

I need a stable C2D board that works with linux and lan. I was thinking of a Intel G965 board but I heard that chipset isn't supported in linux?

Building a mid tower for a colo.

for budget server, try the new 2.0 version of Gigabyte 8i865GME-775-RH board which supports core2 duo chip.

for a $50 board, it comes with rather aged Intel 865G chipset, ICH5 SATA, and Intel 100/10 NIC. absolutely no linux support issues!

it takes 2x DDR1 modules for 2G max, and you do need a Dremel cut on audio post for 1U installation.

[qps]

Originally Posted by cwl@apaqdigital

for budget server, try the new 2.0 version of Gigabyte 8i865GME-775-RH board which supports core2 duo chip.

for a $50 board, it comes with rather aged Intel 865G chipset, ICH5 SATA, and Intel 100/10 NIC. absolutely no linux support issues!

it takes 2x DDR1 modules for 2G max, and you do need a Dremel cut on audio post for 1U installation.

Only problem there is unless you're using an E4300, you're going to take a huge performance hit. It will run any other Core 2 Duo chips at 800 MHz FSB. I'd spend the extra $30 and get the board I recommended above.

[cwl@apaqdigital]

Originally Posted by qps

Only problem there is unless you're using an E4300, you're going to take a huge performance hit. It will run any other Core 2 Duo chips at 800 MHz FSB. I'd spend the extra $30 and get the board I recommended above.

despite the 800fsb, the 1.8Ghz E4300 is really performing pretty darn close to 1.86Ghz E6300 (1066fsb):
http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets...spx?i=2903&p=3

that goes to tell you the "significance" of FSB speed.

that's not surprising, 2.66Ghz/1066fsb E6700 (or Xeon 3070) performs equal to or better than single 2.66G/1333fsb Xeon 5150 on most applications:
http://www.gamepc.com/labs/view_cont...0vs6800&page=6

[qps]

Originally Posted by cwl@apaqdigital

despite the 800fsb, the 1.8Ghz E4300 is really performing pretty darn close to 1.86Ghz E6300 (1066fsb):
http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets...spx?i=2903&p=3

that goes to tell you the "significance" of FSB speed.

that's not surprising, 2.66Ghz/1066fsb E6700 (or Xeon 3070) performs equal to or better than single 2.66G/1333fsb Xeon 5150 on most applications:
http://www.gamepc.com/labs/view_cont...0vs6800&page=6

That may be the case, but the Core 2 Duo E6x00 series or Q6x00 series are going to run at a slower clock speed because they are multiplier locked.

800 x (multiplier lock) is going to be less than 1066 x (multiplier lock) every time.

[cwl@apaqdigital]

well, E4400 (2.0G) and E4500 (2.2G) are coming out soon....

currently, E4300 is about $30 cheaper than E6300! thus, E4300 + 8i865GME-775-RH solution is going to be $60~$70 cheaper than E6300+ Intel D946GHIS for about the same performance. $70 saving per server can add up quickly for those hosts operating large # of low-end servers. the gigabyte board is also ideal for folks looking to upgrade existing servers with DDR1 modules already.

[qps]

Originally Posted by cwl@apaqdigital

well, E4400 (2.0G) and E4500 (2.2G) are coming out soon....

currently, E4300 is about $30 cheaper than E6300! thus, E4300 + 8i865GME-775-RH solution is going to be $60~$70 cheaper than E6300+ Intel D946GHIS for about the same performance. $70 saving per server can add up quickly for those hosts operating large # of low-end servers. the gigabyte board is also ideal for folks looking to upgrade existing servers with DDR1 modules already.

Absolutely, Intel 865-based boards are very attractive for the E4x00 series boards.

The new E6x00 series -- E6320 and E6420 I believe -- will all have 4 MB cache. The E6300 and E6400 are being discontinued.

[RBBOT]

despite the 800fsb, the 1.8Ghz E4300 is really performing pretty darn close to 1.86Ghz E6300 (1066fsb):
http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets...spx?i=2903&p=3

that goes to tell you the "significance" of FSB speed.

It's not so much about the FSB speed as the amount of L2 cache. There is a 4Mb vs. 2Mb cache difference between the E4xxx and the higher E6xxx core 2 chips (the 2Mb E6300 and E6400 being replaced with E6320 and E6420 next month).

Most of the benchmarks you see on hardware review sites are aimed at desktop use and include a suite of applications that use things like audio/video/archiving which use data in a stream - i.e. they read a very large amount of data and look at each byte once or twice in quick sucession then move on. That data pattern does not need a large cache.

This is not realistic for comparing their performance on typical web server/database application. e.g. A database frequently loads datasets of a moderate size and has to sort them / perform lookups against them. A bigger cache here makes a massive difference.

X-bit labs did a recent benchmark of an E6420 against an E6400 - these chips are identical in all ways that matter except for the size of the cache:

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu...o-e6420_3.html

As you can see the desktop applications that are most like server applications in their memory access patterns (e.g. excel doing calculations on a large spreadsheet) see the biggest gain from the cache.

So, whilst the E4xxx series are still great chips (I have qps hosting one for me, presumably on the motherboard he is advocating) the performance difference between them and the higher series is more than it appears from desktop performance reviews.

[cwl@apaqdigital]

in fact, it turns out that Gigabyte 8i865GME-775-RH board does support 1066fsb by changing FSB setting in BIOS providing that you must use DDR400 modules. thus, you do have the option to put E6xxx chip on it.

[qps]

Originally Posted by cwl@apaqdigital

in fact, it turns out that Gigabyte 8i865GME-775-RH board does support 1066fsb by changing FSB setting in BIOS providing that you must use DDR400 modules. thus, you do have the option to put E6xxx chip on it.

That is overclocking the i865 chipset. It wasn't designed to run at those speeds.

Plus, the RAM will still only run at 800 MHz, so regardless of the FSB, there is still a bottleneck.

[cwl@apaqdigital]

DDR400 with CL2/CL3 low-latency modules often outperforms DDR2-533 (typically CL4) or DDR2-667 (typically CL5). that's part of the reason why there is very little real world improvement going from socket 939/940 (DDR1) platform to socket AM2/1207 (DDR2) platform.

although, CL3 DDR2-533 and CL4 DDR2-667 are available, but you will be paying tremendous premium for them.