Choices of 64-bit PCI motherboards?

[RLE]

I'm looking for a motherboard that has at least one 64-bit pci slot, socket-A, DDR (no sdram slots clutter please), at least 2 case fan connectors and onboard LAN. Don't need/want onboard sound nor video. This is for a mostly headless Linux server.

Two obvious older ones that happen to both be dual would be:

Tyan S2466N
Asus A7M266-D

None of the new ones seem to support 64-bit PCI and I don't really need a dual. I don't mind switching to a P4 processor if necessary if I can find the right HT-capable motherboard.
Any suggestions?

 

[mechBgon]

I'm not aware of any production single-CPU boards with a 64-bit PCI bus, either 33MHz or 66MHz (which is a bummer ). Anyone else?

(edit for brain slippage on MHz v. bits)

 

[Peter]

You need the chipset's support for this. Now no commodity chipset has 64-bit PCI, and with 66-MHz PCI practically implying that the chipset needs to have twin PCI busses (because at 66 MHz you can't do more than two slots), this means we're talking expensive server grade chipsets here.

On the socket-A front, the only contender is AMD's 760MP(X) chipset. Twin CPU busses, twin PCI busses, the later X variant being 66 MHz on the primary 64-bit PCI bus.

 

[RLE]

Ok, I guess I do need to shell out the cash for a 760MPX-based board. Can always just toss my single AthlonXP-2000 in there for now and perhaps pick up another later.
For the curious, this is for a 3ware Escalade 7500-4 raid card. It works ok in 32-bit mode, but I am trying to squeeze more io out of it.

 

[Peter]

Yes, an XP processor model can be used in those. Single-CPU mode only then.

For that RAID card, inspect whether it's 66-MHz PCI capable. If it's not, then you might want to shop for a leftover 760MP board at a bargain price rather than a current 760MPX board (watch for high speed CPU support on the older ones though!).

 

[mechBgon]

I'm tempted to say that if you want performance, you should stop playing with IDE and get some Cheetah 15k.3's. Even a RAID card can't make an IDE drive seek faster. 3.8ms seek time will always give the Cheetah a huge headstart and 0.1ms track-to-track will give it more. Then there's the >75Mb/sec sustained transfer rate... yummy!

 

[Vette73]

Originally posted by: Peter
Yes, an XP processor model can be used in those. Single-CPU mode only then.

For that RAID card, inspect whether it's 66-MHz PCI capable. If it's not, then you might want to shop for a leftover 760MP board at a bargain price rather than a current 760MPX board (watch for high speed CPU support on the older ones though!).

Auhh.. NO. The Athlon XP CAN be run in dual mode. All you have to do is connect the last bridge of the L5 on the chip. I am running 2 1600+ XP's in my 760MPX board, stable and fast.

But use Reg. ECC ram, some say they can use regular DDR but people have had good and bad stories with it.

 

[RLE]

I fully agree that going SCSI-raid would be nicer and faster, but this is just for a personal server and budget is an issue here. I set a limit of $1000 for myself for this project. My 80G 7200/8M cache Maxtors were around $70 each. So, $240 for the drives, $245 for the 3ware card and I have a pretty decent 240G raid-5 setup for under $500. This is currently running on the $99 Fry's ECS K7S5A/AthlonXP-2000 combo with a single stick of 256M DDR2100 ram ($38 at BB). The only thing I didn't skimp on was the power supply and case Antec Truepower 430W PSU and Antec case for $156 at CompUSA (I was in a hurry). I tossed in a spare floppy and cd I had lying around. So, that adds up to $778 for what I think is a very nice server. It obviously needs more RAM, but that won't eat up the remaining $222 in my budget so I was looking to see if I could get a slightly more appropriate motherboard. Right now I have a feeling my motherboard is my weakest link and the whole goal here is to build a reliable mail/web server that i won't have to worry about when I am on the road.

 

[RLE]

Peter, the 3ware card is 64-bit 33 MHz so a straight 760MP board would be ok, I guess, if it can handle the faster current cpus.

 

[mechBgon]

Originally posted by: RLE
I fully agree that going SCSI-raid would be nicer and faster, but this is just for a personal server and budget is an issue here. I set a limit of $1000 for myself for this project. My 80G 7200/8M cache Maxtors were around $70 each. So, $240 for the drives, $245 for the 3ware card and I have a pretty decent 240G raid-5 setup for under $500. This is currently running on the $99 Fry's ECS K7S5A/AthlonXP-2000 combo with a single stick of 256M DDR2100 ram ($38 at BB). The only thing I didn't skimp on was the power supply and case Antec Truepower 430W PSU and Antec case for $156 at CompUSA (I was in a hurry). I tossed in a spare floppy and cd I had lying around. So, that adds up to $778 for what I think is a very nice server. It obviously needs more RAM, but that won't eat up the remaining $222 in my budget so I was looking to see if I could get a slightly more appropriate motherboard. Right now I have a feeling my motherboard is my weakest link and the whole goal here is to build a reliable mail/web server that i won't have to worry about when I am on the road.

I didn't say anything about SCSI RAID, just straight-on SCSI Looking at the results here, I see a couple of things revealed:

• 64-bit doesn't matter (they did a 32-versus-64 test towards the end at 3Ware's expense, precise same results either way)
• Max transfer rate off a 7450 with a 3-drive RAID5 is still slower than a single Cheetah X15-36LP
• IOmeter results for X15-36LP are more than double that of a 3-disk IDE RAID5 on a 7450
• Looking up the results from the 7450's legacy tests against the X15-36LP, a four-disk IDE RAID5 7450 is annihilated by a single X15-36LP in Winstone results (2024 and 5782 for the RAID5, versus 11133 and 31633 for the standalone SCSI drive)
• The Cheetah 15k.3 makes the Cheetah X15-36LP look slow by comparison

You have four drives, right? Unless the 7500 is a quantum leap over the 7450 in RAID5 performance, then I'd recommend switching to a four-drive RAID10, which scores much higher (6020/17420). You lose some capacity but triple your performance. Or if you don't really need 160Gb of space, you could probably sell that RAID setup for enough to buy a 36Gb 15k.3 plus an Adaptec 19160.

edit: just checked, a pair of 36Gb 15k.3's and a whitebox 19160 with cable & terminator would set you back $676 at Hypermicro. 5-year 24/7 lifespan guaranteed really sweetens the initial buy-in on those drives. Just a thought...

 

[RLE]

mechBgon: Obviously I need the storage and the ability to lose a drive without losing data. You are suggesting that instead of paying $485 for 240G I pay $676 for 36G (since I would have mirror to retain the ability to lose a drive). That's nowhere near enough storage for $200 more. It makes no sense.

 

[mechBgon]

Ok, but if performance is a factor (and it sounds like it is, since you were asking the 64-bit question) then the SCSI setup is going to clean house on IDE. And not everyone needs vast quantities of space... my office system doubles as a file server and has only 10Gb of my 18Gb X15-36LP in use so far. Dare I ask what you're storing that requires over 160Gb of storage capacity...?

Also, keep in mind that for optimal results, you'll want to replace failed drives with identical ones... got spares stashed away for when that happens? IDE product lines change frequently, I've noticed, but you can still buy Quantum Atlas 10k's from ~1998 to repair a SCSI RAID. And those 5-year warranties are nice.

 

[mechBgon]

I guess I should stop being antagonistic and mention that for many purposes, the RAID only needs to be as fast as the network connection, so don't mind my ravings.

And from my own testing, I will reveal this: whatever you do, don't pick an Asus A7V333-RAID if you need good PCI performance, it STINKS. My hard drive hits about 60Mb sustained transfer rates natively, but on my A7V333-R, the SCSI card itself was bottlenecked at just 49Mb/sec maximum burst throughput! (measured by Adaptec SCSIBench)

Disabling the board's PCI-based USB 2.0 controller brought that up to 72Mb/sec maximum burst throughput. Plunking the card and drive into my K7S5A, I immediately got 101Mb/sec burst. Dropping it into my humble nForce-based A7N266-VM, I got 105Mb/sec! :Q And at 128kb blocksize, throughput jumped to over 120Mb/sec on nForce (and this is the "old" nForce, too). Holy smokes, the whole PCI bus doesn't go much faster than that! :Q

(edit: I should clarify that those are same-sector read speeds, the "best-case scenario" where the card's limitations, or the motherboard's limitations, are showing)

Based on that, I suggest an nForce2 board, much more flexible than a TigerMP. EPoX 8RDA non-plus sells for around $100 for example. Also, here's a tip if you want a benchmarking tool: go to ATTO, put in name and email, go to the ATTO ExpressPCI HostAdapter Utilities, and get their Windows SCSI Utilities and they have a nice benchmarking app in there, could be useful for tweaking performance or comparing among motherboards. (works on IDE too)

 

[RLE]

I do actually have a spare drive that matches the others. Currently sitting in an external USB2 case not doing anything. The 3ware isn't very picky about matched drives as long as I don't put a smaller one in. At $70 it is a lot easier buying a drive to just sit on the shelf. Having a $250 drive just sitting there hurts a bit.

On the "Why the heck do you need so much storage?" question. I get 1400-1500 emails a day not counting spam. My main mailbox is typically well over a gig and that is just me. Other folks have mail accounts on the box as well (family and friends hitting up the techy for decent pop/imap/webmail accounts with unlimited storage) and the entire mail spool for the dozen or so accounts currently take 21 gigs. My digital pictures, baby, vacations, conferences, etc. are currently taking up close to 4 gigs. Samba is also running on the box and the various other machines in the house back themselves up to this server. If they really backed up everything, that would easily overflow the 240G, but right now the backups are taking around 60G. Probably another gig of various source code and build trees for various projects I work on, a couple of gigs of mp3s and another couple of gigs of baby .avi's. It all adds up well over 100G used right now and there needs to be room to grow.

And no, I don't do Windows, so those tools aren't going to do me much good.

 

[mechBgon]

Holy cow. :Q At work, our Exchange server (which uses 36Gb SCSI drives with software mirroring, fwiw) has maybe 1Gb of email for 80 users.

But I am going off on a tangent. Back to the topic at hand. Tyan TigerMP uses standard ATX PSU's, so it would probably be the best pick since you invested in a good PSU already. Its big brothers, the Thunders, use three different flavors of non-ATX PSU's (two variants of EPS and one proprietary). This would also get your NIC(s) isolated from your RAID card by putting them on two different busses, so maybe that will be a benefit. The TigerMP takes Registered ECC DDR only, unlike some of the other Tyans like the TigerMPX, which will accept one or two unbuffered non-parity DDR modules, so keep that in mind as a hidden cost.

I still think nForce2 might do a very nice job for you, and can take up to three 1Gb PC2100 DIMMs.

 

[Peter]

You don't really want to use Unbuffered DIMMs on AMD's 760MP(X). It does sort of work, but "sort of" isn't what you want here.

Besides, you should help yourself to a backup solution as well ... Onstream ADR2-120 springs to mind. IDE, FW, USB2 and SCSI flavors available, with the SCSI and FW versions being almost twice as fast as the others.

... and if you do go SCSI, use an LSI or Tekram U160 adapter, not an Adaptec. At least identical performance, but much less headaches and a very substantially lower price.