Twin Athlons or bottom end Opteron for server?

[NickCauston]

Need to build a Server, but don't know whether to use one of the old twin Athlon boards with a pair of XP-Mobiles in it or a bottom end Opteron (140 1-way 1400mhz) what do you all think?

As it is a server it should have ECC DIMMS so, unfortunately, that rules out all the normal single Athlon boards. Are the socket 940 Opterons stable enough yet to use for a server?

Any opinions?

 

[imported_juanflaiter]

What OS are you using? If you are still using Windows, I would go for a pair of Mobiles.

 

[CraigRT]

I'd go with a dual MP2400 or higher for a server.

 

[NickCauston]

I'm just getting a bit worried that supply of these dual mobos will dry-up within the next year or two, which would cause a bit of a problem if it failed and we needed to get a replacement. The server will have a planned life of about four years.

Cheers,

 

[NickCauston]

Forgot to say, going to be running Windows 2003, well 2003 Small Business Server actually.

 

[Zap]

Well, why not go BOTH dual CPU and Opteron? Depending on what the needs of the server is, there are motherboards ranging from around $200 to around $500. Lower end ones are like desktop boards, except with ECC support and of course the dual socket 940. Higher end ones have things like integrated ATI Rage video and PCI-X slots. You can also run the dual Opteron boards with a single CPU, leaving you room for growth.

What are you planning to use the server for? That may give us more information to base our recommendations on rather than your choice of OS.

 

[Peter]

Use twin Opterons. Windows 2003 SBS is already available in 64-bit, and the platform has quite a long life in front of it, while the 32-bit Athlon MP has already officially been phased out a couple of weeks ago.

 

[NickCauston]

Thanks for the ideas. In the end I have decided to go with a single Opteron 140 or maybe a 240 depanding on what I can get my hands on first, Opterons are in short supply over here in the UK at the moment. That is going to live on a single Opteron board like the Asus SK8N or SK8V not decided which yet.

The server is only going to be a glorified file server running Exchange and acting as a Proxy server (plus antivirus checks) for some Internet traffic for a ten user network so not likely to actually need most of the power anyway. Could probably go to twenty users without worrying much.

 

[Peter]

Then I suggest you use a dual-Opteron board, plant a single 240 for now, and have some growing space to ...erm... grow into as the user count increases.

And do yourself a favor and use a mainboard made for this task, rather than use a desktop mainboard. If you're going for minimum budget, use e.g. the Tyan Tomcat K8S (S2850) for a single Opteron.

http://www.tyan.com/products/html/opteron.html

 

[NickCauston]

I have been looking at the specs for that Tyan board you suggested, thing is I can't see much difference between that and the desktop boards. Now if there was a proper server board that had 64bit PCI and the such, that would be worth the extra.

 

[Peter]

The differences are: Twin ethernet onboard, simple graphics onboard, sturdy design made for 24/7 operation. You'd know the difference in a year or two ...

Further up the Tyan page, there's a wide selection of boards w/ 64-bit PCI-X slots.

 

[Vette73]

Why not get a cheap dual board like..

MSI Dual Opteron

and Put in 1 2XX Opteron chip.

That way you get a good system now and if need be you can pop in another Opteron anytime.

 

[Peter]

That'll be a desktop/workstation board yet again. PCI performance is not as good on those as it is on the Tomcat - simply because on the former, it's CPU->northbridge->southbridge->PCI, while with the AMD single-chip arrangement on the Tomcat, it's CPU->chip->PCI.

Besides, with no RAM slots on the 2nd CPU, that board won't scale performance as much as it could. Adding a 2nd Opteron is only half as much fun when you can't double the RAM bandwidth at the same time. And it doesn't have PCI-X slots either. With servers being about I/O bandwidth, one should have those long before thinking about a 2nd CPU.