Tyan K8SRE S2891
The
Tyan K8SRE is the latest server based Opteron board from a well-known motherboard manufacturer, Tyan. The K8SRE features Nvidia's nForce
TM Professional 2200 core logic solution. For more information on the nForce Professional chipset, check out Derek Wilson's
excellent coverage.
Overall, the Tyan board performed well in our tests. We did, however, have some compatibility issues with our Crucial memory on this board. Some minor BIOS tweaks managed to get us up and running, and stable. We'd recommend that you adhere to memory that is officially supported by Tyan to avoid any compatibility issues - our memory was not on the recommended list.
1Ghz HyperTransport Support
According to AMD, the 252 supports a 1GHz HyperTransport bus frequency. The Tyan board sets the HyperTransport bus frequency automatically to 800MHz, which is what we used for our tests. We did, however, manually forced the HyperTransport frequency to 1GHz using nVidia's nTune and there was no difference in performance in any of our tests.
Test Software Configuration
Windows 2003 was configured with /3GB and /PAE switches in the boot.ini to support the 8GB of memory used for our tests. SQL Server Enterprise was set to use AWE extensions and a maximum memory limit was set at 6144MB.
Test hardware configuration
Intel Xeon System
3.6 GHz Nocona 1MB L2
3.6 GHz Nocona 2MB L2
Intel SE7620AF2 Motherboard
8GB Crucial PC2-3200 DDR2 Memory
Windows 2003 Enterprise Server (32 Bit)
8 x 36GB 15,000RPM Ultra320 SCSI drives in RAID-0
LSI Logic 320-2 SCSI Raid Controller
AMD Configuration
Opteron 250
Opteron 252
Tyan K8SRE S2891 Motherboard
8GB Crucial DDR-3200 Memory
Windows 2003 Enterprise Server (32 Bit)
8 x 36GB 15,000RPM Ultra320 SCSI drives in RAID-0
LSI Logic 320-2 SCSI Raid Controller
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Carfax - Tuesday, February 15, 2005 - link
Sheesh, the workstation benches still aren't up? :(More people are interested in the workstation benchmarks than database I'd wager because it's a better showcase for the new enhancements.
How long will we have to wait?
Jason Clark - Tuesday, February 15, 2005 - link
snorre, proper? It is proper in terms of the Windows world since 64 bit DOES NOT EXIST :). If you want to see 64bit linux coverage as said in these comments and in the article view the linux section or Johans work in the IT section.snorre - Tuesday, February 15, 2005 - link
I'd like to see a proper Xeon DP 2M vs Opteron 252 review, since MS SQL 32-bit benchmarks are only of limited interest. When will we see this?Are there any proper Opteron 252 reviews out there?
semo - Tuesday, February 15, 2005 - link
#70, you said it. it's the cost. cost is my killer.sure ddr2 costs more than ddr but i hate upgrading my whole setup just to get new momory. right now i'm running a pc133 setup and cannot upgrade even if i wanted to (and believe me... i want to). i know that low latency is what the hammer architecture wants but doesn't regitered memory increase latencies... and what is registered memory anyway?
Jason Clark - Tuesday, February 15, 2005 - link
There was a few questions about single or dual in here, I had answered that but to clarify all testing was DUAL processor.Jason Clark - Tuesday, February 15, 2005 - link
One thing to remember with the Tyan bios is it is pre-production. We'll post info as soon as we have it.Jason Clark - Tuesday, February 15, 2005 - link
We're working with Tyan on the 1GHz HT issue, if we get a new bios that supports it we will re-test and post our results..Cheers.
Viditor - Tuesday, February 15, 2005 - link
"i'm interested in number cruncing and games and rendering, i.e. a workstation not a server"Why would you not want registered memory then? Contrary to popular opinion, it does not affect the speed...only the cost.
For gaming, dual systems are no help at all (unless you're running a game server) with todays software. For professional rendering, you absolutely WANT registered memory!
DDR2 would actually be no speed increase at all for AMD64 systems, and none yet for Intel systems. Not until the memory speeds get much higher will we see any benefit from DDR2...
XDR is also not a good match for the AMD chips because of the high latency. AMD chips are NOT bandwidth constrained but ARE latency sensitive (meaning that increasing memory speeds does very little, while increasing latency makes them much worse).
The only real issue of registered memory is the cost, and if that is the problem I would suggest a high end A64 939 SLI board (e.g. Asus A8N-SLI), and upgrade to dual core in September or so...
semo - Tuesday, February 15, 2005 - link
i'm interested in number cruncing and games and rendering, i.e. a workstation not a server. unforutnately the integrated memory controller of the amd hammers are both their strengths and weaknesses.it's only upto amd whether we can have unregistered, ddr2 or maybe even xdr memory i guess
Viditor - Tuesday, February 15, 2005 - link
"is it possible to have a dual proc setup without using registered memory?"Technically yes...but registered memory is what's preferred for servers because it is more securely accurate. All Opterons use registered memory...
Platforms for the Athlon MP use non-registered memory, and a very few of the Xeon platforms do as well...