cheap opteron, thoughts?

[polluxmr2]

i found this and was intrigued....

http://www.geeks.com/details.asp?inv...P5AV-R&cat=CPU

thats dirt cheap for any proc, but thats an 8 way opteron! ( i know its a refurb, im not sure how you refurbish a cpu though)

first of all, what do you think? and second, where can i find a quad socket 940 mobo? i haven't had much luck with google.

[Strongbow]

Tyan do a few, I think the M4881 - 8P would suffice but you'd best check first. The problem is though they are all single core and the cost of the motherboard will rocket the price up probably beyond the cost of a two socket quad core system.

[Nflight]

This is what Strongbow was trying to say!
http://sector29.com/PRODUCT_PAGES/13...B-S4882UD.html

[Strongbow]

Actually I think we're both wrong - sort of!

You would need to buy a Tyan S4881 + HT Riser card + Tyan M4881

Not cheap, but very cool!

ftp://ftp.tyan.com/datasheets/d_s4881_104.pdf



...and Clint, what are you doing up at this time of day?

[vaughan]

Wow, $1200 motherboard for a $35 cpu?

[LeBo]

Each socket has to have it's own memory bank also.

[Nflight]

I think the real idea is 4 cpus on one board. But for just over 8 times the price of the cpu, you can have a brand new 8000 series Quad core and instead of having 4 cores total on your new system, now a total of 16 cores would be your end result.

Hmm now how big is my pocket and just how much can I afford? Now for a little math - 1 core times $35 equals one lonely cpu on a large MB made for 4 cpu's. 4 cores time $35 equals $140 one one MB. Now we enter the new Quad Cores at the lowest price I can find. $832 each cpu or 4 cores in one package which brings us to $208 per core, so 4 quads priced at $832 each on one board comes to $3328 without the board is starting to get confusing here, am I making any sense in this conversation yet?

The board will cost somewhere similar to with prices ranging from $750 to $1,500 putting the total cost of such a monster at nearly $5,000. Now where did the 8 times come in? I don't know what I was thinking, but 16 times the output seems more entertaining when you can get all this output in one package that draws less then 600 watts total. ( Thinking with a tint of Green in my blood - less power drain better for the environment)

BY the way $35 times 8 = $280 not $208, I am saving my pennies for this illustrious day when I can afford to replace my existing single dual core for one of these...somehow my math is off in never never land. I have to recheck my thinking, some way I have error ed, my god I am fallible.

[PoorBoy]

You lost me on the ( I think the real idea is 4 cpus on one board. ) part of your post ...

[polluxmr2]

ram isnt so much an issue, thats reasonably cheap.

but yeah, the mobo price makes it not worth it.

but in general, what would have higher performance numbers? an 8 p single core based system or a 2 p quad core based system? ( or even a 4p dual core system )

[Strongbow]

Depends...

• single core or multicore - if the single core is faster (much faster) then it will come down to the lowest level of whether or not your O/S and main apps are multi-threaded?
• Then base the size of L2 and L3 cache compared with RAM performance compared with amount of RAM compared with 32 or 64bit apps compared with number of concurrent apps running etc... oh dear!

So... go for high frequency CPU, large L2 & L3 caches, lots of cores, the fastest interconnects (HyperTransport for AMD) and fast memory etc....

and you end up with this (running HT3 )... http://www.amd.com/us-en/Processors/...E15334,00.html

My advice is don't buy old computing technology unless you have designed a specific task for it. Generally always buy the fastest most powerful you can afford as in a few months it too will be 'run of the mill' and the older stuff will be obsolete.