I'm curious as to what a DP system can do with an enthusiast focus. I work on the same platform in the server and workstation segment. But stability, reliability, and staying within spec is always the goal for that segment.
Well - in simple terms it's all about the additional performance. For example, a growing number of guys on the folding team are now building dual-Xeon rigs as Stanford has recently released a project that requires at least eight CPU cores and 6GB of RAM to run at full load for several days. One of the reasons this particular project is proving so popular is that a lot of folders have discovered to their cost, that Nvidia graphics cards, unlike workstation/server hardware, aren't built to run at full load for days on end - they get memory errors (no ECC) and/or burn out. We also know that some bit-tech/CPC readers do audio remixing, video editing/encoding, 3D modelling etc on their rigs - all of which love the extra cores a dual-processor rig provides.
To continue on the question then, what advantages does a home Dual socket have over a server based dual socket set up? Surely if there's a sacrifice in price there's gonna be a sacrifice somewhere else?
The key advantage is that almost no business workstation/server boards allow overclocking, whereas more consumer orientated dual-processor motherboards (such as the legendary Asus PC-DL) do - presumably something that EVGA are trying to do with this board (in addition to all the graphics card slots).
I would tend to agree myself, but quite a few extreme overclockers still use EIDE hard disks as EIDE controllers are less sensitive to overclocking than SATA controllers. Given that tons of benchmarks barely use the hard disk at all, this may allow you to overclock further. Of course, in the real world, where willy waving benchmarks don't matter, EIDE is next to useless
Thanks Lizard Part of me wants to get this but in all honesty there is little chance lol. Been getting deluded idea build a server that carries out tasks while im at a "workstation" and can also fold, hold all my data and handle TV recording too. We can all dream I guess.
Go on, you know you want to More seriously though, you could probably do all of that on a Core i7 rig, especially with Gulftown just around the corner.
That's very true. Trying to hold off upgrading as long as possible. The miser in me says phenom II, the value for money part says i5 750 while everything else screams i7 920 lol. The longer I hold off the more likely the i7 is =)
Besides things like BIOS support, what else is needed to make something like an enterprise platform something that can be overclocked? I do firmware development primarially for server and workstation hardware. so I am rather curious as to what would be done differently if I were working on something that the end users were certainly going to overclock, beat on in an enthusiast fashion.
Well, I suppose it's not just the BIOS; but also the VRMs and the clockgens that need to be 'overclocking friendly'. Many clockgens for example, provide no support for tweaking clocks without causing havoc with other buses on the motherboard.
Well *4x HD5870 *2x i7 980X (doubt it will have support for any other i7) *24GB Dominator GT(X?) *8x Intel X25-M G2 160GB SSD in RAID0 *Dual-loop W/C Someone who would like to do the math?
