Hardware Intel Xeon W5580: Nehalem EP

Definitely no, as that would require that extra QPI link which is present on the highend Nehalem-EPs.

 

Or some nice 4870X2 CF action on that Supermicro board and of course some solar panels to lessen any CO2 guilt!

 

That may be true in certain applications, but don't forget that some users need to cram as much performance into a limited space/electricty budget as possible, in which case a single powerful workstation is better than a render farm.

 

that's true!

 

What type of interface do they use to link so many motherboards together?

 

If you mean linking into renderfarm than - for the cheap/small/mid they use Gigabit Ethernet , for big and expensive , like supercomputers there are special interfaces (use Wiki)

 

There'll be something of sorts soon

 

Looking forward to "something of sorts soon"...

 

+ It'll be interesting to see how the Xeons OC

 

My apologies for the thread revival


I note from Page 3 of this review you have the Supermicro X8DA3-O CrossFire friendly but not Sli compatible.

Could i ask if this is definitely so and what BIOS was used??

 

Answered me own question

Don't laugh, GTX7800 are the only Sli cards i had available.

Well, i installed them and tried various drivers but i'm sorry to say there is no Sli option available in the nVidia control panel even though both cards are seen in Device Manager and reported to be working correctly.

I can only hope there will be a BIOS upgrade at some point but not holding my breath.

Having said that, its munching through WCG with a constant 16 tasks running

 

I'm not sure nVidia will allow enabling SLI for anything else than the X58 chipset for now. And even then they did it out of pure necessity.

 

It is an X58 chipset. But each board needs to be validated (and paid for) SLI certification.

 

Any more news about Lucid Hydra?

 

I considered the Mac Pro in Nov 09, but went with this instead:

2x X5550 Nehalem 2.66GHz CPU
6x 4GB Crucial 1333MHz ECC
Intel S5520SC Motherboard
PC-A77B Lian Li Chassis, with hard drive hotswap bay
Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium 7.1 Sound
EVGA GTX 295 CO-OP Cheesecake
2x X25-M 80GB 2nd Gen SSD RAID0 boot
3x WD Caviar Black 1TB RAID5 data/backup
Galaxy EVO 1250W
2x Intel BXSTS100C Passive/Active CPU Cooler

The problems with the Mac Pro are that it does not support Crossfire or SLI and the best card available is a GTX 285, it does not have 1333 MHz ram, the PCI express slots can only supply a maximum of 300 watts. I would expect more from Apple's flagship workstation. The trade-offs of course, are that you get a rock-solid system running MacOSX and most folks won't notice the missing performance.

My S5520SC has been a major headache, and since i'm not using an Intel approved chassis, there have been lots of problems with the onboard BMC kicking my fans into overdrive. Unfortunately, I later discovered that there is also a 300watt maximum for PCI on my board too.

Fortunately, there is hope around the corner. EVGA is working on a dual xeon board that can run four 16 lane PCI video cards. The board will also support overclocking:

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/motherboards/2010/01/27/evga-w555-dual-xeon-motherboard/1

 

Have you tried updating the FRU/SDR package? You might either be able to trick the BMC and get the fans to throttle that way, or you might be able to edit the SDR package to get the fans to throttle down too. At least with the 5000 series boards (like the S5500xVN) the SDR was a plain text file, but I did not invest much time into figure it out. I had access to an older version of the BMC firmware that actually throttled the fans without being too picky about the chassis.

 

Yes, I updated all of the firmwares after initially building the system and check for updates regularly. In fact, I just updated everything again today. The fans, after initially being whisper quiet after the update, kicked right back into overdrive after the system posted.

I've fiddled with BIOS/BMC/FRU/SDR settings more than a couple dozen times over the past 3-4 months. I had some success - the system was whisper quiet until enabling SW RAID a couple months ago. I'd mostly given up on it since then. I've been interested in water-cooling setups for years anyway, and now there is a compelling reason to implement it.

It will be a month or two before I can get all of the gear together, so I'll investigate what you were saying regarding the SDR text files. I've also heard that there is an EFI program that lets you view your temps. I suspect that my IOH chip is running hot as a result of being buried under a GTX295. Maybe I've just got a bad board.

Thanks for your comments and suggestions.

 

Let me know if you have trouble finding the tool. I've worked with the s55XXYY boards for work and may be able to help track the software down.

 

I installed and ran both the Intel Active System Console and the SelView utility (EFI). The selviewer reported no issues other than normal things like system startup and shutdown, etc. All of the system temps were well within acceptable limits:

xeon1
core0 98F
core1 93F
core2 96F
core3 93F

xeon2
core0 95F
core1 91F
core2 98F
core3 98F

GTX295
gpu0 104F
gpu1 105F

I guess one would expect such low temperatures given these fan rpms:

proc1 6572
proc2 6231
sys1 1104
sys2 1104
sys3 960
sys4 1440
sys5 1480

Yeah, this computer is so loud you can hear it running in the basement from upstairs

I found an article describing what you mentioned earlier regarding modifications to SDR. Someone on the intel forums mentioned that a file named HC_BMC.sdr (found in the bios/fru/sdr download) can be edited in such a way that one could alter the behavior of system fans. Others have allegedly done this with success for unsupported chassis like mine.

I'm reluctant to fiddle with this file, but I may try making some modest changes and observing the effect. I may also try to install an old SDR.

Thanks for your suggestions Splynncryth.

 

Well, I guess I can continue the thread hijack considering how old this is

That file sounds right like it is along the right lines. If it's like the S5000 stuff then selecting a chassis will change the SDR programming. I don't remember off the top of my head if it pulls in another file or if it is all in the same file.

The trick will be figuring out which sensor means which fan sensor, fan control, and thermal sensor. Then, I think it should be a matter of setting thresholds and ramps.

You might also see about downgrading the BMC firmware if you can locate older versions, and the system will let you.

It is unfortunate that this stuff is not more user friendly. there is a lot that a BMC can do that is just starting to show up in other markets.