Some great news from Toms Hardware and TG Daily. Apparently AMD is showing off new boards and chipsets (something on my wish list):
http://www.tgdaily.com/content/view/31991/118/
Apparently our new motherboard platform will be called Wahoo.
And the 4 core processor? It's apparently 45nm and was demoed this week as well! It will be called "Agena".
http://www.tgdaily.com/content/view/31977/135/
Pretty exciting stuff!
News about R600 has been a little disappointing. Apparently AMD is releasing a model that is between the 8800 GTS and GTX but about the same price as the GTS. I believe the model is the 2900 XT. The monster card is the 2900 XTX which is supposed to be shipping around the same time as the board and processor parts.
It seems the ATI community is pretty happy about their drivers - encouraging. Hopefully ATI is doing the right thing and not developing their driver codebase on the fly.
Here is some info on the 2900's performance:
2900 XT Benchmarks
Showing posts with label 4x4. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 4x4. Show all posts
Friday, May 11, 2007
Monday, April 30, 2007
Disk Disk Disk
I think the one of the upcoming challenges for the 4 and 8 core workstation market is going to be resolving a major problem for multi core systems. I/O contention.
In the 4x4 we have two processors with a total of four cores, soon to be 8. So much CPU - and yet I find that I still wait. So I must of course ask the question "What am I waiting for?". Invariably the answer is the hard drive. As I continuted to cogitate I realized now that the machine can run four concurrent processes - system or otherwise, and there can be 4 active threads ( minimum ) that would be able to and need access to the hard disk. Each thread on it's own is quite capable of saturating the hard disk with requests.
With 8 threads running concurrently we're going to have even more trouble feeding them the data that they need. It's an unfortunate scenario because there does not seem to be a decent answer.
For now I see the most viable option is to add between 4 and 8 disks to your system. I will elaborate.
To truly take advantage of the 8 cores I think that we'll need the following:
Drives Purpose
1/2 (R0) System Disk
1/2 (R0) Program Files
1/2 (R0) User Data
1/2 (R0) User application data (My Documents, Music, Etc.)
These are all areas that are accessed very frequently and demand a high level of I/O. The nvidia chipset has a large number of SATA slots, and it's possible that the designers were thinking that it would be wise to use them all. I can see now, why this is the case.
This is likely overkill - you could probably get away with using 2 of the 4 sets. But if you need and use Virtual Machines a 3rd or 4th set is not out of the question.
I suspect there would be performance boost, but I'm not entirely sure how we'd go about measuring this.
Just food for thought.
In the 4x4 we have two processors with a total of four cores, soon to be 8. So much CPU - and yet I find that I still wait. So I must of course ask the question "What am I waiting for?". Invariably the answer is the hard drive. As I continuted to cogitate I realized now that the machine can run four concurrent processes - system or otherwise, and there can be 4 active threads ( minimum ) that would be able to and need access to the hard disk. Each thread on it's own is quite capable of saturating the hard disk with requests.
With 8 threads running concurrently we're going to have even more trouble feeding them the data that they need. It's an unfortunate scenario because there does not seem to be a decent answer.
For now I see the most viable option is to add between 4 and 8 disks to your system. I will elaborate.
To truly take advantage of the 8 cores I think that we'll need the following:
Drives Purpose
1/2 (R0) System Disk
1/2 (R0) Program Files
1/2 (R0) User Data
1/2 (R0) User application data (My Documents, Music, Etc.)
These are all areas that are accessed very frequently and demand a high level of I/O. The nvidia chipset has a large number of SATA slots, and it's possible that the designers were thinking that it would be wise to use them all. I can see now, why this is the case.
This is likely overkill - you could probably get away with using 2 of the 4 sets. But if you need and use Virtual Machines a 3rd or 4th set is not out of the question.
I suspect there would be performance boost, but I'm not entirely sure how we'd go about measuring this.
Just food for thought.
Sunday, January 14, 2007
Impressions and some "benchmarks"
After putting the system together my first impulse was to open task manager and see what was going on behind the scenes, and I was stunned.
I think I've seen my system exceed 50% utilization twice. Not for lack of trying mind you. I loaded up Warcraft III, Flight Sim X, FEAR and found that they were all CPU bound to one CPU, I came to realize that the other cores and chips just don't help at all, at least not right now. I mean, I already knew this, single threaded games won't use more processors - but seeing everything in action really drove the point home.
If you are buying a system for gaming, keep this one point in mind - your games will only run as fast as your fastest core. Half Life is slated to get some multi-threading goodness sometime this year, but coding (i know) multi-threaded applications is difficult and frequently slows the development process. There are a host of issues that need to be dealt with when developing with threads. It also increases bug hunting time. So while it would be "nice", many houses that have single threaded developers probably aren't going to be adding a ton of "risk" to their project plans any time soon just so that we can use all of these crazy cores. The good news is that the PS3 is inherently mutli-threaded and will allow game developers a chance to get their feet wet with threads and concurrent process streams.
The impression here is that 4 cores is too many for 99.99999999999999% of the people out there. The bandwidth available on this system is staggering. I found that when I was installing software I would start two, sometimes three "long running" installs. Or I might run the updater and do an install browse the web etc. etc. There would be basically no slowdown. Nothing seems to take very long, and things like searching my Outlook inbox doesn't put a dent in system performance. All the while I'm free to go from site to site, recompile code, and run queries. If you want a gaming rig I think that two cores might be a better number, it will give the OS and other tasks an area to work while the other core is maxed out. Also, the Intel chips are highly overclockable.
What was a little surprising is that I'm using way more ram, because I can run more programs. In hindsight it makes sense, though when I put this system together I looked at my previous RAM usage and settled on 2 GB, thinking 4 GB might be excessive. I was wrong. Running Visual Studio 2005 really eats a lot of ram, add in SQL Server Management Studio, a few browsers, Outlook, EVE or WCIII and iTunes and you have 1.5 GB easy. I'm also using x64 for my development tools which increases RAM usage as well. The bottom line is that if you have a lot of applications open, go for the 4GB you'll probably need it when Vista is out.
Disk IO is phenomenal. I'm never waiting on the disk. Well I am, but not nearly as much as other machines. This has less to do with the chips and more to do with the drives. If you are building a high end machine like this, get the faster disks. You'll find that they are still fast three years later. It's really the only "investment" that won't get thrown away.
I don't know what's going on in my machine. At the moment, I have no way to monitor temps across the system. I've tried a number of different packages and I've found that they either hang the system or report wierd numbers. This is actively preventing me from tweaking it anymore than I already have. Though at the moment I'm running it in "stock" mode.
From a graphics perspective it eats up the highest settings. In some cases such as EVE, I've found that it actually renders a little better at higher settings. Everything just looks great though. I'm pretty sure that has more to do with the 8800.
Lack of cooling options. Most coolers are not designed to deal with multiple cpus. While I'm sure it would help, I'm going to hold off until a decent 8800 cooler is available. I've also been thinking about desinging a cooling rig for this type of setup that is quiter than a fan based solution.
Installation benchmarks
Windows XP64 - 26 Minutes
Patch to current - 16 Minutes (DSL 6.0 Mb)
Full Office Install (From ISO) - 1 Minute 30 Seconds
Full Visual Studio 2005 Team Architect Install (DVD ISO ~ 3.5GB of data) - 12 Minutes 24 Seconds
SQL Server Tools - 2 Minutes 30 Seconds
Those are the extent of the heafty installs. Those of you who have done the VS.NET install can appreciate how fast that really is.
Drive benchmarks (using h2benchw)
I was interested to see if there was any gain or loss in performance by using the MediaShield controller. I was also interested to see the difference between a single disk and the RAID 0. I found that there was no signficant different between the RAID and non-RAID connected drive. The RAID adds a pretty heafty read boost, though I was expecting a little more.
Write tests were not conducted primarily because it took too much time.
Single Raptor no RAID
Sustained transfer rate (block size: 128 sectors):
Reading: average 71966.5, min 27578.4, max 85309.5 [KByte/s]
Random access read: average 8.13, min 2.52, max 20.64 [ms]
Random access read (<504 index =" 28.9">
Single Raptor RAID connected (also system disk)
Sustained transfer rate (block size: 128 sectors):
Reading: average 71351.8, min 16714.1, max 85308.2 [KByte/s]
Random access read: average 8.10, min 2.24, max 19.86 [ms]
Random access read (<504 index =" 28.8">
RAID 0 Striping (system disk)
Sustained transfer rate (block size: 128 sectors):
Reading: average 99133.7, min 55080.4, max 111992.1 [KByte/s]
Random access read: average 8.14, min 0.05, max 14.84 [ms]
Random access read (<504 index =" 31.7">
Games
I'm going to expand on this a little more but here is some preliminary stuff:
Warcraft III
Highest settings, 1600x1200, don't have a framerate, but it's fast, very fast.
30% CPU Use
EVE Online
Resolution: 1920x1200
100 FPS in station, 27-32 FPS Outside (You've never seen EVE like this)
Settings:
Antialias: 16xQ
AA Transparency: Supersample
Anisotropic: 16x
Vertical Sync: On
25% CPU
EVE seems like it might use more than one thread. I'll post some new EVE pics soon, they are unbelievable.
I think I've seen my system exceed 50% utilization twice. Not for lack of trying mind you. I loaded up Warcraft III, Flight Sim X, FEAR and found that they were all CPU bound to one CPU, I came to realize that the other cores and chips just don't help at all, at least not right now. I mean, I already knew this, single threaded games won't use more processors - but seeing everything in action really drove the point home.
If you are buying a system for gaming, keep this one point in mind - your games will only run as fast as your fastest core. Half Life is slated to get some multi-threading goodness sometime this year, but coding (i know) multi-threaded applications is difficult and frequently slows the development process. There are a host of issues that need to be dealt with when developing with threads. It also increases bug hunting time. So while it would be "nice", many houses that have single threaded developers probably aren't going to be adding a ton of "risk" to their project plans any time soon just so that we can use all of these crazy cores. The good news is that the PS3 is inherently mutli-threaded and will allow game developers a chance to get their feet wet with threads and concurrent process streams.
The impression here is that 4 cores is too many for 99.99999999999999% of the people out there. The bandwidth available on this system is staggering. I found that when I was installing software I would start two, sometimes three "long running" installs. Or I might run the updater and do an install browse the web etc. etc. There would be basically no slowdown. Nothing seems to take very long, and things like searching my Outlook inbox doesn't put a dent in system performance. All the while I'm free to go from site to site, recompile code, and run queries. If you want a gaming rig I think that two cores might be a better number, it will give the OS and other tasks an area to work while the other core is maxed out. Also, the Intel chips are highly overclockable.
What was a little surprising is that I'm using way more ram, because I can run more programs. In hindsight it makes sense, though when I put this system together I looked at my previous RAM usage and settled on 2 GB, thinking 4 GB might be excessive. I was wrong. Running Visual Studio 2005 really eats a lot of ram, add in SQL Server Management Studio, a few browsers, Outlook, EVE or WCIII and iTunes and you have 1.5 GB easy. I'm also using x64 for my development tools which increases RAM usage as well. The bottom line is that if you have a lot of applications open, go for the 4GB you'll probably need it when Vista is out.
Disk IO is phenomenal. I'm never waiting on the disk. Well I am, but not nearly as much as other machines. This has less to do with the chips and more to do with the drives. If you are building a high end machine like this, get the faster disks. You'll find that they are still fast three years later. It's really the only "investment" that won't get thrown away.
I don't know what's going on in my machine. At the moment, I have no way to monitor temps across the system. I've tried a number of different packages and I've found that they either hang the system or report wierd numbers. This is actively preventing me from tweaking it anymore than I already have. Though at the moment I'm running it in "stock" mode.
From a graphics perspective it eats up the highest settings. In some cases such as EVE, I've found that it actually renders a little better at higher settings. Everything just looks great though. I'm pretty sure that has more to do with the 8800.
Lack of cooling options. Most coolers are not designed to deal with multiple cpus. While I'm sure it would help, I'm going to hold off until a decent 8800 cooler is available. I've also been thinking about desinging a cooling rig for this type of setup that is quiter than a fan based solution.
Installation benchmarks
Windows XP64 - 26 Minutes
Patch to current - 16 Minutes (DSL 6.0 Mb)
Full Office Install (From ISO) - 1 Minute 30 Seconds
Full Visual Studio 2005 Team Architect Install (DVD ISO ~ 3.5GB of data) - 12 Minutes 24 Seconds
SQL Server Tools - 2 Minutes 30 Seconds
Those are the extent of the heafty installs. Those of you who have done the VS.NET install can appreciate how fast that really is.
Drive benchmarks (using h2benchw)
I was interested to see if there was any gain or loss in performance by using the MediaShield controller. I was also interested to see the difference between a single disk and the RAID 0. I found that there was no signficant different between the RAID and non-RAID connected drive. The RAID adds a pretty heafty read boost, though I was expecting a little more.
Write tests were not conducted primarily because it took too much time.
Single Raptor no RAID
Sustained transfer rate (block size: 128 sectors):
Reading: average 71966.5, min 27578.4, max 85309.5 [KByte/s]
Random access read: average 8.13, min 2.52, max 20.64 [ms]
Random access read (<504 index =" 28.9">
Single Raptor RAID connected (also system disk)
Sustained transfer rate (block size: 128 sectors):
Reading: average 71351.8, min 16714.1, max 85308.2 [KByte/s]
Random access read: average 8.10, min 2.24, max 19.86 [ms]
Random access read (<504 index =" 28.8">
RAID 0 Striping (system disk)
Sustained transfer rate (block size: 128 sectors):
Reading: average 99133.7, min 55080.4, max 111992.1 [KByte/s]
Random access read: average 8.14, min 0.05, max 14.84 [ms]
Random access read (<504 index =" 31.7">
Games
I'm going to expand on this a little more but here is some preliminary stuff:
Warcraft III
Highest settings, 1600x1200, don't have a framerate, but it's fast, very fast.
30% CPU Use
EVE Online
Resolution: 1920x1200
100 FPS in station, 27-32 FPS Outside (You've never seen EVE like this)
Settings:
Antialias: 16xQ
AA Transparency: Supersample
Anisotropic: 16x
Vertical Sync: On
25% CPU
EVE seems like it might use more than one thread. I'll post some new EVE pics soon, they are unbelievable.
Why 4x4?
Expensive, Hot, Loud, Not the winner. Those might be reasons not to build a 4x4 machine. I think though, that there are some solid reasons to build this system, and to start using this platform. So here are a few...
Dual processors.
I think we've all wanted dual processors at some point in our lives and this is it, finally, a dual processor desktop platform that we can all use. Granted, ASUS seems to think that this is a "server" motherboard, but I would tend to disagree. It lacks the Buffered/ECC ram that would make it a stable and reliable addition to a server room. The disk controller is not fit for a server environment either.
Upgrade path.
One thing that I like about AMD is that there is a decent amount of life in their products. Socket 939 is still alive and kicking, AM2 should be around for a while as well. The 4x4 and Socket F is it's own thing as well. If you want to upgrade in 12 months, it will be possible. The same cannot be said of Intel who has an external memory controller that frequently requires a new motherboard with the purchase of a newer processor (though the new 5300's are pin compatible with previous motherboards). More than anything I bought this system for this fall, and the 8 cores that I will be able to plug into my machine. It's going to rock.
IO.
AMD has an excellent architecture for I/O. My tasks vary on a day to day basis, but I felt that AMD would provide the necessary bandwidth for all of my tasks and more. So far this is the case. Though the broken ethernet controller is a disappointment.
Speed
Despite losing out to the QFX, it didn't lose by that much and in terms of cost, the board and chips for the FX70 are about the same price.
Conclusion
Pick what you want - there is more than enough processing to go around. I like AMD, I think they have been innovating and I want to support their products. This purchase hasn't been by the numbers, but I'm very happy.
Dual processors.
I think we've all wanted dual processors at some point in our lives and this is it, finally, a dual processor desktop platform that we can all use. Granted, ASUS seems to think that this is a "server" motherboard, but I would tend to disagree. It lacks the Buffered/ECC ram that would make it a stable and reliable addition to a server room. The disk controller is not fit for a server environment either.
Upgrade path.
One thing that I like about AMD is that there is a decent amount of life in their products. Socket 939 is still alive and kicking, AM2 should be around for a while as well. The 4x4 and Socket F is it's own thing as well. If you want to upgrade in 12 months, it will be possible. The same cannot be said of Intel who has an external memory controller that frequently requires a new motherboard with the purchase of a newer processor (though the new 5300's are pin compatible with previous motherboards). More than anything I bought this system for this fall, and the 8 cores that I will be able to plug into my machine. It's going to rock.
IO.
AMD has an excellent architecture for I/O. My tasks vary on a day to day basis, but I felt that AMD would provide the necessary bandwidth for all of my tasks and more. So far this is the case. Though the broken ethernet controller is a disappointment.
Speed
Despite losing out to the QFX, it didn't lose by that much and in terms of cost, the board and chips for the FX70 are about the same price.
Conclusion
Pick what you want - there is more than enough processing to go around. I like AMD, I think they have been innovating and I want to support their products. This purchase hasn't been by the numbers, but I'm very happy.
Friday, December 29, 2006
PSU Selection
I spent a lot of time fretting over which PSU to get. The main reason was that I didn't want a 1 Kw hair dryer running in my case. I had to figure out how much I power I realistically needed though. It was easy to get a handle on the processor power consumption, however the drives and the motherboard were largely a mystery. There is little published info on the L1N64-SLI WS so I had to just guess. The 8800 GTX was going to use a solid 200-250W from what I could tell. After adding things up I decided that a 750W power supply would be sufficient, my expectation is that at peak load the system would use about 600W of the 750W available.
I did a lot of reading up on what's involved in a high end power supply noise, power fluctuation, and reliability. This review over at Tech Power Up made up my mind. The be quiet! Dark Power 750 seemed to be the ideal candidate for my new machine, and I'm sure it still is however I couldn't find it anywhere for purchase. So I took the general criteria, Large Fan, Modular Cables and went hunting for something else. Price didn't matter so much as would it be quiet, and reliable?
I finally settled on a ThermalTake 750W due to a few positive comments about it's performance. Oddly it is the Crossfire Certified model, but I was purchasing based on output rather than certification and I felt that 750 was the number I needed. The ThermalTake site while visually unappealing, does have some good information on it. The packaging for the ThermalTake was very niiiiice, it came with a number of cables that are nicely appointed. The cables actually impressed me the most. They came sheathed in a slick mesh that refuses to snag on anything in the case, and holds up to a respectable amount of wear and tear.
Keep in mind the 750W is not sufficient to run two 8800 cards. It is also physically unable to as it only has 3 PCI-e connectors.
ThermalTake does offer another SLI power supply rated to 850W that has 4xPCI-e that will probably be sufficient. I'm not convinced that a 1Kw power supply is needed in a stock 4x4 system. I think that 850 would likely be sufficient, but if you are doing overclocking and such the 1Kw in SLI is probably a good idea.
I did a lot of reading up on what's involved in a high end power supply noise, power fluctuation, and reliability. This review over at Tech Power Up made up my mind. The be quiet! Dark Power 750 seemed to be the ideal candidate for my new machine, and I'm sure it still is however I couldn't find it anywhere for purchase. So I took the general criteria, Large Fan, Modular Cables and went hunting for something else. Price didn't matter so much as would it be quiet, and reliable?
I finally settled on a ThermalTake 750W due to a few positive comments about it's performance. Oddly it is the Crossfire Certified model, but I was purchasing based on output rather than certification and I felt that 750 was the number I needed. The ThermalTake site while visually unappealing, does have some good information on it. The packaging for the ThermalTake was very niiiiice, it came with a number of cables that are nicely appointed. The cables actually impressed me the most. They came sheathed in a slick mesh that refuses to snag on anything in the case, and holds up to a respectable amount of wear and tear.
Keep in mind the 750W is not sufficient to run two 8800 cards. It is also physically unable to as it only has 3 PCI-e connectors.
ThermalTake does offer another SLI power supply rated to 850W that has 4xPCI-e that will probably be sufficient. I'm not convinced that a 1Kw power supply is needed in a stock 4x4 system. I think that 850 would likely be sufficient, but if you are doing overclocking and such the 1Kw in SLI is probably a good idea.
Wednesday, December 20, 2006
Take to the trails!
The orders are in. Over the next week I will be (hopefully) receiving the following components:
2 AMD FX-70 Processors
1 ASUS L1NF64-SLI WS Motherboard
2 GB Ballistix Tracer DDR2-8000
1 Toughpower 750W PSU (116)
1 XFX 8800 GTX
1 Antec Power One Case (Black)
2 Western Digital Raptor 150 GB 10K RPM SATA Drives
I had some trouble tracking down the motherboard and processors. UpgradeNation.com was the only place that seemed to carry it. Searches for FX-70 returned nothing but a few places showed up on Froogle under FX70. Hopefully their estimation for availabilty is correct (late this week 12/22).
2 AMD FX-70 Processors
1 ASUS L1NF64-SLI WS Motherboard
2 GB Ballistix Tracer DDR2-8000
1 Toughpower 750W PSU (116)
1 XFX 8800 GTX
1 Antec Power One Case (Black)
2 Western Digital Raptor 150 GB 10K RPM SATA Drives
I had some trouble tracking down the motherboard and processors. UpgradeNation.com was the only place that seemed to carry it. Searches for FX-70 returned nothing but a few places showed up on Froogle under FX70. Hopefully their estimation for availabilty is correct (late this week 12/22).
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