Dual, quad core and winXP pro

[Handruin]

Does anyone know if Windows XP pro supports two sockets with 4 cores on each socket (8 total cores)? I know it supports two sockets, but I can't find if Microsoft restricts the users on the number of total cores.

In addition to that, are there any consumer motherboards for the Intel Core2 quad (Q6600/Q6700) that support two chips that people are familiar with?

I guess I'm really curious if such a solution would dramatically reduce the time to process Canon RAW files. Would it actually be disk I/O starved at that point?

 

[ddrueding]

From all the research I have done (but not personal experience), XP Pro will support 2 processors, regardless of the number of cores.

Howerver, I have not seen a single dual socket-775 (or AM2 for that matter) motherboard for sale. It seems if you want more than one CPU, you go to socket 771, 940, or 1207. And those processors are very expensive.

 

[Handruin]

It was a pipe dream after all... I'm still curious about windows XP. My thoughts were the same as yours, but you never know with Microsoft.

Maybe I'll spend some time over at 2cpu to see if they've heard anything about consumer level dual socket boards for socket 775. It may not even be possible without moving into the server class chips.

 

[Mercutio]

MCSE to the rescue!

The rule is: sub-"Basic" versions support one core, one processor (e.g. Starter or Legacy Windows)

Home versions support one processor with as many cores as one processor can have.

Professional versions can have two processors each with as many cores as any one processor can have.

Server versions can generally support four physical CPUs.

Enterprise versions support eight physical CPUs.

Datacenter is for anything more exotic than that.

 

[Handruin]

OK, great. So if I can find a motherboard, it is possible to have an 8-cpu home system running windows XP.

 

[Will Rickards]

Okay everyone was answering your actual question.
So I'll ask the real question: why?
Why isn't 4 cores enough? Are you trying to be a F@H monster?

 

[Handruin]

I guess I'm really curious if such a solution would dramatically reduce the time to process Canon RAW files. Would it actually be disk I/O starved at that point?

I'll quote one part of my original message. There is no real need for this other than a folding monster (as you suggested) or supreme media encoder (DVD's, music, and RAW image processing). Largely it's more for curiosity or the fact that it could be possible to have 8 cpu's in an average sized home machine (or the I can do it factor which is silly).

I was thinking that for only a few hundred more over the price of a single quad core, four additional cores could be obtained...assuming the motherboard wasn't extremely outrageous in price. The Core 2 Quad Q6600 is roughly $280 at newegg. If a normal motherboard is $120 and a dual socket was $300, I'm looking at $460 more for 4 additional CPU's (which I feel is decent).

 

[P5-133XL]

I've actually considered that as an option to replace my X2 4600+"s, with the new quad-core Opterons coming online, since they are going to be priced aggressively. The newer Xeons are just going to be priced too much to even bother considering. However, I really want to see how they actually perform first: I'm suspisious that the clock rates are going to make them non-competative. In addition to the prices of server motherboards, there is the price issue with registered DDR2 RAM ...

 

[ddrueding]

Currently it looks like the cheapest way to 8 cores is:

TYAN S5372G2NR-LC - $250
Intel Xeon E5310 Clovertown 1.6GHz - $235ea.

$720

But I would probably want faster cores, something like this:

Intel Xeon E5345 Clovertown 2.33GHz - $500

So $1250...a bit steep. And I'm not sure about the overclocking you will get from a server board.

 

[ddrueding]

And as Mark pointed out, the RAM isn't cheap (or fast).

 

[DrunkenBastard]

I have started speccing the 2.66GHz quad core Xeon (Core2 based) for our 2U servers. It's significantly cheaper than the dual dual core 5160 @ 3GHz option. Dual quads is almost insanity but the incremental cost compared to everything else that goes in to the end price is insignificant in many cases.

The problem has become that it is far more expensive to feed these cores with data via disk drives, than pay for the cpus themselves. FC connectivity to the SAN is an option, but that's around $1800 just for a dual port fiber HBA. Dual ports are needed so that SAN switch upgrades can be non-disruptive. Blades are attractive for the reduced cost to deliver FC, but the they have woeful internal storage, and require that the blade be shutdown for drive replacements (at least with IBM). Still, 8 cores per blade, with 14 blades per chassis can give you a significant amount of compute density in 9U of rack space. Of course the price you pay is availablility of four L6-30 (30 amp 208V) power connectors or similar, capable of providing enough power to the entire bladecenter if one of the circuits fails. And the cooling demands are quite severe.

 

[mubs]

Bur how well does a desktop OS that was designed for a max of two CPUs (physical in those days) scale with > 2 cores??

 

[Handruin]

That's a good point, I really do not know how well XP Pro scales. I suspect it might be a matter of threading and how well it can manage the number of threads needed to saturate 8 cores? The only other choice for me would be a Mac with 8 cores under OSX? I don't think I could do RAW processing on Linux without a huge amount of headache, but I think Canon's DPP supports the Mac.

Maybe there will be more options when AMD gets their tri and quad core CPU's out the door in the next couple years. Maybe they'll offer a consumer version of the AM2+ with dual sockets...

You're right ddrueding, I'd also want the faster cores than the 5310's. That price is a bunch higher than I wanted to get to, but still not ungodly unobtainable. That Tyan board would be a no-go only because there is no 16x PCIe on it. I'd have to look around for something that offers it, but I'm guessing a server board like that isn't in the realm of gaming.

 

[Mercutio]

Windows isn't a "desktop OS" - Windows is Windows, with some tunable parameters for desktop, application or file server workloads. You use essentially the same kernel and support files no matter what version of Windows you have (more or less, anyway).
That said, x86 as a platform isn't really set up to keep that many CPUs fed; the bottleneck is going to be memory architecture or bus bandwidth, not the OS.

 

[ddrueding]

I need at least 2 PCI-E slots. One for graphics and the other for the RAID card. I'm also afraid that the performance SSDs will only ship with SAS interferes, requiring another RAID card.

 

[Will Rickards]

You could use windows XP Pro x64 edition. Then you would actually be using the windows 2003 kernel.

If you look at the coverage of IDF I think intel was demoing a platform for the high end that was two socket. I think this page at anandtech has some details. Not sure when/if it will come out?

 

[Will Rickards]

Intel's upcoming skulltrail platform - dual socket penryhn board (socket 771 but uses specially adapted desktop cores, not the server cores. What you are looking for? Maybe but it will probably be expensive and isn't exactly out now but soon.

 

[Handruin]

That looks promising, but probably expensive as you suggested. I'm not in any rush for this, it was mainly curiosity right now. Had there been any reasonably priced boards out now, I might attempt it.

 

[Santilli]

Hi

I wonder if the programs we currently have can even use the existing processor power?

Except for DVD Shrink, most of the programs I have can't even use the measly two physical 2.8ghz Xeon's I currently have. It takes multitasking to really get near 100% cpu usage, and, it usually looks like this:
DVD Shrink taking a larger movie, and shrinking it, watching another movie with PowerDVD, surfing the net, and doing email, and, that generally does the trick.

I guess a Quad system, or even 8 core would work well in the future, but, I'm not convinced I have any reason to do so.

Perhaps your money is safer spent on increasing I/O, read
a moveable SATA or SCSI solution?

Would you be more specific as to which programs you are working with that need 8 cpu cores???

So, 2003 server Web edition supports 8 cores?

S esq.

 

[ddrueding]

2003 Web Server will support 16 cores (4CPUs @ 4 cores each).

Saturating 4 cores is easy. Most of the things I do would benefit from more.

Scenario 1: Video encoding (DVD to x264/DivX/XviD)
Scenario 2: Batch photo processing (RAW with preconfigured settings to PSD with automated level/plugins to jpg)
Scenario 3: Multiple VMs running a simulated network

 

[ddrueding]

Of course, before you saturate 16 cores with any of the above, you will want more than a single 7200RPM drive. But I/O is cheap these days; for the original cost of your SCSI gear, you could have a complete SSD solution!

 

[Santilli]

David:
What programs are you running?

Seems to me I remember the Video program I used with the Plextor converter ate tons of processor cycles.

How do you do batch photo processing? Photoshop?

Haven't been able to get VM up and running on my machine, but, I'll take your word for it.

I've used pretty much all refurbished drives from Seagate for my scsi stuff, and, my experience so far has been that they last around 5-7 years, about the same as the new ones, it seems, for about 100-200 dollars a piece, or, I won't buy them. Most in the 100 dollar range.

IIRC, a 4 drive array starts loosing the reliability, and, it's starting to approach diminishing returns in Raid 0 with SCSI, last time I looked.

Worse using ATA drives. Wonder how well SATA works for RAID 0, but, it lacks that snappy seek time scsi has, but, it 's much better then it used to be.

I actually am really getting used to how cool it is to have an actual, removeable boot disk. I don't mean the SCA box type removeable, but, true, easy, SATA hotswapable drive bay type boot disks. I'm not sure I'd go for it yet, but, I really like the idea of using a hot swap

Setup, with another similar drive bay, one for boot, and the
other for swapable storage. At 60 bucks, they seem like a real steal to me, and, 30 of that is in the removeable tray.
Also makes me wonder if I could boot from a couple of the drives in Raid0, and have a couple more for storage?

S

PS
I've never really understood why it was taking so long to go solid state, other then perhaps the drive makers might buy up the patents on such technology to keep it off the market. When ram prices crashed, I REALLY expected to see solid state drives...

 

[ddrueding]

The good drives aren't using RAM, they are using flash (non-volatile).

 

[[Edit]]

...Worse using ATA drives. Wonder how well SATA works for RAID 0, but, it lacks that snappy seek time scsi has, but, it 's much better then it used to be.

SATA drives make excellent RAID drive members -- much better than PATA drives.

I actually am really getting used to how cool it is to have an actual, removeable boot disk. I don't mean the SCA box type removeable, but, true, easy, SATA hotswapable drive bay type boot disks...

Don't bother with that Granite Digital thing. Those particular OEM drive cases that Granite Digital keeps selling are horrible. Granite Digital makes / sells a lot of quality product (albeit, frequently expensive), but those particular translucent drive cases they sell with the removable drive section are simply junk.

This internal SATA enclosure is far more handy:



http://www.storageforum.net/forum/showthread.php?t=6747

 

[ddrueding]

How did I not notice the quad-core Opterons were out, and cheap?

2x AMD Opteron 2346HE Barcelona 1.8GHz Socket F Quad Core Processor Model OS2346PAL4BGE - OEM - $600
GIGABYTE GA-3CCWL Dual 1207 NVIDIA nForce Professional 3600 CEB Form Factor Server Motherboard - $260

8 Cores for $860. Of course, they are only 1.8Ghz each...you can even get the 1.7Ghz cores for $240 each.

And with all those PCIe connections....very tempting....

 

[P5-133XL]

Your math is a little off:
2x $600 + $260= $1,460 (For 1.8Ghz)
2x $240 + $260 = $740 (For 1.7 GHz)

 

[ddrueding]

Your math is a little off:

Actually, no. If you follow the link you will see the 1.8Ghz CPUs are $299 each, so 2 x $299 = $600.

 

[Handruin]

That's not that bad and I didn't know they were out either. I'm curious how a single Opteron 1.8GHz compares to the Intel Q6600 (searching for reviews right now). I just noticed that Opteron even has a shared L3 cache. For $860, that's about what I was expecting even for the Intel Octo-core monster I was interested in. Though, the memory might cost more due to it being registered ECC.

Any reason why the price difference is so large between the 1.8 GHz (Opteron 2346HE) and 1.9 GHz (Opteron 8347) Opterons? Everything else looks to be the same in spec except the $500 difference in price.

 

[ddrueding]

The difference is in the first digit. The 8347 supports 8-way (32 core) systems, where the 2346HE supports 2-way (8 core) systems. That is how they squeeze the money out of the supercomputer market with otherwise standard hardware

 

[ddrueding]

Registered RAM is a bummer and the low clock-speed is pretty bad; but none of the boards seem to have any OC capabilities whatsoever. Therefore I find it likely that a heavily OC'd Q6600 (3.2? 3.4?) would likely smoke one of these anyway.

4*3.4=13.6
8*1.8=14.4

Ignoring IPC variations and considering scalability issues of certain apps, the quad core still looks like a winner.

 

[Chewy509]

I'm curious how a single Opteron 1.8GHz compares to the Intel Q6600 (searching for reviews right now).

http://www.techreport.com/articles.x/13176

From the conclusion:

As a result, Barcelona is sometimes faster, sometimes slower, and oftentimes the equal of Intel's Core microarchitecture, MHz for MHz.

 

[Handruin]

Thanks Chewy. I read most of the performance charts and it seems the Xeon is still a bit faster overall. Techreport complained about AMD's use of the L3 cache, as it introduced extra latency into the overall picture. I was hoping to see more out of AMD with their quad cores.

 

[Chewy509]

That's simply because of the clock speed advantage of the Intel cores...

Even though my next significant upgrade isn't for 16-18months, I'm starting to keep an eye on the current happenings... The landscape as it is, IMO is quite dull. AMD just released their Quad core, which even though matches the Core2's clock for clock, are at a significant MHz deficiency. AMD/ATi gfx current gen cards haven't shown what they are capable of (and if they already have, well, ummm, let's hope AMD/ATi can 1-up nVidia on the next round).

Storage looks fascinating though, with Seagate just releasing their 'hybrid' drives with up to 256MB flash storage, or with the decent sized and somewhat affordable SSDs.

Even though my last 2 boxes where dual socket, my next box will most likely be a single socket quad core PC. Just need to wait for non-RAID SAS PCIe HBAs to come out...

If I was buying today, it would be along the lines of:
Intel Q6600
nForce4 Ultra board
nVidia 8600GTS
4GB RAM
PCIe SAS Controller + 1x 15K SAS HDD (OS/Apps)
1x 500GB or 750GB SATA HDD (Data/Archive)
1x DVD-RW SATA (most likely Pioneer).
Running Solaris Express Edn (aka Solaris 11).

The above setup certainly gives more bang-for-buck than any compariable dual-core, dual socket setup.

 

[Mercutio]

Why bother with the high performance video under Solaris?
And why not a Linux/BSD machine, or for that matter OSX?

 

[Pradeep]

Until AMD can get the Barcelonas to faster speeds, Intel has won this "round". However, AMD does know the Barcelona can't compete on speed, and therefore prices it appropriately.

 

[mubs]

I'm probably asking about the obvious, but let me do it anyway. Handy, DD, for the purposes of raw file conversion, what is the idea behind using these multi-cores? Is it to simultaneously convert multiple files?

 

[ddrueding]

Yep. But quite a few things in Photoshop include significant processing time as well.

 

[Handruin]

I'm probably asking about the obvious, but let me do it anyway. Handy, DD, for the purposes of raw file conversion, what is the idea behind using these multi-cores? Is it to simultaneously convert multiple files?

From what I've seen using Canon's Digital Photo Professional, it makes use of multiple cores to process each picture. When I batch process 100 pictures, both of my cores are jump to 100% utilization while each picture is being converted from RAW. My expectation is that with more cores, the work will get done faster which will help with the amount of time it takes to process all of these. I don't know for certain if all 8 cores would be utilized, so I'll need to research the number of threads Canon's DPP uses.

 

[Chewy509]

Why bother with the high performance video under Solaris?
And why not a Linux/BSD machine, or for that matter OSX?

The decent video card would be for the same reason you would get a high performance gfx card for either Linux/BSD/Mac OS X, gaming.

Over the past few years I've grown to dislike the Linux scene, in particular how a lot of the distro's are slapped together. RH, SUSE, etc all have their own little way of doing these. Nothing is standardise between Linux distro's (which is also one of it's strengths).

*BSD support for 3D is lacking for current stuff, however this may change in the next 12 months with AMD and Intel opening up the documentation. This directly effects gaming. Wine support on 64bit platforms is non-existant. (nVidia only has drivers for FreeBSD x86). The community in general is very good, however I don't know if I stepped on some toes, but have had my head bitten more than once on the public mailing lists.

As for Solaris, well it has v.good 3D support for nVidia, the community is well versed (and missing the attitude of the Linux community), the same games work on Solaris as Linux (due to the latest OpenSolaris having decent Linux Kernel Emulation), and it has support from Adobe, Oracle, etc. (That means working Flash, PDF, rock solid Java support, RealPlayer, etc).

And Mac OS X, well it's a simple matter of $$$.