Opteron Board preference ....

William A. Mahaffey III

27 Mar 2004 27 Mar '04

14:23

.... I am getting close to trying to build an Opteron based machine as a compute node on my LAN, set up to run w/o monitor, keybd, mouse, & not a file server, just a (fast) CPU & lots of RAM. I have narrowed down to either ASUS SK8V or TYAN Tomcat K8S (both available @ newegg.com). Does anyone have any strong (preferably firsthand :-)) opinions, yea or nay, about either of these boards ? Thanks in advance.

Show replies by date

Andi Kleen

27 Mar 27 Mar

14:31

New subject: [suse-amd64] Opteron Board preference ....

On Sat, 27 Mar 2004 08:27:51 -0600 "William A. Mahaffey III" wrote:

...

.... I am getting close to trying to build an Opteron based machine as a compute node on my LAN, set up to run w/o monitor, keybd, mouse, & not a file server, just a (fast) CPU & lots of RAM. I have narrowed down to either ASUS SK8V or TYAN Tomcat K8S (both available @ newegg.com). Does anyone have any strong (preferably firsthand :-)) opinions, yea or nay, about either of these boards ? Thanks in advance.

I would avoid VIA chipsets and lots of RAM right now. They seem to have problems with the IOMMU, which causes problems with >3GB and the on board devices. -Andi

William A. Mahaffey III

15:45

New subject: [suse-amd64] Opteron Board preference ....

Andi Kleen wrote:

...

On Sat, 27 Mar 2004 08:27:51 -0600 "William A. Mahaffey III" wrote:

...
.... I am getting close to trying to build an Opteron based machine as a compute node on my LAN, set up to run w/o monitor, keybd, mouse, & not a file server, just a (fast) CPU & lots of RAM. I have narrowed down to either ASUS SK8V or TYAN Tomcat K8S (both available @ newegg.com). Does anyone have any strong (preferably firsthand :-)) opinions, yea or nay, about either of these boards ? Thanks in advance.

I would avoid VIA chipsets and lots of RAM right now. They seem to have problems with the IOMMU, which causes problems with >3GB and the on board devices.

-Andi

-- Check the List-Unsubscribe header to unsubscribe For additional commands, email: suse-amd64-help@suse.com

Yes, there was a recent thread which touched on that, which is partly why I asked :-). Thanks. Any idea when that is liekly to be fixed ?

William A. Mahaffey III

16:39

New subject: [suse-amd64] Opteron Board preference ....

Andi Kleen wrote:

...

On Sat, 27 Mar 2004 08:27:51 -0600 "William A. Mahaffey III" wrote:

...
.... I am getting close to trying to build an Opteron based machine as a compute node on my LAN, set up to run w/o monitor, keybd, mouse, & not a file server, just a (fast) CPU & lots of RAM. I have narrowed down to either ASUS SK8V or TYAN Tomcat K8S (both available @ newegg.com). Does anyone have any strong (preferably firsthand :-)) opinions, yea or nay, about either of these boards ? Thanks in advance.

I would avoid VIA chipsets and lots of RAM right now. They seem to have problems with the IOMMU, which causes problems with >3GB and the on board devices.

-Andi

-- Check the List-Unsubscribe header to unsubscribe For additional commands, email: suse-amd64-help@suse.com

Yes, there was a recent thread which touched on that, which is partly why I asked :-). Thanks. Any idea when that is liekly to be fixed ?

Andi Kleen

18:14

New subject: [suse-amd64] Opteron Board preference ....

On Sat, 27 Mar 2004 10:32:30 -0600 "William A. Mahaffey III" wrote:

...

Yes, there was a recent thread which touched on that, which is partly why I asked :-). Thanks. Any idea when that is liekly to be fixed ?

Ask VIA. For 2.6 there will be likely a workaround (using slow software bounce buffering), but not for 2.4. -Andi

Michael Hanulec

5 Apr 5 Apr

05:24

New subject: [suse-amd64] Opteron Board preference ....

...

...
...
file server, just a (fast) CPU & lots of RAM. I have narrowed down to either ASUS SK8V or TYAN Tomcat K8S (both available @ newegg.com). Does

i'd highly recommend looking at IWill's Opteron motherboards. i've used both of them, both workstation and server, successfully with 16GB or ram. the Pro 9.0 SATA CD also adds the necessary driver support for the Silicon Image chipset found on-board. -mike -- hanulec@hanulec.com cell: 858.518.2647 && 516.410.4478 https://secure.hanulec.com EFnet irc && aol im: hanulec

William A. Mahaffey III

6 Apr 6 Apr

09:12

New subject: [suse-amd64] Opteron Board preference ....

Michael Hanulec wrote:

...

...
...
...
file server, just a (fast) CPU & lots of RAM. I have narrowed down to either ASUS SK8V or TYAN Tomcat K8S (both available @ newegg.com). Does

i'd highly recommend looking at IWill's Opteron motherboards. i've used both of them, both workstation and server, successfully with 16GB or ram. the Pro 9.0 SATA CD also adds the necessary driver support for the Silicon Image chipset found on-board.

-mike -- hanulec@hanulec.com cell: 858.518.2647 && 516.410.4478 https://secure.hanulec.com EFnet irc && aol im: hanulec

Sweet. iwill.com ? & do any of the online retailers carry them (newegg, spartan, etc.) ?

William A. Mahaffey III

13:27

New subject: [suse-amd64] Opteron Board preference ....

Michael Hanulec wrote:

...

...
...
...
file server, just a (fast) CPU & lots of RAM. I have narrowed down to either ASUS SK8V or TYAN Tomcat K8S (both available @ newegg.com). Does

i'd highly recommend looking at IWill's Opteron motherboards. i've used both of them, both workstation and server, successfully with 16GB or ram. the Pro 9.0 SATA CD also adds the necessary driver support for the Silicon Image chipset found on-board.

-mike -- hanulec@hanulec.com cell: 858.518.2647 && 516.410.4478 https://secure.hanulec.com EFnet irc && aol im: hanulec

Sweet. iwill.com ? & do any of the online retailers carry them (newegg, spartan, etc.) ?

mbrown

14:47

New subject: [suse-amd64] Opteron Board preference ....

I've seen an awful lot of posts on various SUSE mailing lists regarding problems with the VIA chipsets and large amounts of ram, but I don't have any personal experience with those boards. I had a contact at AMD (one of their sysadmins) recommend the ASUS SK8N for 1p boards and Rioworks HDAMA or HDAMB for 2p boards. I have the HDAMB board and it has been very stable, but I have not yet loaded up more than 4 gigs of ram yet (if you need more than 8gb ram you would need the HDAMA board). I'm about to get some 1p machines with the ASUS SK8N mobo, so will have first hand experience soon. Mike On Mon, 5 Apr 2004, William A. Mahaffey III wrote:

...

Date: Mon, 05 Apr 2004 18:07:25 -0500 From: William A. Mahaffey III To: suse-amd64@suse.com Subject: Re: [suse-amd64] Opteron Board preference ....

Michael Hanulec wrote:

...
...
...
...
file server, just a (fast) CPU & lots of RAM. I have narrowed down to either ASUS SK8V or TYAN Tomcat K8S (both available @ newegg.com). Does

i'd highly recommend looking at IWill's Opteron motherboards. i've used both of them, both workstation and server, successfully with 16GB or ram. the Pro 9.0 SATA CD also adds the necessary driver support for the Silicon Image chipset found on-board.

-mike -- hanulec@hanulec.com cell: 858.518.2647 && 516.410.4478 https://secure.hanulec.com EFnet irc && aol im: hanulec

Sweet. iwill.com ? & do any of the online retailers carry them (newegg, spartan, etc.) ?

William A. Mahaffey III

7 Apr 7 Apr

12:33

New subject: [suse-amd64] Opteron Board preference ....

mbrown wrote:

...

I've seen an awful lot of posts on various SUSE mailing lists regarding problems with the VIA chipsets and large amounts of ram, but I don't have any personal experience with those boards.

I had a contact at AMD (one of their sysadmins) recommend the ASUS SK8N for 1p boards and Rioworks HDAMA or HDAMB for 2p boards. I have the HDAMB board and it has been very stable, but I have not yet loaded up more than 4 gigs of ram yet (if you need more than 8gb ram you would need the HDAMA board). I'm about to get some 1p machines with the ASUS SK8N mobo, so will have first hand experience soon.

Mike

On Mon, 5 Apr 2004, William A. Mahaffey III wrote:

...
Date: Mon, 05 Apr 2004 18:07:25 -0500 From: William A. Mahaffey III To: suse-amd64@suse.com Subject: Re: [suse-amd64] Opteron Board preference ....

Michael Hanulec wrote:

...
...
...
...
file server, just a (fast) CPU & lots of RAM. I have narrowed down to either ASUS SK8V or TYAN Tomcat K8S (both available @ newegg.com). Does

i'd highly recommend looking at IWill's Opteron motherboards. i've used both of them, both workstation and server, successfully with 16GB or ram. the Pro 9.0 SATA CD also adds the necessary driver support for the Silicon Image chipset found on-board.

-mike -- hanulec@hanulec.com cell: 858.518.2647 && 516.410.4478 https://secure.hanulec.com EFnet irc && aol im: hanulec

Sweet. iwill.com ? & do any of the online retailers carry them (newegg, spartan, etc.) ?

.

Sweet, I'm looking at them as I write this. Thanks.

Richard Mixon (qwest)

27 Mar 27 Mar

16:13

New subject: [suse-amd64] Opteron Board preference ....

Do not know about the K8S Tiger, but our Thunder K8S (S2880) has been pretty good so far as a Java application server. We are only using 2GB of memory, but most of the Tyan boards use the AMD chipset. Some are encountering memory recognition problems above 3GB with VIA chipsets. - Richard -----Original Message----- From: wam@mail.hiwaay.net [mailto:wam@mail.hiwaay.net]On Behalf Of William A. Mahaffey III Sent: Saturday, March 27, 2004 7:28 AM To: SuSE AMD 64 Mailing List Subject: [suse-amd64] Opteron Board preference .... .... I am getting close to trying to build an Opteron based machine as a compute node on my LAN, set up to run w/o monitor, keybd, mouse, & not a file server, just a (fast) CPU & lots of RAM. I have narrowed down to either ASUS SK8V or TYAN Tomcat K8S (both available @ newegg.com). Does anyone have any strong (preferably firsthand :-)) opinions, yea or nay, about either of these boards ? Thanks in advance. -- Check the List-Unsubscribe header to unsubscribe For additional commands, email: suse-amd64-help@suse.com

Richard Mixon (qwest)

16:18

New subject: [suse-amd64] Opteron Board preference ....

Nothing against Asus and New Egg - we've used New Egg for years and still like them a lot - but for our Opteron server we went to Monarch http://www.monarchcomputer.com/. New Egg was not keeping up with higher-end server components (hot swap rack mount cases in particular). Monarch has a great selection and prices and very, very knowlegable technicians. They were able to resolve a number of very sticky hardware support issues (SuSE AMD64 Linux was new as was Tyan's builtin SCSI raid support). To be fair, New Egg does not even try to be in the assembly box, just parts - Monarch does both. - Richard -----Original Message----- From: wam@mail.hiwaay.net [mailto:wam@mail.hiwaay.net]On Behalf Of William A. Mahaffey III Sent: Saturday, March 27, 2004 7:28 AM To: SuSE AMD 64 Mailing List Subject: [suse-amd64] Opteron Board preference .... .... I am getting close to trying to build an Opteron based machine as a compute node on my LAN, set up to run w/o monitor, keybd, mouse, & not a file server, just a (fast) CPU & lots of RAM. I have narrowed down to either ASUS SK8V or TYAN Tomcat K8S (both available @ newegg.com). Does anyone have any strong (preferably firsthand :-)) opinions, yea or nay, about either of these boards ? Thanks in advance. -- Check the List-Unsubscribe header to unsubscribe For additional commands, email: suse-amd64-help@suse.com

William A. Mahaffey III

16:35

New subject: [suse-amd64] Opteron Board preference ....

Richard Mixon (qwest) wrote:

...

Nothing against Asus and New Egg - we've used New Egg for years and still like them a lot - but for our Opteron server we went to Monarch http://www.monarchcomputer.com/. New Egg was not keeping up with higher-end server components (hot swap rack mount cases in particular). Monarch has a great selection and prices and very, very knowlegable technicians. They were able to resolve a number of very sticky hardware support issues (SuSE AMD64 Linux was new as was Tyan's builtin SCSI raid support). To be fair, New Egg does not even try to be in the assembly box, just parts - Monarch does both.

- Richard

-----Original Message----- From: wam@mail.hiwaay.net [mailto:wam@mail.hiwaay.net]On Behalf Of William A. Mahaffey III Sent: Saturday, March 27, 2004 7:28 AM To: SuSE AMD 64 Mailing List Subject: [suse-amd64] Opteron Board preference ....

.... I am getting close to trying to build an Opteron based machine as a compute node on my LAN, set up to run w/o monitor, keybd, mouse, & not a file server, just a (fast) CPU & lots of RAM. I have narrowed down to either ASUS SK8V or TYAN Tomcat K8S (both available @ newegg.com). Does anyone have any strong (preferably firsthand :-)) opinions, yea or nay, about either of these boards ? Thanks in advance.

I was aware of Monarch, but haven't been to their site lately, just went there, great selection, I'll keep them in mind, thanks.

7337

Age (days ago)

7348

Last active (days ago)

List overview

Download

12 comments

5 participants

participants (5)

Andi Kleen
mbrown
Michael Hanulec
Richard Mixon (qwest)
William A. Mahaffey III