recommended MB for phenom?

[nbecker]

I'm about to build a new server for high-performance computing use. I'm planning on a phenom, and am wondering what is the best chipset today, and what would be a good MB.

[Kano]

High Performance? Well even a Q6600 ist faster than every available Phenom - and thats not even OC.

[nbecker]

High Performance? Well even a Q6600 ist faster than every available Phenom - and thats not even OC.

I believe that memory bandwidth may be the most important issue in my work. I'm under the impression that amd is doing well here.

[d2kx]

The 2nd generation AM2+ motherboards are coming very soon (790FX/SB750), I would wait a bit for them to arrive (~ 2-3 weeks I guess). The SB750 is able to clock the Phenom even further if you're interested in overclocking.

[deanjo]

Well I just got a Asus M3N-HT Deluxe Mempipe in on Saturday. Took the Phenom 9850 off the Gigabyte GA-MA790FX-DS5 which maxed out @ 2800 Mhz overclocking and slapped it on the Asus using the same ram, powersupply, videocard, cpu and heatsink. So far up to 3300 Mhz stable and still pushing it further. Gonna try the 6400+ BE on it next to see how far that can be pushed. Could only get about a 100 Mhz bump OCing with it on the Gigabyte.

[Kano]

3.3 GHz is not bad, did you press ctrl-f1 to get to hidden bios entries on you gigabyte?

[deanjo]

3.3 GHz is not bad, did you press ctrl-f1 to get to hidden bios entries on you gigabyte?

Ya, tried screwing around with the HT link width in there to see if I could push it further. Didn't help any.

[nbecker]

So, should I go for Asus M3N-HT with it's nvidia chipset, or wait for '2nd generation AM2+ motherboards are coming very soon (790FX/SB750)'?

I have no interest in SLI - this is just for high performance computing.

[Kano]

Well then usually you would buy a Q6700, Q9450 or similar. Do you know of any benchmark where Phenom is significant faster than Core2?

[nbecker]

Well then usually you would buy a Q6700, Q9450 or similar. Do you know of any benchmark where Phenom is significant faster than Core2?

I believe my use will be limited by memory bandwidth. I have the idea that amd has the edge here - but I don't really know.

[deanjo]

So, should I go for Asus M3N-HT with it's nvidia chipset, or wait for '2nd generation AM2+ motherboards are coming very soon (790FX/SB750)'?

I have no interest in SLI - this is just for high performance computing.

Well I'm still waiting to make final judgement on the board. I usually don't put boards into my working systems until I torture the heck out of them for a week or two. First couple of weeks is all about finding the quirks in a particular product. I have no interest in SLI either but the reason I got it was for high performance computing as well with Cuda. The 3 x16 PCIe slots allow me load it up with GPU's for that purpose.

[technolope]

Well I'm still waiting to make final judgement on the board. I usually don't put boards into my working systems until I torture the heck out of them for a week or two. First couple of weeks is all about finding the quirks in a particular product. I have no interest in SLI either but the reason I got it was for high performance computing as well with Cuda. The 3 x16 PCIe slots allow me load it up with GPU's for that purpose.

I have the Phenom 9850 and a Gigabyte MA790FX-DS5 board (and I intend to use CUDA with it for N-body research), but I couldn't get the machine to run all 4 cores for more than 20 minutes without crashing (at stock 2.5 GHz speeds!). After the return, the second one crashed after 1.5 minutes of 4-core load. I'd recommend against the Gigabyte.

[d2kx]

Well then usually you would buy a Q6700, Q9450 or similar. Do you know of any benchmark where Phenom is significant faster than Core2?

Sorry, I've lost the URL where you get the Q9450 (260€+, can't really say when it's not avaible anywhere) for a price that is only a bit close to the price of the 9850BE (185€). And I've lost the link where you could see that a Q9300 (210€) / Q6700 (200€) has noticeable advantages over a Phenom (let it be 2.5GHz or 3GHz+). Can you remind me of where I could read this?

Most people that I talk to really recommend the ASUS M3A32-MVP Deluxe (130€) over the Gigabyte ones until 790FX/SB750 boards arrive. Gigabyte has the better Intel S775 boards though.

:)

[Kano]

You lost it because it was never here ;)

[d2kx]

You lost it because it was never here ;)

Alright, thanks for clearing this up. Must have been in a nightmare then :D

[nbecker]

Maybe I should reconsider Intel? I see newegg has q9450. What MB would you choose to go with this? I'm assuming DDR2, since AFAIK DDR3 is still a lot more expensive.

[Raven3x7]

http://www.connexitor.com/blog/pivot/entry.php?id=191#body

[Vighy]

I believe my use will be limited by memory bandwidth. I have the idea that amd has the edge here - but I don't really know.

yes they have, since the memory controller is integrated in the CPU.

but what kind of HPC?

[Redeeman]

i have a Q9450 and its insanely fast ;)
http://global.phoronix-test-suite.com/?k=profile&u=redeeman-31054-9264-15799
vs
http://global.phoronix-test-suite.com/?k=profile&u=kte-11103-10818-32082

and this uses only 1 core :P

for a multicore thing:
http://global.phoronix-test-suite.com/?k=profile&u=redeeman-9430-12980-16919
http://global.phoronix-test-suite.com/?k=profile&u=kte-17851-11474-15615

[Kano]

Do you only use DDR2-800 or why it is only at 3200 MHz. For that cpu I would use DDR2-1066 and a nice P35/P45 board from Gigabyte.

[apaige]

Redeeman: first, you're comparing a 3.2 GHz CPU to a 2.7 GHz CPU. That's a 4x500 MHz difference. Second, something must be wrong on the guy's Phenom setup, because pbzip2 completes in 25.4 seconds on my Phenom 9600 (2.3 GHz). That's over twice as fast on a CPU that's slower by 4x400 MHz, and less than 5 seconds slower than the 3.2 GHz Q9450 with a difference of 4x900 MHz.

Since the pbzip2 test relies a lot on memory bandwidth, I wonder if ganged/unganged mode has something to do with the performance discrepancies.

Edit: my bad, I was still using the old 45 MB wav file (concatenated 8 times). But even with the new 82 MB file (times 8), pbzip2 completes in 38.4 seconds on my Phenom.

[Kano]

Yes maybe better OC the Phenom too or try the Q9450 at stock speed (2666), you just need to know that you can not OC to more than 8*400=3200 (default fsb is 333) with standard DDR2-800. The limit with DDR2-1066 is 8*533.3=4266. As my 65nm E6600 can easyly go up to 3200 with stock cooler (maybe I get one better one some time) I don't think that 3200 is a real limit for the Q9450...

[Melcar]

Yes maybe better OC the Phenom too or try the Q9450 at stock speed (2666), you just need to know that you can not OC to more than 8*400=3200 (default fsb is 333) with standard DDR2-800. The limit with DDR2-1066 is 8*533.3=4266. As my 65nm E6600 can easyly go up to 3200 with stock cooler (maybe I get one better one some time) I don't think that 3200 is a real limit for the Q9450...


A decent DDR2-800 set could match DDR2-1000 speeds easy, and I've seen some pushing DDR2-1066. If going for an AMD system and plan to overclock, one could do with DDR2-800 memory. On an Intel system it's worth it to go DDR2-1066, simply because you could very easily run the RAM/fsb 1:1 which will really boost performance (as opposed to running 1:1 on an AM2/AM2+ machine).