[Dvorak]

has anyone heard anything about this one? TYAN S4980G2NR Quad 1207(F)

looks like I could save money on power supplies and motherboards if that thing works.

[Apokalipse]

From what I've heard, it doesn't support the Shanghai (45nm K10.5) Opertons; it only supports the Barcelona (K10) or K8 Opterons.

Also, if you want to use 4 CPU's, you need to use the 800 or 8000 series chips.

Four 800 (K8) or 8000 (K10) series chips can work in one motherboard
Two 200 (K8) or 2000 (K10) series chips can work in one motherboard
One 100 (K8) or 1000 (K10) series chip can work in one motherboard.

[Dvorak]

edit, sorry, didn't notice those bottom 3 lines, thanks =)

[Apokalipse]

2000 series opterons would work, but not with more than two chips.

As far as multi-CPU systems go, the AMD K8 and K10 systems are basically the way to go right now.
They have the HyperTransport bus and integrated memory controllers. so they scale much better than a system with a FSB.
the FSB isn't nearly as bad on a single CPU system though.

Shanghai chips are the ones most corporations are going for right now. They have better performance than Barcelona, and much better performance per watt.

But you will only see the benefit from 8 or 16 cores if your programs can run that many threads.

[Puddle Jumper]

Originally Posted by Apokalipse

As far as multi-CPU systems go, the AMD K8 and K10 systems are basically the way to go right now.
They have the HyperTransport bus and integrated memory controllers. so they scale much better than a system with a FSB.
the FSB isn't nearly as bad on a single CPU system though.
.

Intel offers dual socket lga1366 boards for the nehalem based Xeons which have integrated memory controllers and QPI.

The Xeons are faster than the Opteros but are also more expensive so depending on your budget they may not be a better option.

[Apokalipse]

Originally Posted by Puddle Jumper

Intel offers dual socket lga1366 boards for the nehalem based Xeons which have imc's and QPI.

Yes, the problem being the cost.

Originally Posted by Puddle Jumper

The Xeons are faster than the Opteros but are also more expensive so depending on your budget they may not be a better option.

What kind of Xeon and what kind of configuration?

the K10 Opterons are usually better than Core 2 Xeons in multi-CPU systems (Shanghai especially).
K8 Opterons were better than Netburst Xeons (though we all know to avoid Netburst).

AMD is planning 6-core CPU's, which will work in existing sockets (though probably needing a BIOS update); though currently Nehalem-based Xeons are the fastest, and the most expensive.

Nehalem has HyperThreading, which makes each core appear like two cores.
It doesn't perform nearly as well as actually having that many cores, but it can give a boost to programs that take advantage of that many threads.

[Dvorak]

yeah, basically what I need is the cheapest solution available for maximum cores with at least 1.5ghz
since this board would need to use shanghais to take advantage of 4 sockets, it's far more expensive than just buying 4 mobos, 4 psus and 4 AMD Opteron 1354 Budapest 2.2GHz

[Puddle Jumper]

Originally Posted by Apokalipse

What kind of Xeon and what kind of configuration?

I was referring to the nehalem based Xeons. Intel is also planning on releasing 8 core nehalem based Xeons.

Originally Posted by Apokalipse

AMD is planning 6-core CPU's, which will work in existing sockets (though probably needing a BIOS update); though currently Nehalem-based Xeons are the fastest, and the most expensive.

Intel is also planning on releasing 8 core nehalem based Xeons.

[Apokalipse]

AMD is also going to make 12-core CPU's after they make 6-core chips.

@Dvorak: the board you're looking at won't support the shanghai chips. It supports K8 chips and Barcelona K10 chips.

There are quad socket motherdoards that do support shanghai chips. Though you need the 8000 series chips to run four in the same motherboard.

what are you running that needs a lot of cores?

If you can make use of separate systems, you could just go with some Phenom II's + 780G boards

Newegg.com - AMD Phenom II X4 940 Deneb 3.0GHz 4 x 512KB L2 Cache 6MB L3 Cache Socket AM2+ 125W Quad-Core Black Edition Processor - Processors - Desktops
Newegg.com - ASRock A780GMH/128M AM2+/AM3 AMD 780G HDMI Micro ATX AMD Motherboard - AMD Motherboards

The triple cores are cheap, though you'd need to build more systems to get the same number of cores.