Tyan K8SRE S2891
The
Tyan K8SRE is the latest server based Opteron board from a well-known motherboard manufacturer, Tyan. The K8SRE features Nvidia's nForce
TM Professional 2200 core logic solution. For more information on the nForce Professional chipset, check out Derek Wilson's
excellent coverage.
Overall, the Tyan board performed well in our tests. We did, however, have some compatibility issues with our Crucial memory on this board. Some minor BIOS tweaks managed to get us up and running, and stable. We'd recommend that you adhere to memory that is officially supported by Tyan to avoid any compatibility issues - our memory was not on the recommended list.
1Ghz HyperTransport Support
According to AMD, the 252 supports a 1GHz HyperTransport bus frequency. The Tyan board sets the HyperTransport bus frequency automatically to 800MHz, which is what we used for our tests. We did, however, manually forced the HyperTransport frequency to 1GHz using nVidia's nTune and there was no difference in performance in any of our tests.
Test Software Configuration
Windows 2003 was configured with /3GB and /PAE switches in the boot.ini to support the 8GB of memory used for our tests. SQL Server Enterprise was set to use AWE extensions and a maximum memory limit was set at 6144MB.
Test hardware configuration
Intel Xeon System
3.6 GHz Nocona 1MB L2
3.6 GHz Nocona 2MB L2
Intel SE7620AF2 Motherboard
8GB Crucial PC2-3200 DDR2 Memory
Windows 2003 Enterprise Server (32 Bit)
8 x 36GB 15,000RPM Ultra320 SCSI drives in RAID-0
LSI Logic 320-2 SCSI Raid Controller
AMD Configuration
Opteron 250
Opteron 252
Tyan K8SRE S2891 Motherboard
8GB Crucial DDR-3200 Memory
Windows 2003 Enterprise Server (32 Bit)
8 x 36GB 15,000RPM Ultra320 SCSI drives in RAID-0
LSI Logic 320-2 SCSI Raid Controller
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Hans Maulwurf - Wednesday, February 16, 2005 - link
Yes, but IBM would not use memory that is not on the recommanded list of the mainboard, at lest I hope so.And it is possible that the boad sets very high latencies for the memory you used. So I think it is an important information especially when using memory that is not recommanded.
Jason Clark - Wednesday, February 16, 2005 - link
Hans, let me ask you this. When someone in an IT dept. calls Compaq, Dell, HP or IBM for a server do you think they ask them what the memory timings are set at? The answer is no. Which is why we aren't going to provide information like that, as it isn't relevant to the target audience or the purpose of the article. We're trying to educate the IT folks on what platform does what on certain workloads and IT related tests.Cheers.
prd00 - Wednesday, February 16, 2005 - link
Hans Maulwurf - Wednesday, February 16, 2005 - link
Jason,you do not have to play with the memory timings to report them.
dm - Tuesday, February 15, 2005 - link
danidentity, i guess you're right when you mentioned about 5pages of reply ;)...prd00 - Tuesday, February 15, 2005 - link
Sorry, missed your comment Jason.. I read viditor comment that said as single. So, in Dual setup, Xeon is more powerful now ;). Then, Xeon must be faster in single.I am waiting for 64 bit one ;)
prd00 - Tuesday, February 15, 2005 - link
Wow.. single??On single setup, I already knew that Xeon is powerful. Right now what we are lacking is a TRUE SERVER BENCHMARK. Not just single vs single. I can safely recommend Xeon since a few months ago on single setup, but right now, most of our customers are asking about DUAL SETUP. Some are looking in QUAD setup. Single is useless in server environment. For databse server, 9 out of 10 are looking for 2p setup
So, what I am really looking are database benchmark on single, dual and quad setup, and also how does it scale. Which platform best suited for 2p and 4p, and which one has better upgrade future (i.e. by adding processors), and until what point.
So, like, Xeon is good for 1p, but on 2p Opteron is better, while more than 8p we can consider Itanium instead for database server.
Kind of conclusion like that.
Jason Clark - Tuesday, February 15, 2005 - link
Zebo, because this is a server test. You don't play with memory timings/overclocking in servers. We used default memory timings that the Tyan board set for the memory. I linked to the manufacturer specs on the memory which identifies its SPD rating. The only thing we're investigating at this point is the 1GHz HT issue in the bios.PrinceGaz - Tuesday, February 15, 2005 - link
It's certainly a change from the usual Opteron beating Xeon in almost all server tests reviews, and all the more so because you say they were both dual CPU systems (I was under the impression while reading they were only single CPU servers being compared).It just goes to show how much difference the benchmarks that are run, how well the systems are set up, and any other things we never know about, can influence results.
I'm glad Intel is coming out ahead in some tests on AT, maybe you should make them come out ahead on desktop stuff too as that might encourage AMD to drop the prices on the higher rated E0 revision Athlon 64 processors sooner rather than later :)
Zebo - Tuesday, February 15, 2005 - link
Jason how comw you did'nt say mem timings nor speed or if 1T or not? I've never seen a review from AT without this.