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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bob661 - Monday, February 14, 2005 - link
#14The difference is the 2xx can go up to 2 CPU's and the 8xx can go up to 8 CPU's. That's it.
Ross Whitehead - Monday, February 14, 2005 - link
R3MF, we plan to discuss w/ AMD and Tyan the lack of benefit the 1 GHz HyperTransport provided.Jason Clark - Monday, February 14, 2005 - link
ceefka, meager? 3 of the most popular uses of a database? If there is something you think we are missing, please reveal ;).We'll work on a web article asap.
ksherman - Monday, February 14, 2005 - link
is it just me, or did you take the best Xeon and put it against a mid range Opteron? what about the 8xx series? what is the difference between 2xx and 8xx?blackbrrd - Monday, February 14, 2005 - link
Seems Intel just turned the table again. What about webserver performance?blckgrffn - Monday, February 14, 2005 - link
I meant on the desktop, which is why the PM doesn't really count, sorry I wasn't more clear on that...blckgrffn - Monday, February 14, 2005 - link
I hope that the upcoming prescotts with 2meg L2 cache show similar improvements across the board - not because I am Intel fan, but really AMD hasn't had much in the way of direct competition from Intel lately (the PM doesn't count)Every benchmark has been: The 3000+ AMD64 is better than nearly any P4 for gaming performance, and if you really want to win all the benches but one or two, shell out for the fx-55... kind of boring, really :)
ceefka - Monday, February 14, 2005 - link
However meager the benchies, it proofs my point that a company should mix and match according to their needs and not just stick with one or the other because their supplier says they shoud buy this or that.We have lots of financial data and scans, tables etc. going here, so a 4-way Opteron can be justified to sit between a few Xeon boxes for other apps. Unfortunately we're in the Intel comfort zone and browsing through accounts, scans and tables is therefore tedious.
R3MF - Monday, February 14, 2005 - link
just because i'm awkward -i'd like to see a comparison between a:
> FX55 (2.6GHz) & O252 (2.6GHz)
> nF4 Ultra & nF4 Pro (abit wln8+)
> 2x 512MB DDR500
> 2x 300GB Max10 NCQ
> 6800 Ultra
in order to see whether the core enhancements in the new Opteron make a difference........?
am i asking for too much? :p
gordon151 - Monday, February 14, 2005 - link
Yeah, this article needs to be re-written because the Opteron doesn't crush Xeon. These numbers are dubious!