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Hardware

Dual Opteron SFF PC Tested 127

Posted by timothy from the jeesharooni dept.
Steve writes "Back in May, IWILL announced the ZMAXdp (slashdot article), a dual Opteron SFF PC. Sept 23rd saw a further press release with more details of this intriguing system. At HEXUS.net, we've had the exclusive chance to get one of these systems in our test lab, obtaining pictures and specs along with our own analysys and benchmarks. The system runs suprisingly quiet and cool considering what's under the hood. This could become the system of choice for high-end workstation users who don't want a huge machine taking up their desk-space, or perhaps the toy of choice for those of us who hunger for so much power in such a small system."
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Dual Opteron SFF PC Tested More

Dual Opteron SFF PC Tested

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  • Cube (Score:2, Offtopic)

    by BigZaphod ( 12942 )
    It is like a red version of Apple's old cube design combined with the Nintendo Game Cube. Funky. Although, personally, if I'm looking for power, quiet, and ease of use, I'd just get a dual G5 Mac at this point. (Assuming I had the cash, of course).

    • Re:Cube (Score:2, Interesting)

      by isolationism ( 782170 )
      Some will and some won't -- the author of Gizmodo [gizmodo.com] suggested the opposite (buying one for around the same price as a G5 -- but probably less, I would imagine).

      I've been looking at this case for a good couple months now (before there were any pre-production versions available). The dual-processor aspect is definitely enticing; I'd like to run Gentoo on it with Windows installed on a virtual machine so I'm not up the creek when I need to use some Windows software.

      What I have a harder time deciding is, do I

      • Re:Cube (Score:3, Interesting)

        by Gherald ( 682277 )
        If you are considering a dual opteron with Gentoo and vmware because you still need windows, forget it!

        Get two Socket 754 athlons (3000-3400ish) and put Gentoo on one, Windows on the other.

        It's much more practical... you could load the Linux machine with storage (software Raid5 with SATA drives) and maybe put a Raptor in the Windows machine (which could be a SFF for LAN parties, if you like)

        Thats what I do... a Gentoo AMD64 syste as a web/file server, a Winddows one for games. Both double as workstation
        • Well, I already have a Gentoo file server (with a hardware RAID 5 -- the card is a years-old Adaptec from when I used to run it under Windows which continues to serve me well in Linux), but it runs fine on an 850MHz Duron with 512MB SDR.

          I decided some time ago (obviously) it would be a waste of money to chuck hardware that still does its job reliably -- although this is admittedly an excercise in future preparedness for when something does eventually fail.

          Anyway, I'm not particularly interested in upgra

          • In price/performance, a dual proc Opteron is often comparable to two seperate Athlon64 machines. The difference of course being that you get all that horsepower in a single machine, which can be nice. But if you're going to be running a virtual machine anyway then seperate machines for Linux and Windows is a GOOD thing, because they can both run natively and offer greater flexibility.

            Here's a little breakdown:

            *** Dual Opteron system

            - Single but hopefully high quality PSU required
            - A good dual motherboa
    • That's some power there... And to follow up, next we see an IBM sixteen-way POWER5 small form factor PC, with onboard RAID5 and forty gig of RAM*

      *tardis included.
    • It's nice that a G5 system is an option for you.

      For the vast majority of us in x86 land, this Iwill box is a very nice setup, and will probably cost significantly less than a dual G5 system.

    • Re:Cube (Score:5, Informative)

      by harlows_monkeys ( 106428 ) on Saturday September 25, 2004 @03:23PM (#10350415) Homepage
      Although, personally, if I'm looking for power, quiet, and ease of use, I'd just get a dual G5 Mac at this point

      Dual G5 Macs aren't quiet. This is a point of much consternation in Mac forums--with Macs seeming to be ideal for audio work, many are puzzled that Apple doesn't build a truly quiet machine for that niche.

      For somethine really quiet, it looks like your best bet now is to build something yourself. Start with cases and power supplies and cooling from Zalman [zalmanusa.com]. Their external water cooling system looks particularly nice, and easy to install.


    • Yee-sh!!! My Eyes! My Eyes!! It's hideous!!!

  • From TFA... (Score:5, Funny)

    by brilinux ( 255400 ) on Saturday September 25, 2004 @02:29PM (#10350069) Journal
    In profile, you can see that its quite a long unit from front to back, especially with the PSU housing protruding from the back, J-Lo-esque.

    You know you are a nerd when you compare your computer to Jennifer Lopez...

  • summary (Score:5, Informative)

    by pbranes ( 565105 ) on Saturday September 25, 2004 @02:29PM (#10350071)
    Here's the quick summary:

    It's disgustingly well engineered and it works incredibly well.

    Here's a link to a single page that you don't have to click through. [hexus.net]

    • On the note of single pages. Am I the only one that really hates it when review sites take what should be at most a two page review and strech it to 10 or more pages? Are the banner views really that good?
      • Yes - you are the only one who hates being insulted with tiny pages of content surrounded by scores of blinky ads. Everyone else just loves it, and in turn hates the unobtrusive Google-style advertising and their idealistic "dont be evil" motto.

        Running an adblocker or even clicking on the "printable version of this page" option takes food off their childrens' table! </sarcasm>

        --

    • I was going through random search on google image search when I came across some computers nearly identical to this one. Search for "grm" to see what I mean. Is there some tie between the two products?

  • But... (Score:2, Funny)

    by Gothmolly ( 148874 )
    Does it run Windows? I guess not [microsoft.com], so maybe you'd have to run a real operating system [www.suse.de] on it.
  • When we transfer our sentience to defensive pods, will this be useful? Perhaps our main interface with reality will suffice.

  • Red (Score:2, Interesting)

    by vijaya_chandra ( 618284 )
    Do these guys also have some association with Ferrari like acer has for one of their laptop models!?!

    This box's awfully red and am sure'd hurt anyone's eyes
    • Do these guys also have some association with Ferrari like acer has for one of their laptop models!?!

      As long as it doesn't make "WroomWroom" when booting up ...

  • Coralized Cache (Score:2, Informative)

    by chickenmonger ( 614989 )
    Might as well provide a link just in case the server slows to a crawl...

    http://www.hexus.net.nyud.net:8090/content/reviews /review_print.php?dXJsX3Jldmlld19JRD04NzY= [nyud.net]

  • Better Link (Score:3, Informative)

    by b1ng0 ( 7449 ) on Saturday September 25, 2004 @02:46PM (#10350166)
    All on one page for easy reading and printing link [hexus.net]

  • My thoughts about this system (Score:5, Informative)

    by HoneyBunchesOfGoats ( 619017 ) on Saturday September 25, 2004 @02:46PM (#10350167)
    I've been following this Iwill SFF for some time, as I'm very interested in it. Here are a few of the distinguishing features:

    * It has a mini-pci slot on the underside of the motherboard, which is meant for a wireless card, and a removable antenna for said card on top of the case.

    * It only has two RAM slots, and lists the maximum RAM as 2GB.

    * The RAM is only connected to CPU0, so any data CPU1 requests will have to be requested through CPU0. This does mean there will be a speed hit, but it isn't major.

    * The MSRP is $499.

    I just hope they offer it in some other color than bright red.

    • Re:My thoughts about this system (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Jeff DeMaagd ( 2015 ) on Saturday September 25, 2004 @03:02PM (#10350267) Homepage Journal
      I thought most of the cheaper Opteron boards only attached memory to CPU0. This reduces the number of board traces. The boards I've seen that exploit all memory channels for a 2P Opteron system cost $500 for the board only, and that's not counting the cost of a WTX/extended ATX case to house that board.
      • Yes, the cheap (around $200) ATX dual 2P Opteron boards are not NUMA boards. We're not talking about a whole bunch of boards though. There are only 2 ATX Opteron boards that I know of (Tyan Tiger K8W and MSI's Master-FAR thing). Both send all memory access through CPU0. The performance hit isn't much except for in the extreme cases when memory bandwidth is a bottleneck.

        Most of the normal EATX boards are actually around $400-430. Again, there isn't a lot of choice in the Opteron world, especially if yo

    • Re:My thoughts about this system (Score:1, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      According to the manufacturer's page [iwill.net], it looks like the other color is silver. I'm guessing the $499 is the bare machine w/o an processors.
      • That system is a computer rendering. And the motherboard they show isn't even a SFF board, and it's not even made by IWill! (It's really a full ATX board, check out this pic [amdboard.com].) From the bottom of the IWill page you link to:

        Product specification and details may change without notice. Actual products may look different from the photo.
    • And where did you see a MSRP of $499?
  • I believe with the Tyan Thunder K8QS Pro (S4882), you can get a quad-opteron system. I doubt it would even run Suse properly. Isn't 64-bit rightfully feared?

  • Athlon64/Opteron may well be diasterous for Intel (Score:5, Insightful)

    by ShatteredDream ( 636520 ) on Saturday September 25, 2004 @02:53PM (#10350205) Homepage
    Intel plans to sell 100,000 Itanium processors, and in the same time frame AMD plans to sell between 1.5 and 2.0 million Athlon64 and Opteron processors. Intel has been left with a 64bit processor that nobody really wants, I have the sneaky suspicion that soon there will be more PowerMacs running 64bit PPCs than Itanium workstations and servers. That alone should tell Intel that the writing is on the wall: adapt or die.

    A friend of mine just put together a dual Opteron workstation for a client, and the price was dirt cheap compared to the Itanium workstations. It was only a few hundred dollars more expensive than a PowerMac G5. Itanium workstations are incredibly expensive and what do you get? A processor that nobody really wants to support in the end.

    Truthfully, I think the biggest winners coming out of this will be Java and .NET as the splintering of the processor market will make the case for virtual machines greater. Why ship 3-5 native binaries when you can ship just 1 binary for a VM instead?

    • Re:Athlon64/Opteron may well be diasterous for Int (Score:4, Interesting)

      by HoneyBunchesOfGoats ( 619017 ) on Saturday September 25, 2004 @02:59PM (#10350245)
      Intel is adapting. They have a huge ace up their sleeve, the Pentium M (processor in Centrino laptops). It's basically picking up the P6 architecture where the Pentium 3 left off, and it's a fantastic performer, as well as being in the same power consumption range as VIA's C3 processors. Intel are going to continue to push the P4's Netburst architecture as long as people keep buying it, and when that takes its eventual nosedive, they'll have the P-M waiting. Intel isn't a company to rest on its laurels.

      • P-M future could be quiet PC (Score:5, Interesting)

        by gad_zuki! ( 70830 ) on Saturday September 25, 2004 @04:11PM (#10350740)
        The P-M is very, very impressive, but isn't it a dead end? Intel can't be banking on this thing to be their new killer chip.

        Its not 64 bit (which is not a big deal now), its limited to 400 mhz FSB, the P4-M will not be as thifty with juice as the C3, etc. Its ability to do more with less clock cycles is going to hurt Intel's own branding and marketing strategy which is built on the megahertz myth. It is currently outperformed by the old P4 and the opteron.

        Its neat and probably headed towards the desktop (if it isnt there already), but I think the opteron is going to hurt Intel for a while. Perhaps a long while.

        Intel could really make inroads with the P-M/mobo as the basis for a quiet PC. Less heat, less fans, etc. Create some new form factor/standard which has ONE fan. Period. Or none, like Apple.

        The desktop market could really use an industry leader pushing machines which aren't so loud.
        • 64-bit support is pretty trivial to add, and doesn't cost much silicon. I'm surprised Intel waited for AMD to do it first. (64-bit support is already available on P4 Xeons.)

          The P4-m is a seperate chip from the P-M, and yes I agree that the P4-m is terrible.

          The P-M is not built on the megahertz myth, and outperforms P4 chips the same way that AMD's chips outperform the P4. The P-M consumes ~24 watts at maximum load, but most of the time it's far below that; at minimum speed, it consumes under 7 watts

        • Its not 64 bit (which is not a big deal now), its limited to 400 mhz FSB,

          No, what you mean is that the current forms of the chip have this limitation. No doubt Intel will have these two limitations taken care of long before they introduce it as their desktop processor.

          Although I generally prefer AMD, this is a very promising change, IMO. Getting processors with good performance, but much lower power consumtion is something almost everyone wants, and AMD isn't doing much to bring that to fruition. Intel

      • I have recently scavenged a P4 "M" class(2.0 gHz)
        from a broken laptop (e-mail me and I'll tell ya the story....OMG) and installed it in a mini-ATX LANboy case I built.
        No problems, standard heatsink, RAM at 1 Gb, and running Fedora Core 2 for a week with 0 downtime. Intel may be good-to-go with this idea, and we (geeks) may be the true winners here....
        • What did you have to do to make the transplant work?

          What parts of the laptop were kept, which ones replaced (and how)?

          Where did you happen to salvage the laptop guts?

          timothy

        • Re:Athlon64/Opteron may well be diasterous for Int (Score:1, Informative)

          by Anonymous Coward
          Argh, Pentium 4M is NOT the same as the Pentium M.

          The Pentium M is based on the PPro core, whereas Pentium 4M is a standard Pentium 4 (aka Netburst) with some power management circuits thrown in.

          Pentium M-2.0 GHz outperforms a Pentium 4-3.2 GHz in integer calculations, while drawing _significantly_ less power.
    • Is the slashdot truth that the Itanium is doomed? The comparison with Athlon 64 is not interesting, the only AMD processor that is close to competing with Itaniums would be the Opteron 8xx, the competitor of Athlon64 is Pentium IV, and the other Opterons competes with the Xeons. How do you think those sales numbers look in comparison? I will personally buy an Athlon 64 next though, and so will a lot of other sladotters as well. We are an important group to AMD, but very few on slashdot understand the marke
    • Actually, the Opteron and Athlon 64 are better compared to the new Nacona Xeon processors with Intels version of x86-64 called 64 EMT. When you consider the number of shipped Xeon systems the Opteron numbers start to pale.
    • and untill AMD has something comparable, I don't care what they've got. Well, I guess AMD might kick butt in the highend workstation market for a while, but elsewhere where the need for performance isn't so great that you don't see impressionable idiots making IT decisions they're still gonna get spanked. I mean, come on, who came up with 'AMD me'? It sounds either silly, stupid or dirty, depending on your mood/social background.
  • I'm pretty certain that my next system shall be dual-Opteron powered, but the price of the appropriate CPU's is gonna have me saving up money for much longer than is possible. Is there any real difference between the 1-series Opterons and the 2-series Opterons, design-wise? Or, perhaps, with the appropriate equipment and know-how, can a single-processor Opteron be made to work on a dual-Opteron board? I'm surprised I haven't yet heard talk of this. Please, point me in the right direction.
    • As far as I can recall the 1 series Opteron cannot be made to function as a dual processor chip, nor can the 2 series be made to operate as a 4 series.

      I can't quite remember all the gory technical details but it has to do with the number and type of Hypertransport links each core has. the 1xx series cores simply don't have enough HT links to function in a dual setup.
    • No you cannot use two 1xx Opterons to build a duallie, because the 1xx models lack the extra HT links. There is no known mod. They are also locked but you can overclock them by adjusting the reference 200MHz clock.
    • Buy a 2xx Opteron, when the need or money arises, put a second 2xx in the 2 socket board.

      This is little different from Intel, although I think you could get a 1xx Opteron (possibly an FX-5x chip) and make it work in a 2P board, you WILL have to replace that chip with a 2xx, along with a second 2xx when going dual processor.

      The part that is like Intel is that you can leave the second socket empty. The part that isn't like Intel is that you might be able to just get a cheap-o chip to make the board work.

      K
  • From the look of things, the 2 DIMMs are on 1 channel on 1 CPU, so 3 of the 4 memory channels are unused and the 2nd CPU has to go via the first one to access memory. If I've interpreted the pictures right, this means it'll be a lot slower than a system with a better memory setup. Of course, Hexus don't seem to notice this and don't bother to compare it to a more conventional Opteron with the same speed CPUs (they compare it to a system with faster CPUs so it's not obvious why that system is faster). And fi
    • How about RTFA and not just looking at the (pretty) pictures? They do notice and mentions it several times in the article text.

  • All memory on CPU0 (Score:3, Interesting)

    by chiph ( 523845 ) on Saturday September 25, 2004 @03:02PM (#10350266)
    All the RAM is on CPU0, so if you need to access something on CPU1, you have to go over the HTT bus and wait for the other CPU to satisfy your request. While this is likely something that was due to it being a SFF computer, I find that disappointing.

    Chip H.

  • Dual Opteron (Score:3, Interesting)

    by October_30th ( 531777 ) on Saturday September 25, 2004 @03:04PM (#10350280) Homepage Journal
    As someone who's running a dual Opteron setup with Gentoo right now, this is pretty interesting. The noise in a standard server case is pretty awful.

    Futhermore, while the problem with heat does not seem to be so acute with Opterons as it is with P4s and Xeons, it must be said that Opterons seem to lose to Xeons in floating point performance. That was a great disappointment to me since I run floating point intensive simulations (or more precisely prototypes of simulations to be run later on real, supercomputer-grade hardware) and because most of the Intel's advantage seems to come from the compiler and not from the hardware per se.

    • Opterons seem to lose to Xeons in floating point performance.

      That's rather strange, are you talking about using an Opteron in 32-bit mode, or 64-bit?

    • Re:Dual Opteron (Score:2, Interesting)

      by anno1602 ( 320047 )
      When the icc first came out for Linux, the code it produced also ran markably faster on an Athlon (no XP back then) processor than gcc's fare. You might want to try that. You have to carefully choose what extensions you want the compiler to use, though, not all Intel stuff is supported by AMD (and vice-versa). IIRC, the Opteron does support SSE2.
  • I've tried to create a mirror of the printer friendly page on my server. Was having some problems with it but give it a shot... let me know if its working to the outside world or not. http://69.242.156.34/misc/mini/mini3/ [69.242.156.34]
  • AMD comes out with dual core processors. 4 processors in a SFF box? Hell yea!

  • razorback2 (Score:3, Interesting)

    by IAR80 ( 598046 ) on Saturday September 25, 2004 @03:27PM (#10350451) Homepage
    Check this http://www.razorback2.com/?pageid=dontech http://www.razorback2.com/?pageid=gal P2P serveur a la Francaise. A dual opteron edonkey server project and one of the bigest (if not the bigest) on the internet with more than 600K users. Power to people! Liberte egalite fraternite and share those movies.
  • I really considered an SFF computer to replace my aging one, but in the end opted for a really SFF with a built in display: A laptop.

    The one big downside with a laptop is the slow spinning hard drives. The performance in that department is noticeably slower. I'll retain final judgement until I bump the RAM from 256MB to 1GB.

    Other than that I'm very satisfied with mine, and like the portability. I have a Dell Inspiron 9100 (with 256MB of RAM Doom 3 was barely playable at 640 X 480)...

  • Speaking of dual Opteron workstations... (Score:4, Informative)

    by Fweeky ( 41046 ) on Saturday September 25, 2004 @03:43PM (#10350566) Homepage
    Anyone have motherboard recommendations? Here's a few I've seen:

    MSI K8T MASTER2-FAR [dabs.com] - cheap as chips, but no PCI-X. Anything else it's missing? Someone I spoke to mentioned it lacks NUMA support; is that going to be important when looking at dual core chips next year, or am I likely to want to buy a new motherboard by then anyway?

    Gigabyte GA-7A8DW+ [scan.co.uk] - Also relatively cheap. Has a couple of PCI-X and a PCI/33 slot; bit anemic in this area, but has 4x SATA (good for my planned RAID-10 array), and actually has the nifty AMD64 heatsink mounting mechanism.

    But then there's this Tyan Thunder K8W [scan.co.uk] and similarly priced/specced friends; where's the AMD64 mounting system gone again? The layout of the board suggests seperate memory interfaces per CPU, which I guess will be important for dual core, but by then I'll probably also want PCI-Express and such too, so..

    Suggestions? Plan is to run FreeBSD on it. Oh, a case would be good too.. am I going to need something special for EATX? Anyone spotted a tower case with 4x hot-swap SATA bays? ;)
    • For the truely needy speed freaks, there's the quad Opteron Thunder K8QS Pro (S4882) [tyan.com].
    • I just put one together. Up to 16GB of RAM, 4 SATA, 2 ATA133, 2 SCSI u320.

      Tyan K8S Pro [tyan.com]

      Seems pretty good, but two things seemed rather out of place. It has only USB 1.1, not 2.0. And it has double Gigabit Ethernet plus a separate 10/100 Ethernet connection, but no Firewire. I'd rather have had Firewire than the silly Ethernet port.

      No audio other than the case speaker.

      Graphics is pretty limited. But on the other hand, both these would almost certainly be upgraded by most people, so no point in putt
    • Be careful with motherboard sizes, only the MSI looks like it's a true ATX motherboard (no larger then 12" x 9.6").

      This problem will popup and bite you with some of the newer ATX cases where the hard drives are turned 90-degrees (Antec p160) or cases with a motherboard tray.

      The Antec Sonata case does not have a MB tray, looks like it could hold a 10" board, but might prevent you from using the 3rd (lowest) 5.25" bay.
  • OK, I RTFA and tried to pick out something I could use to compare it to a dual G5. No go, except maybe in memory bandwidth where the iWill is 4.6GB/s and the dual G5 is 20. Guess that tells me something.
  • that was almost sexual.

    these guys have raised the bar in a way that I'm blown away.

    I'm gonna go see if they do servers this well. If so, me and the boss are having an equipment meeting on monday.

    • Yep their servers are great! :) DK8N should bring up lots of hits around the net. The QK8S is a very unique board as well.
  • I googled [google.com] for "iwill" and the cached version of the iwill.net homepage is for a Hawaiian steel guitar musician. Anyone know what's up with that?

    Has anyone else noticed Google returning clearly invalid cached copies of pages recently?

  • http://img.hexus.net/v2/sff/iwill/zmaxdp_preview/i mages/rear_big.jpg
    Where's the Centronics?? Where's the 2nd RS232??
  • I love reading people throwing in for the Apple PowerMac G5 on this one. I thought it was funny, 'cause I expect Apple hardware to be much more expensive out of the box than home-built PCs, especially PCs running typically less expensive AMD processors.

    So, I decided to do a little research, and here's (ballpark) what one of these IWill boxes would cost you up front if buying the parts from Newegg.com.

    PLEASE NOTE -- I LOVE MACS. I JUST CANNOT AFFORD THEM. THIS IS FOR COMPARATIVE PURPOSES ONLY!

    Here we g
  • This will make the deticated/colo server market even more cut throat.
  • A month ago I did some performance testing of a J2EE application which is currently running on dual Xeons. The dual Opteron running Fedora Core 2 64 bit for AMD and Java JDK 5.0 RC1 was 2 to three times faster on our test suite. Interestingly, the tests which mainly did things involving CPU-Memory I/O were more than three times faster. See here [gregluck.com] for more details.

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