Dual Motherboard Suggestion...

[Donald2B 0]

I am working on building a nice dual processor workstation that I will be using to do a lot of 3D Animation and things of that sort. Here is a brief list of the items that I plan on putting into this machine. Any help with a motherboard would be greatly appreciated.

 

Dual PIII 850

512 MB PC133 RAM

30.4 GB WD Hard Drive

Elsa Gladiac GeForce 2 Video Card

CL 12X DVD Rom Drive

etc...

 

Thanks All!!

[Ronin 0]

Here is a listing of my current system. I have no hardware problems at all with this system It's very stable and fast. E-mail me if you would like to know more.

 

 

 

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My System:

 

Dual Intel 850's

Tyan Thunder 2400 MB

256 Megs Ram

Adaptec 39160 Ultra 160

1 - 18 Gig Cheetah - U160

2 - 18 Gig Cheetah U2W

SB Live Platinum

Plextor 12/4/32 - Burner

Plextor 40x UW CD-Rom

10x Sony DVD Drive

Hercules Geforce 2 64meg

Viewsonic PF815 22" Monitor

[Ronin 0]

Here is a listing of my current system. I have no hardware problems at all with this system It's very stable and fast. E-mail me if you would like to know more.

The MB I'm using is the Tyan Thunder 2400 Dual PIII i840 chipset.

 

 

 

 

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My System:

 

Dual Intel 850's

Tyan Thunder 2400 MB

256 Megs Ram

Adaptec 39160 Ultra 160

1 - 18 Gig Cheetah - U160

2 - 18 Gig Cheetah U2W

SB Live Platinum

Plextor 12/4/32 - Burner

Plextor 40x UW CD-Rom

10x Sony DVD Drive

Hercules Geforce 2 64meg

Viewsonic PF815 22" Monitor

[Ronin 0]

I don't know why is posted twice but oh well.

[DrSchmoe 0]

I am not sure what your budget cap is or what you are considering "3D Animation"? Are we talking 3DMax with high-resolution renders?

 

For hobbyist level things, the machine should be more than sufficient. However, if you want to do professional work I would look at an Elsa Gloria II instead of the GeForce2. Technically its raw speed would be less but the output quality should be significantly better. Also, you would probably want a good SCSI drive (Cheetah), or a RAID-0 array made up of multiple Cheetahs.

 

Here's why:

We do DVD quality renders here. We just recently completed a 30 second animation, which in uncompressed form requires 1.5GB. To play the animation in real time requires a hard disk with 50MB/sec-sustained transfer. 3DMax can dump compressed output, however, if you want to do digital posting you shouldn’t get "lossy" until the last step.

 

Hope this helps.

[Donald2B 0]

Ronin: I have been thinking about the i840 chipset motherboards but have been concerned about the type of memory they require. I have taken a look at the Tyan Thunder 2400 and the Super Micro PIIIDME, both of which use the i840 chipset. Are there any drawbacks from having this chipset or would I be better off sticking with the old faithful 440BX chipset?

 

As far as computer animation is concerned, I work with 3D Studio Max, SoftImage, and Maya. I have been currently working on some really high resolution renders with Max. Polycounts reaching the 2 Million mark, and I am really looking at building a very nice workstation that I will be able to use for a while.

 

I don't do much in the way of video work, so would the SCSI drives be worth the extra cost?

 

Again, Thank you for all of the information...it is greatly appreciated!!

[DrSchmoe 0]

i840 is a much better route to take. BX has its advantages, namely that it has been proven over 2 years, but the 840 technology is vastly improved.

 

Truthfully though, I would look into an i820 board and get RDRAM. The combination will yield a significantly faster system than the 840, especially for rendering and media intensive tasks. I would personally recommend the ASUS P3C-D, however if you have a favorite manufacturer it is just as easy to go with them.

 

Also, when considering drives, the polygon counts do not matter. That is only an issue of CPU overhead. If you intend to do DVD resolution at 30 frames per second (720x486), then you need to go SCSI. The ASUS P3C-D does not have built in SCSI, which is a good thing. I would add an aftermarket RAID card, which could be used in either single drive, or RAID array configurations.

 

You might want to consider the AMI MegaRAID Express 100, which would probably be an ideal match for your system ($300). Or you could go for the slightly more powerful Express 200 ($550), or Express 500 if you want 160MB SCSI support (don't know the price).

 

But I seem to be digressing... If you do high-resolution animation SCSI is worth it. However, if you are rendering out single frame images, then IDE should suit you fine.

 

Personally, you can never have too much storage. If you go the IDE route, I would look at the IBM 75GXP drive. It is priced around $500 for 75GB. It will also blow the doors off anything but the best 10,000-RPM SCSI drives.

 

Anyway, I hope this helps... I am not sure what your budget is, so I my recommendation might be a little steep. If you need to conserve money, I would start with 256MB of RDRAM, and add the additional 256 at a latter date.

[badboy 0]

I have a Supermicro P6DGE mobo which uses the Intel GX chipset which supports 2 Gig's of ram will also handle Intel Pentiums PIII's (coppermine) up to 950 mhz this board is stable as a rock. I have used this board for six months and has never crashed. It fully supports ACPI and hibernation without any problems.

 

My system specs

 

Windows 2000 Final 2195

Supermicro P6DGE

Dual Pentium PIII 550's (not coppermine)

256 mb Pc100 Sdram

Guillemot Geforce 256 with Nvidia 5.25 Drivers

Iwill SCSI Card

Soundblaster Live with Creative Liveware for Windows 2000

AVM ISDN Card

2 x IBM IDE 20 gb hard drives

Panasonic 8 x SCSI writer

Delta 4 x write 4 x rewrite

memorex 6/32 DVD player

Teac 32 speed SCSI Reader

 

Hope you find what you are looking for !!!

[slkh 0]

Supermicro P6DGU with onboard SCSI support.

A RAID Port if you need RAID support.

 

Overall stability, I give 9/10

Overclockability, 5/10. Limited bus speed.

Board Layout, 1/10 (Worst I have ever seen, with IDE channel at lower left of the board, and the board is HUGE. No way of getting it on Midi tower, need extra long cable (1m cable) if you are going for Full Tower Case)

BIOS support = not very good, problematic ACPI support.

 

Features: 8/10

[slkh 0]

Supermicro P6DGU with onboard SCSI support.

A RAID Port if you need RAID support.

 

Overall stability, I give 9/10

Overclockability, 5/10. Limited bus speed.

Board Layout, 1/10 (Worst I have ever seen, with IDE channel at lower left of the board, and the board is HUGE. No way of getting it on Midi tower, need extra long cable (1m cable) if you are going for Full Tower Case)

BIOS support = not very good, problematic ACPI support.

 

Features: 8/10

[slkh 0]

Supermicro P6DGU with onboard SCSI support.

A RAID Port if you need RAID support.

 

Overall stability, I give 9/10

Overclockability, 5/10. Limited bus speed.

Board Layout, 1/10 (Worst I have ever seen, with IDE channel at lower left of the board, and the board is HUGE. No way of getting it on Midi tower, need extra long cable (1m cable) if you are going for Full Tower Case)

BIOS support = not very good, problematic ACPI support.

 

Features: 8/10

[DrSchmoe 0]

I wouldn't do the SuperMicro... The chipset is the GX, which is even older than the previously mentioned ones. Not to mention it doesn't have 133MHz support.

 

The RAID port is a proprietary Adaptec technology. Adaptec makes great SCSI products, but when you look at RAID, there are much better options (i.e. almost anyone else).

 

As far as I can see, the only real drawback to an 820 solution is the price of RDRAM, and being limited to 1GB. Although, fortunately the price of RDRAM keeps falling.

[Donald2B 0]

From the feedback I have been getting I know that I want to go with the i840 chipset. I am looking at the SuperMicro PIIIDME motherboard. It supports 133MHz FSB, UDMA 66, and 4x AGP Pro. I think that this is the board I might go with. Anyone have any experience with this motherboard?

[slkh 0]

Appologize for the duplicated postings. No idea why it happens.

 

It is true that Supermicro P6DGU isn't the latest board available in the market. Not saying i840 platform, it definitely beat the GX chipset in performance. But the price tag that come with it, I mean the RDRAM, is really scaring people off.

 

While in theory, i820 suppose to beat any BX/GX chipset. But in practice, it wasn't so. While i840 with dual channel of RDRAM suppose to really push the performance gap further. But the price of RDRAM which is expected to lower in somewhere around 2164, really make it the options for the richie rich

 

I thought GX chipset was for the Xeon? It wasn't any older than the BX chipset as far as I know. And it does support 133 Mhz FSB, with overclocked AGP bus. If you don't bother about the overclocked AGP bus, it smoke out even i840 in terms of performance

 

For the time being, I don't think it is time to buy any dual processor motherboard because the 760 platform is just around the corner, probably already sampling to the taiwanese manufacturer. That will be my next upgrade.

[slkh 0]

How about Asus CUR-DLS dual processor motherboard?

http://insanehardware.com/reviews/hardware/cur-dls/

[Ronin 0]

I have used both PC100 and PC133 memory on my Tyan Thunder 2400. It supports both memory types. I owned the Supermicro mb in question and both work just fine. I will say this. Make sure that what ever memory you use that both sticks of mem are the same. These mb are very picky when it come to mem. Just make sure that you use the same mem. You will have to use memory in pairs you will not be able to get away with using just one stick of mem. But they are both great motherboards.

 

 

..

[DrSchmoe 0]

Quote:

Originally posted by slkh:
How about Asus CUR-DLS dual processor motherboard?
http://insanehardware.com/reviews/hardware/cur-dls/

That is a bad idea... The board itself is good, but has 4MB of onboard video, which makes it useless for the job of a rendering machine. This product is only intended for servers. Another version of the board will be out later in the year with AGP support, but I don't think anyone wants to wait until October/November.

[This message has been edited by DrSchmoe (edited 27 June 2000).]

[Donald2B 0]

Thanks for the great info Ronin, and everyone else for that matter!!

 

That Asus board does look nice, but I am not to sure if I want to go with the FCPGA chip yet or not. I don't know if there is any major performance difference, but I think I am going to stick with the good ol' Slot 1. I wanted a motherboard that I can continue to grow into and I think that from the different boards that I have looked at, the Tyan Thunder 2400 and the SuperMicro PIIDME both look to be my two top contenders at this point in the game.

 

Again thank you to all who have provided me with some of your knowledge!

[Jonrobs 0]

Hey BadBoy,

 

I also have the P6DGE motherboard but i can not get hibernation/suspend to work. Did you have APM or ACPI enabled in your bios during w2k install.

 

Otherwise i would recomend the P6DGE, i have had no crashes.

[badboy 0]

When I install Windows 2000 I had advanced power managment disabled and ACPI control register enabled and standby and hibernation work fine, The only problem I did have was with Adaptec easy cd creator v 4.0 this diabled acpi and other small things but now I use Nero Burn and have no problems at all I think hibernation is good if you use it Windows restarts in half the time. But also the way I have it set up Windows shuts down and also powers off the computer.

[Jonrobs 0]

Installed in the same maner as you did, but i never get the hiernation tab in the power settings. I do have Adaptec 4.0 installed so i will remove this and try again.

 

Thanks for your help

 

John

[slkh 0]

Again my old advice

Not the right time to get a Dual CPU motherboard.

 

Recent news mongering around saying that Athlon motherboard 760 can run the processor asynchronically. (Meaning, stick in a 750 Mhz, and a 850 mhz on the motherboard, it will work!!!!)