Anybody remembers the Abit-VP6 motherboard? It was the first consumer level motherboard with dual sockets. it was also the only non-pro dual socket mobo. It allowed (me, and many others) to have a very cheap dual core system in 1998 ! It didn't require any fancy'n'expensive processors, just buy two cheapest PIII and off we go!

This mobo gathered great following among the community these days. And this one which I bought in 1998 still serves me well as a home server. It was a great mobo indeed.

Opterons are expensive.

Anybody would be happy to buy a dual socket motherboard for Phenoms II, to get 8 cores ? I would, certainly. Maybe the "upper management" will consider this hint

discuss.

BTW, I don't think that intel i7 with its "hyperthreading" and pseudo-8 cores would have any chace against dual Phenom II.

I'd pay for it!

If I had the money <.<

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For the price you'd probably have to pay, I think a nice quad-core CPU will do just fine for ANYONE... They make dual socket boards for a reason, and that would be businesses, not for gaming or even your everyday use.

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ditto!

It would be interesting to see, but you have to remember that thoe Dual-socket Pentium III motherboards just had an increase of southbridge and northbridge (front-side bus) chipsets. AMD's CPUs have had an integrated memory controller for many years now, and many types of memory standards now. It's not as esy to make two AMD CPUs talk to each other effeciently. You need special CPUs with the extra HT link enabled for socket to socket communication. I'd love to see an enthusiast motherboard that could handle two Phenom IIs, but at this point, and having a recession it would be pointless for AMD to produce and fund. Anyways, Istanbul is arriving early, and if they ever really needed a CPU with more cores, they could sell those 6-core CPUs with a few less HT links for the mass consumer market. These are already direct drop in replacements for Socket F Shanghai CPUs.

They will probably end up on the desktop side next year, since by then the server side will move onto DDR3 and then the memory controller will be updated and we might see this on socket AM3, if AMD sees a need for a 6-core desktop version.

Just my theory on this. Anything is possible, a 6-core desktop CPU or a dual-socket AM3 motherboard, you never know.

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A 6-core Opteron "Istanbul" processor from AMD will be directly comparable in performance to a 4-core 8-thread Xeon-Nehalem processor from Intel in highly threaded server workloads, I would think. However, the Xeon-Nehalem processors would give higher performance/watt. HyperThreading equates to 30% more performance for 10% more power. Adding two cores to the Opteron will equate to about 50% more performance for about 35% more power. Given Phenom II's and Core i7's current power consumption at load, the 6-core "Istanbul" would lose in performance/watt, albeit by a small margin. I think it will all come down to the costs for 2-way and 4-way processor configurations.

Relating back to the topic; there is no need for 8-cores on desktop right now unless all you do is encode and render. Most people use their desktops for multimedia (music, videos, pictures), web browsing, word processing, instant messenging, email, and occasional low-end gaming. Really, a dual-core is still the best match, in my opinion. I would really like to see a person doing ordinary tasks utilize an average of 50% or more of a quad-core processor a day.

Hell if it wasn't for gaming I could probably do everything I needed to on an Atom and save a lot of electrical energy while I'm at it. Now I just need to apply this concept to everything I do

Edited: 02/22/2009 at 08:04 AM by Firestrider

A dual-socket Phenom II motherboard is not possible. Socket AM2+/AM3 does not have enough pins for the CPU-to-CPU HyperTransport link needed to run two CPUs on the same board. You will have to buy two Opteron 23xx CPUs and a dual socket F board to get a dual-CPU, 8-core system.



The Abit BP6 was an interesting unit as Abit took advantage of the fact that the FSB arrangement used on the board allowed for SMP operation and that Intel hadn't thought to disable it on Socket 370 "Mendocino" Celerons. The Mendocino Celerons were the only chips out there with on-die L2 cache and they were cheap as well, so the BP6 plus two Mendocinos was a very attractive setup if you ran Linux or Windows NT. Needless to say, Intel was seriously PO'd at the fact that a lot of workstation users that would have paid big money for Pentium III Xeons bought cheap Celerons instead and locked the Pentium 4 and subsequent desktop chips from ever working in multi-CPU arrangements.

Before AMD ditched the FSB for an integrated memory controller, everything was Socket A. AMD technically did lock non-Athlon MP chips from being operated in SMP mode, but it was trivial to remove that lock and also unlock the multiplier on Socket A chips, so people still were able to get a dual-CPU unit on the cheap. When AMD introduced the Opteron with HyperTransport and IMCs, there were now physical differences (number of HT links in the chip pinout and socket) between single-CPU and multi-CPU setups, so the era of using inexpensive desktop chips in a multi-socket server ended.



They are a bit pricey, but it's more of a case that the price of desktop chips has absolutely tanked and the price of dual-CPU server chips has only decreased modestly. The least expensive quad-core Opteron is the 75-watt, 65 nm, 2.0 GHz Opteron 2350, which costs $254. $254 isn't bad for a DP server processor, but it is nearly a hundred dollars more than the 2.6 GHz Phenom X4 9950. The Opteron equivalent to the Phenom IIs starts at $349 each for a 2.1 GHz 55-watt high efficiency model (2372 HE.)



I intend to get a dual-socket motherboard and two Opterons for my next desktop/workstation due to the sheer capabilities of such a system. I do realize there is a bit of a premium associated with such a unit, but the overall cost probably about the same as in the Old Days when people used BP6s + Celerons or unlocked Athlon XPs in dual socket A boards.

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Other than that CPU-to-CPU HyperTransport link and difference socket are the Shanghai Opterons pretty much the same as Phenom IIs? What exactly are the HyperTransport links used if it isn't for a CPU-to-CPU link on desktop? Do we really need so many of them for I/O? The HE models look like they reduced the frequencies and voltage a bit to get better performance/watt. I wonder if you can do the same with Phenom IIs?

Also, does AMD have a chipset that will support two Opteron CPUs on the same board? I can't seem to find one.

AMD will have their own server chipset soon, right now they use nVidia, and I guess for a while there,a few rare cases of ATI chipsets. On the desktop models, the extra HT links are removed, they aern't even puit into production for those dies. So less transistors and pins, and in some cases, it's a smaller package.

If you mean two Opterons on the desktop side, that hasn't been possible since socket 939 days.

I'm really looking into that G34 socket for my next setup, or whatever AMD's next Opteron socket is. I'd like a dual-socket of whatever there is out there at the time. I've always wanted to try a scalable workstation where I can run Windows, Linux or whatever in virtualisation and have the best of all worlds. No real limits really, except price....

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Edited: 02/23/2009 at 10:47 PM by PorscheRacer14

Actually I see on http://www.amd.com/pricing that Opteron 2376 costs $174 and is 2.3 Ghz. 45nm, 75-watt.

That Abit was also notorious for bad caps...

I had one, it was so far gone from bad caps that the power section was destroyed

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Physics? Ha! This is clearly magic and devilry at work. Prepare firewood! We have witches to burn!


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Yep, it blew up when I was away at work, and my parents replaced the setup with a Pentium 4 becasue it was clocked faster. Oh well. I ended up getting an... I believe it's MSI... no Biostar motherboard for free that worked with my Slot A Athlon, and it's still living on for my mom who uses it for picture and video editting. I couldn't bare to watch her use the Pentium III anymore. That's when she noticed the AMD difference, hahaha.

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yeah, I had to replace capacitors with a new ones. It was around 2002. And still (with new caps) it works great.

... and I can't buy it anywhere in Europe. Every computer shop tells me that they cannot sell Opterons. They have only Phenoms II. And they insist on selling me Xeons (when I tell them that I want 8 cores). This is so strange and disgruntling...

Hey guys, i'm new here. and i'm not so techeee... i have two AMD Athlon processors.. i would like to know if there is any dual cpu motherboards available, in which i can use those together.. actually, i dont want to throw one away... that is the reason i'm looking for one of those..

Which Athlon do you have? Unless it's a rare socket 940 or 1207 (scoket F) there's no way you can. Even if it is one of those, you'd be cheaper to get a new motherboard and say a 6-core Phenom II, which would run circles around any dual-Athlon setup, using far less power and a far easier setup. Unless you can get the stuff for basically free, the old technology just isn't worth it anymore.

You can grab a 1055T for around $220 and a good AM3 motherboard for around $180 (enthusiast class) and 4GB of DDR3 1600MHz for around $130. You might even be able to go cheaper on those prices if you look around, so really, to get something new, with warranty and current support, isn't that bad really.

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I really wish there was a dual socket AM3 (phenomIIx6) socket, but i did see an intel mobo by evga with dual 1366 sockets for the xeon 2.8Ghz hex core but at 1-2.1 grand a pop for the xeons and $600 for the mobo that is just so over priced that its laughable,
a mobo with dual AM3 sockets would deal a greatly appreciated blow to Intel
a 12 phys core setsup from AMD @ 3.2+Ghz for under 1 grand VS, a 12 phys core intel xeon @2.0-3.33Ghz for at least 2.5 grand and up to 5 grand, there is no question in my mind everyone will be seeing the AMD difference, too bad its not possible according to this thread

with AMD making consumer processors more affordable than ever there should be a division set toward creating a new socket and chip line for the consumer that will accept cpu to cpu linking

i actually was considering buying the dual socket Intel because i do some intense processing and because it had 7 PCIe but it is not clear on whether it is 3.0 PCIe or 2.0
3.0 would mean that all 7 slots could run @ 16/32x

a side note to anyone reading this, i'm sorry if this seems broken and ill prepared i'm very stressed right now and haven't slept in days sorry if it makes for a hard read reply for any clarifications

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Edited: 09/04/2010 at 04:13 AM by The Badder Dagger

when did I even post here?

By the looks of things. About a year and a half ago!!!! ROTF

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