Hello all, a month or so back I was contracted to build an SMP system to be runing a Win NT4 Server. After checking to see if all the hardware supported NT and had drivers available I purchased the following components:

Tyan Tiger MPX S2466N-4M
2x MP2800
4x 1Gb Crucial registered ECC
ACS-7500 IDE Hot Swap RAID1
Matrox G400

While loading drivers I noticed the only drivers listed for NT were the AMD IDE Bus Master Driver 1.36. The AMD AGP Miniport Driver is not supported in Windows NT 4.0. It struck me as odd there was no requirement for a northbridge chipset driver as NT4 is an aging platform. The system is up and running fine for some time now but I still wonder if there are any further drivers or optimizations I might be needing to add. Comments/suggestions appreciated.

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My Sig_ My Rig' ">http://www.amdscooter.com/P4%20sig%20d.jpg

That does sound odd, but if there's no problems with it, then don't mess with it...

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Game Editor
Flickerdown Data Systems' ">http://www.flickerdown.com
"The Fusion of Hardware and Life"

why NT4.0? Windows Server 2000 would be a much better choice...(2003 is not bad either, but, licensing costs are prohibitive).

cheers,

dave

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The opinions expressed above do not represent the views of Advanced Micro Devices or any of their affiliates.
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Owner, Webmaster
Flickerdown Data Systems' ">http://www.flickerdown.com/stewks/
"The Fusion of Hardware and Life"

This server build was for a customer who specifically requested NT4 Server OS. They run older software that requires it. I am hearing some grumblings from them that the current system seems no faster than the old dually Dell P3-733 they migrated from. I suspect their DB software and an aging OS is the issue but try to keep an open mind. Does Sisoft SANDRA 2004 support NT??

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My Sig_ My Rig' ">http://www.amdscooter.com/P4%20sig%20d.jpg

Howdy,

NT 4.0 is a wonderful server platform. No one writes viruses for it anymore either!!

There a couple things you might look into to increase your server performance.

1. What kind of network are they running - 10, 100, 1000, hubs, switches, full duplex, half duplex. You got to get the data running between the server and the clients.

2. Your drive subsystem is not the highest performance. Install a good SCSI raid controller and setup a RAID 10.

3. database engines always need performance tuning. When you check the memory usage of your 4gb of ram from the task manager - how much is being used and how much is available? Most databases are I/O impared. Allocated more memory to database processes and clients will keep the system from going to the disk all the time.

4. What other processes are running - antivirus, things you don't want such as spyware and adware. Any extra processes like DHCP or WINS or IIS (if not needed) or SNMP should be shut down and brought up on another system.

5. What are the clients running ? - if they are running dead dog slow workstations packed with Spyware & Adware like Weatherbug and Gator and Kazaa then nothing you do at the server side will matter much.

Hope some of the suggestions help.

ponzi

QUOTE Does Sisoft SANDRA 2004 support NT??

i dunno about Sandra 2004, but i couldn't get Sandra 2003 to run on my comp at work(PIII 733MHz with NT4 Workstation - don't ask...i didn't buy it ) - Sandra 2002 would run fine tho, IIRC.

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The opinions expressed above do not represent those of Advanced Micro Devices or any of their affiliates.

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