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| Derick's Workstation |
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Page 2 of 8 Mainboard & CPUs: My last system was a dual AMD Athlon XP 1700+ modified for MP use and clocked to 2600+ (2100MHz) on an MSI K7D Master mainboard. This served me well for roughly a year until the K7D decided to blow some caps out of warranty. Despite the cost savings on a used motherboard such as this, I decided this was a mistake and rather than making it again I unloaded on a shiny new Supermicro X5DA8. This board is an Intel i7505-based beast. Among other things, it contains no less than three independent PCI busses (which I will probably never tax in a workstation setup), dual-channel onboard Ultra-320 SCSI (with Zero-Channel RAID as an add-on option) as well as (6) DDR DIMM Slots which officially support up to 12GB of Registered ECC RAM. Having used the board for some months now I must say Supermicro knows how to build ‘em. I have never bough a more complete retail package, nor have I had a system this stable under fire. Granted these Xeons will never see an overclock but that isn't the point here. On the CPU front, I was pleased with my Athlons, and for the money, there was simply no better option then or now. I mean how can anyone complain about 4200MHz of High-IPC AMD power for less than $100 shipped? That said, they weren't warranted and despite being a powerful everyday chip, even slower Xeons were beating them up pretty badly in the high-end apps I use every day. This, combined with the far more robust platforms available and Intel's great track record regarding workstation/server platform upgrade paths, I chose to go the Xeon route this time around. The price increase was less significant than the benefits to most of my applications at the point I got in at. I've since been getting a lot of feedback relating to this decision in light of the progress AMD has made with the Opteron platform. Keep in mind that the Opteron wasn't available when I assembled this setup and as such, was completely unproven. Besides that, I was in no position to hold out since I had nothing to work on when my K7D died. Even today, the newest Xeons are taking the cake in most design applications. Server applications are another matter (Opterons crush the Xeons). This is not a server. Even in light of the newest developments on both fronts, I stand by my decision: A pair of 2.2GHz/400MHz/512K Xeons purchased used but with retail accommodations for warranty. On this board, a pair of 3.2/533/1MB Xeons would make quite a platform. Odds are, however, that the dual 2.2 will stay on as a render node & development box and I will move to an X6DA8/Dual 800MHz FSB Xeon/PCI Express setup as my next workstation. For the time being, I must say I have no complaints with the system. It is very responsive (more on why later), chews through most tasks a click or two behind a classmate's dual 1.8GHz Opteron (which cost significantly more and was purchased months later). The system sits under full load nearly 24 hours a day whether I'm designing on it actively or rendering in the background and I've yet to have a lockup. The Supermicro/Xeon route might not have been the cheapest but it sure has made me happy. System RAM: This is a direct carryover from the K7D system: A pair of Crucial 512MB Registered ECC PC2100 DIMMs. Sure, these aren't the hottest sticks of RAM on the market any more (though they were the hottest lifetime warranted Registered ECC sticks when I purchased them). Today, thankfully, better high-speed options exist for the R-ECC workstation platform (Corsair XMS Pro Memory among others) but this memory works just fine for this application. Few design applications are heavily memory-bandwidth bound. The board will refuse to run anything but default timings and default speeds. This means, regardless of the CPUS installed, I have a dual-channel PC2100 CAS 2.5 Setup (the board requires matched pairs of RAM and will not POST without such an installation). Installed RAM must also be Registered ECC. 1GB has, unfortunately, become very tight and I eat deep into my page file on a daily basis (more on how I make this work as well as possible later). An upgrade to 2 or 3GB, using the same Crucial modules, is planned for the near future. The 6 slot setup allows 3GB with ‘cheep' 512MB modules and this will cover me well for the time being. A future move to a new platform will necessitate the move to faster RAM. With the Supermicro X6DA8 looking so good, this will likely mean DDR2, perhaps up to 32GB of it depending on certifications that time. I've found one can never have enough RAM in this business and to what extent I can afford, I'd like not to run out again any time soon. |
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