Thinking of an LV Xeon system

[lutjens]

I've been hearing some good things about the LV Xeons, and I'm seriously considering putting up another system, but the main problem is choice of motherboard. I can get an i7505 board for cheap with PCI-X, but would like to run at 200 FSB. The other choice is the significantly weaker (on an I/O front) i875/Hance Rapids combination.

My question is this:

If one of the i7505 boards is BSEL modded to boot at 200MHz FSB will it recognize the FSB? I suspect that most of the newer i7505 chipsets are remarked Canterwoods and although it should work from a yield point of view, I'm wondering if Intel changed the chipset somehow to make it unable to recognize the 200FSB BSEL pin combination.

Can anybody shed some light on this??

[chipmonk010]

http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?t=50314

this may help, the asus pc-dl will do over 200 mhz fsb no prob :D

[matt9669]

http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?t=50996

Thought I'd post this for you - you may not be ready to buy yet, but if you are, two 1.6GHz LV D1-stepping Xeons for $99! :D

[jjcom]

yeah, very good sugestions. the ASUS board and those LV Xeons would be great...much fold :D

jjcom

[lutjens]

The Asus PC-DL is not an option.

I was wondering if an i7505 based motherboard would recognize a BSEL mod and boot (or try to boot) at 200 MHz FSB. Basically, would the chipset recogize the pin inputs or did Intel castrate the i7505 into not recognizing them?

Anybody know?

[jjcom]

just wondering, but why isn't the ASUS board an option?

I wouldn't be surprised if the board didn't boot at 200mhz FSB. You could always try, use something that isn't perminient

jjcom

[smokey]

He said that he didn't want an i875-based option, and I completely agree with him. That board is not worthy of the Xeons. Though I have zero experience actually _with_ one of the PC-DLs, I wouldn't blink before choosing a Tyan or Supermicro with a 72/73/75xx series chipset over it. /offtopic

I know that one of the newer chipsets with support for the higher FSB will be able to run the chip at those higher speeds, however, I don't know enough about whether the 7505 chipset is moddable to run faster on any of the better quality boards.

[lutjens]

The PC-DL isn't an option for a number of reasons:

1) Running Xeons on that board with it's dinky PCI bus is like asking a Corvette engine to inhale through a stir stick.:)

2) Asus voltage regulators are notoriously weak...and looking at that board, it seems to confirm that. The regulators seem barely sufficient for one Xeon, not two.

3) My 4 mothballed 73.4 GB Raptors and older SCSI drives would love a chance to shake off their dust and run at full throttle.:D

Hance Rapids is on OK solution, but is still hampered severely by the crappy V-link speed between the 6300ESB and i875 (a paltry 266MB/s). It's what I'm using now, and it's decent as so long as you don't hammer all the drives at once.

The prospect of cheap 1.6GHz@3.0GHz Xeons is very appealing and I'd be willing to spend some $$$ on the board to get the full benefit of the Xeons. But I'd also like to use readily available PC3200 memory, run at 200 FSB and find a home for my old 9800XT as well.:)

[lutjens]

Thought I'd post this for you - you may not be ready to buy yet, but if you are, two 1.6GHz LV D1-stepping Xeons for $99!

They were the reason why I even began contemplating this little excursion...

Looking at the Ebayer's website though, I think I'd opt for the 2.4's...and their extra multipliers and better yield (although probably marginal):)...