Here's a little teaser....

[duploxxx]

A rd790 board shouldn't be a problem for me to get, BUT a 2s rd790 board is impossible to land....



CPU-Z is giving a bugged reading and the DC opties are running in my Asus L1N64



If the bios is from Tyan, you're going to have some major issues booting the board. The Tyan I used was running a custom bios from AMD which [allegedly ] allowed the cpu's to function properly.

yep same here... tyan system with special AMD bios. and 0 options to control

[Lightman]

An update for what it's worth. The motherboard we're using is a Supermicro H8DME (but the POST screen says H8DM8, oddly enough). Either way, we flashed it with the newest BIOS from 9/7/07 and now it works. Old BIOS was 11/28/06, so there's a clue to why it wouldn't even turn on before. Got a set of 2347s with 16GB of PC5300 ECC in there, and they're now building out the server to install an OS on it and start testing it. As far as working properly, we'll have to see but the BIOS is counting 8 cores. I took pics, but they're on the phone, so I'll have to get them off when I get home tonight if I can figure out how.

Just letting s7 and Dave know in case they want to know of another board that works. If the machine gets setup and I have access to it, I'll run what tests I can, but we'll see what they're doing with it first.

Hah! Good news!

When we can expect another update from you? Are you gonna install Windows based OS or Linux?

[tsuehpsyde]

I asked the guys to install Windows for me. They need to test *all* of the installs, so Windows is taking priority so I can play with it. Hehe. So we'll see soon if it's bugged or working properly. At least if it breaks, we have a contact at Supermicro that should be able to get us a proper BIOS, but that remains to be seen.

Just finished installing the motherboard into a chassis going to to test it shortly...I'll update as I can.

[PhilDoc]

Excellent

[m411b]

hrm....I dont know if thats good for barcelona then if a cpu clocked 260mhz more wins by almost 3 seconds....wonder what the core 2 would do @ 2.16ghz
or OVERALL lol wonder what the barcelonay would do @ 2.16ghz how close it would be.

My lappy w/ 2.33Ghz C2D and 2GB 533. When I get windows back on it I will run 32m and see!

[Lightman]

I asked the guys to install Windows for me. They need to test *all* of the installs, so Windows is taking priority so I can play with it. Hehe. So we'll see soon if it's bugged or working properly. At least if it breaks, we have a contact at Supermicro that should be able to get us a proper BIOS, but that remains to be seen.

Just finished installing the motherboard into a chassis going to to test it shortly...I'll update as I can.

Then I have only one dilemma: to go to sleep or not to go ??

[tsuehpsyde]

I'm at work until 9PM so if all goes well, I should be able to do what I want as long as I keep on top of work. Also, the system has booted into a live Linux environment without problem, so that's a good sign. I'll let everyone know how the Windows Server 2003 install goes.

[s7e9h3n]

I'm at work until 9PM so if all goes well, I should be able to do what I want as long as I keep on top of work. Also, the system has booted into a live Linux environment without problem, so that's a good sign. I'll let everyone know how the Windows Server 2003 install goes.

Till 9PM on a Sat? I feel for you

BTW, is this is the same board that Anandtech used for their preview?

[tsuehpsyde]

This is the board we're using:
http://www.supermicro.com/Aplus/moth...55/H8DME-2.cfm

And Windows is installing now...and yes, until 9PM on a Saturday, and I work until 9PM tomorrow as well. Thanks for the sympathy.

[dave_graham]

Till 9PM on a Sat? I feel for you

BTW, is this is the same board that Anandtech used for their preview?

no. anandtech used a DMU+

cheers,

dave

[tsuehpsyde]

After a few cursings and some various BIOS changes....

http://valid.x86-secret.com/show_oc.php?id=243088

Still trying to figure out why it's unstable, but considering that's not really my department and I have other stuff that needs to be done, I just messed with it until I got it to install properly. Either way, the memory was giving me problems so I ended up clocking it down to DDR2-533 to get it to boot without either rebooting or BSOD'ing. Might be a bad stick of memory in there, but that could take forever to figure out.

The main thing I'll point out is the HT Link speed. Processor #1 gets 400MHz, and Processor #2 gets 200MHz? Not sure what to make of that.

Either way, I'll try to get some stuff posted assuming it doesn't flake out on me like it has been.

[tsuehpsyde]

Ugh, this poor system. The memory is just being abused just to get it to run. The timings are auto, which of course are bad, then for some reason it's in single channel mode, at 266MHz, and the HT Link is slow as Hell. Yikes is all I can say. Here's a painfully slow SuperPI 1M for what it's worth. Gotta get back to work.



Ninja Edit: The first bank of memory (first four sticks) are the only ones showing up. The other 4 sticks in the bank next to CPU #2 aren't showing up at all, so it's only seeing 8GB of memory (but this is 32-bit Windows, so it doesn't really matter). However, the memory is still showing up in slots 1/2/3/4, so I'm not sure why dual channel isn't kicking in...

[cky2k6]

holy crap, everybody who tests seems to have these problems. for a platform just released, this is ridiculous... not trying to beat a dead horse, but conroe worked flawlessly months before release. I mean jeez, when did amd send these poor mobo manufacturers the damn samples?

[tsuehpsyde]

We have a set of 2218s here I could drop in to see how they were working on the same motherboard to see if indeed the processors are to blame, but again, I simply can't do that tonight. Maybe tomorrow depending on circumstances, but I don't want to shoot Barcelona in the head when it could be bad memory causing problems (although the HT speed is a bit strange).

[JohannesRS]

ahn... all those problems AND 43 seconds?

For me it's a good start. Since it can only get faster from there.

[JohannesRS]

cky: YES, conroe and kentsfield did worked.

NOT clovertown and their "likes". The prove is one the time necessarya for intel to begin to ger market share from amd in the server side.

moreover, I do think that Dave and S7 have enough links to prove that it's true.

What bothers me is: since the chipstes from server parts are more difficult to deal with is already a fact, why the heck are they so more difficult to deal with? What are the reasons behind it?

[tsuehpsyde]

Last bench for the night. Just used the default settings of 800x600 8bit.



Let me know what else you want to see and I'll do it. The video is onboard, so 3D benchmarks at this point are worthless so don't even ask.

[dave_graham]

see attached.

Superpi run @ 42.219 seconds.

i'm not very trusting of CPU-Z right now, but whatever.

dave

[dave_graham]

cinebench R10 scores.

notice....same time to render as tsue but....less points...yippee.

cheers,

dave

[tsuehpsyde]

Dave, what's the memory at on that SuperPI run?

[dave_graham]

holy crap, everybody who tests seems to have these problems. for a platform just released, this is ridiculous... not trying to beat a dead horse, but conroe worked flawlessly months before release. I mean jeez, when did amd send these poor mobo manufacturers the damn samples?

a long time ago....there's no excuse for how poorly Tyan, et. al have handled this.

dave

[doompc]

So that is it? 43s...
Disappointing, other non optimized programs will run slow too.

[dave_graham]

So that is it? 43s...
Disappointing, other non optimized programs will run slow too.

again, deriving system performance on a notably weak benchmark is...well, foolish.

in any case, here are some CrystalMark results.

[metro.cl]

Nice to se more benchs arriving

What does Tyan or AMD say about the issues/performance?

[tsuehpsyde]

Still wondering about that memory, Dave. And holy huge images, batman!

And I'm using a Supermicro, but I think Dave is on a Tyan...and our performance seems about similar except SuperPI, but considering the memory issues I'm dealing with that's not surprising.