Shopping for Dual Processor Mother Boards

BasharOfTheAges · Post by **BasharOfTheAges** » Sun Jun 26, 2005 2:30 am

I'm in the process of designing a editing box (probably making it in a year or so depending on my financial situation) and i realized that i know next to nothing about certain aspects of system hardware.

I'm willing to go all out on producing this machine (hopefully not spending more than $1500 if i can help it though) and wanted to maximize my processing power / multitasking capibilities by investing in a dual processor motherboard if i could find one. Browsing NewEgg and the like, i found that either i suck at seaching for parts or such motherboards are not that easy to find.

If anyone knows of any brands or product lines that feature multiple processor support, could you give me some feedback.

Again, hardware isn't my specialty, so feel free to point anything out regarding availibility and/or price corcerns that i may not have realized exhisted.

Thanks in advance for any help.

Beefy_Suavo · Post by **Beefy_Suavo** » Tue Jun 28, 2005 9:14 pm

Tyan makes dual and quad CPU motherboards for AMD Opteron and Intel Xeon processors.

http://www.tyan.com/products/html/systemboards.html

BasharOfTheAges · Post by **BasharOfTheAges** » Tue Jun 28, 2005 9:22 pm

Well, I guess not many people have any idea about this. From what i understand, some Mac motherboards support dual processers and with the HT processers intel is putting out, i was thinking i coudl possibly produce a machine that would mimic 4 3.0+ Ghz processors if at all possibe, but i'm up for any info or suggestions anyone could give me.

Scintilla · Post by **Scintilla** » Tue Jun 28, 2005 9:32 pm

If you can afford a dual-proc solution, then you should be able to afford the dual-core solutions as well... right?

(I'm thinking specifically of the AMD Athlon64 x2 chips, which should work fine in any Socket 939 motherboard with just a BIOS upgrade at most, if I'm remembering my reading correctly...)

ANTDrakko · Post by **ANTDrakko** » Tue Jun 28, 2005 10:54 pm

My Dream Editing Box:

Dual P4 3.0 ghz each with hyperthreading
3 72GB SCSI Hard drives in a RAID 0 array
2 Gig of DDR3200 RAM
Mr. Coffee

Oddly enough, these are the types of machines (well, actually servers that my company deploys) that I work with almost every day, just I can never actually HAVE one for editing

.

Minus the Mr. Coffee...........maybe.......

>_>

<_<

~Seen

Zero1 · Post by **Zero1** » Wed Jun 29, 2005 3:06 am

Hate to put a dampener on things, but good luck to building a dual processor machine on $1500. $2000 and we're talking

Well that's a guesstimate, things are known to be pricey where I live. But for instance a single 2.4GHz Opterone is >$650, so x2 of them really eats into the budget. If you are wanting a good editing system I think one of the first points of call is a good Hard drive array.

Look into the various RAID options, they offer faster read and write speeds, and the ability to use multiple harddrives as a single drive. For instance I have 2x 120GB drives, and windows sees and treats it as a 240GB drive, plus it's significantly faster than what a single 250GB drive would be.

Then there's RAM, I'm no RAM expert but you shouldnt skimp on it. Chances are if you are building a dual CPU machine, the board you will get will be designed for server use, and wll require ECM DDR RAM. ECM is a kind of error checking chip on the RAM, it's a bit slower but more stable, and also more expensive than similar products.

And NEVER skimp on the motherboard. In my eyes its the single most important component. It will pretty much determine the stability, features and efficiency of your system. I once bought a buggy Epox motherboard, and boy did it give me hell. Sometimes it refused to boot, didn't like my RAM, didn't like my Audigy 2, or my RAID card, at the moment I'm running on built in stuff, and it sucks.

ANTDrakko · Post by **ANTDrakko** » Wed Jun 29, 2005 11:11 am

Great editing Machine for roughly 1500. Dual Core, 160GB HDD 7200 RPM, 2 GIG DDR.

~Seen

ANTDrakko · Post by **ANTDrakko** » Wed Jun 29, 2005 11:22 am

Don't need a monitor? This one's a bit cheaper:

~Seen

dwchang · Post by **dwchang** » Wed Jun 29, 2005 2:33 pm

ANTDrakko wrote:My Dream Editing Box:

Dual P4 3.0 ghz each with hyperthreading

No such processor-line exists. The Pentium 4 never had the ability to dual-process. This was because Intel did not want to "compete" against their own Xeon Processors (which in reality were just larger L2 P4's). In turn, no such P4 motherobard exists.

If you want dual-processing you'd go with either AMD Athlons, Opterons or Intel Xeons. If you want dual*core* you'd go with AMD Opterons, Athlon 64 X2's and Intel Pentium D's.

BasharOfTheAges · Post by **BasharOfTheAges** » Wed Jun 29, 2005 3:33 pm

Wow.. thanks for all the help. I'll be sure to look into all of this.

ANTDrakko: I was looking more to build the complete system myself, not buy another Dell.

Z3r01: I think the prices will come down over the next year (this thing won't be built for another year since my trip to Japan and paying for school is more of a priority right now)

Beefy_Suavo: Those look promising, although i'm dreading the prices (once i can actually find them).

About the dual core setups... Some of the MBs that Beefy_Suavo gave in the link he posted are dual-core supported and are dual processer ready. Is that a good idea to go forward with? What specs should i look for on a system like that?

Thanks again everyone