8-core motherboard for hackintosh?

[Team Scream]

One more thing, like I've just recently mention in the Mac Pro thread, Kingston is having their own sale right now, if you have happen to be interseted in some FB-DIMMS for a pretty awesome price: $330 for 8gb set (2 x 4gb modules), that makes a 4gb stick for $165! [http://shop.kingston.com/partsinfo.asp?promo=PRCGRBR&ktcpartno=KVR667D2Q8F5K2/8G]

 

Let's keep this thread alive!

 

Thanks a lot for that info about the RAM Gramayre, I just purchased 4 more gigs for mine and I wanted to get the exact same stuff that I already had.

My system can take up to 32 gigs, but since I already had 4x1 gig modules, I went with 4 more of the exact same thing.

My system with 8 gigs seems to be pretty damn good at this point, and in Final Cut it seems to have made things a lot more snappy which is nice.

 

 

Crackintosh,

 

The Xeons are not very overclockable, there was a utility that I used while booted in Windows that allaowed for minor overclocking but the bios on these Xeon based boards are really not made for overclocking.

I have had 3 different boards with these processors in the short time I have had this system and I really like the Tyan the best, I had an Intel board when I first built the system but thought it was pretty weak, and when I was taking the system apart I dropped a screwdriver onto one of the processor sockets and bent the {censored} out of about 20 of the little pins that make contact with the processor effectively ruining a $500.00 board, that was a painful lesson.

 

I also have had 2 different SuperMicro boards in 2 different builds and I like SuperMicro quality, I think I mentioned I have a Dual Opteron (285) system here as well which is really nice even though it is over a year old now, it is still a very powerful workstation which serves it's purpose well, it too started with a SuperMicro board but now has a Tyan Thunder K8WE.

 

THese things are rock solid performers for me so far.

[crackintosh]

ive never overclocked before so i dont know if id try anything hardcore. people seem to be gettin good OCs with the wolfdales and quad cores on air though. obviously the xeons arent very overclockable since they have a lower multiplier.....i would hope maybe you could get a 2.33 to 2.66

 

im tryin to put a build together for 1500......the price of FBDIMMs really makes it hard

 

CPU- 2 x Xeon E5410 $566

MOBO- Tyan Tempest i5400XT $400

GPU- ZOTAC 8800GT $220

HD- 500 or 750GB $115

RAM- 4 gigs $150

PSU- 750W enough? $100

DVDRW- ASUS or LiteOn $30

CASE- Cooler Master Stacker $150

 

thats $1700

[Team Scream]

ive never overclocked before so i dont know if id try anything hardcore. people seem to be gettin good OCs with the wolfdales and quad cores on air though. obviously the xeons arent very overclockable since they have a lower multiplier.....i would hope maybe you could get a 2.33 to 2.66

 

im tryin to put a build together for 1500......the price of FBDIMMs really makes it hard

 

CPU- 2 x Xeon E5410 $566

MOBO- Tyan Tempest i5400XT $400

GPU- ZOTAC 8800GT $220

HD- 500 or 750GB $115

RAM- 4 gigs $150

PSU- 750W enough? $100

DVDRW- ASUS or LiteOn $30

CASE- Cooler Master Stacker $150

 

thats $1700

 

Yes I think a 750W PSU is fine, and if I were you I would go with the PC Power & Cooling Silencer 750, which is arguably the cleanest power out there.

Still a dual quad core Xeon machine for $1700.00 is a pretty damn good deal.

[mtotho]

Configured a Mac Pro on newegg..

 

I included

 

 

 

LITE-ON 20X DVD±R DVD Burner with LightScribe Black SATA Model LH-20A1L-06 - Retail Item #: N82E16827106072Return Policy: Standard Return Policy

 

$37.99

Antec P182 Gun Metal Black 0.8mm cold rolled steel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case - Retail Item #: N82E16811129025Return Policy: Standard Return Policy

-$20.00 Instant

$169.99$149.99

Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 ST3320620AS (Perpendicular Recording Technology) 320GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive - OEM Item #: N82E16822148140Return Policy: Limited 30-Day Return Policy Select An Optional Extended Warranty Plan 1 Year Extended Service Net Replacement Plan -- $14.99 2 Year Extended Service Net Replacement Plan -- $19.99

$84.99

EVGA 512-P3-N801-AR GeForce 8800GT 512MB 256-bit GDDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Supported Video Card - Retail Item #: N82E16814130318Return Policy: Limited Non-Refundable 30-Day Return Policy Select An Optional Extended Warranty Plan 1 Year Extended Service Net Replacement Plan -- $39.99 2 Year Extended Service Net Replacement Plan -- $69.99 $10.00 Mail-in Rebate $239.99

OCZ GameXStream OCZ700GXSSLI ATX12V 700W Power Supply - Retail Item #: N82E16817341002Return Policy: Standard Return Policy Select An Optional Extended Warranty Plan 1 Year Extended Service Net Replacement Plan -- $29.99 2 Year Extended Service Net Replacement Plan -- $39.99 -$15.00 Instant

$35.00 Mail-in Rebate $149.99$134.99

Logitech 967561-0403 Black USB + PS/2 Cordless Standard Desktop EX110 Mouse Included - Retail Item #: N82E16823126174Return Policy: Standard Return Policy

-$3.00 Instant

$29.99$26.99

G.SKILL 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory Model F2-6400CL5D-2GBNQ - Retail Item #: N82E16820231098Return Policy: Memory (Modules, USB) Return Policy

-$40.00 Instant

$169.98$89.98($44.99 each)

Intel S5000VSASATA Dual 771 Intel 5000V SSI EEB 3.6 (Extended ATX) Server Motherboard - Retail Item #: N82E16813121043Return Policy: Standard Return Policy

 

$354.99

Intel Xeon E5440 Harpertown 2.83GHz LGA 771 80W Quad-Core Processor Model BX80574E5440A - Retail Item #: N82E16819117143Return Policy: Processors (CPUs) Return Policy

 

$1,466.00($733.00 each)

APPLE Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard - Retail Item #: N82E16832110024Return Policy: Software Return Policy

 

$109.99

 

Total $2,695.90 + 13 dollars shipping and tax, depending on where you lived.

 

I know i used desktop memory, who cares

 

And mac version

 

Subtotal $2,999.00 Estimated Ship:

3-5 business days

Free Shipping Next business day delivery available

 

 

Click "Update Details" to reflect changes to system price and shipping.

 

Specifications

• Two 2.8GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon (8-core)
  
• 2GB (2 x 1GB)
  
• 320GB 7200-rpm Serial ATA 3Gb/s
  
• NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT 512MB (Two dual-link DVI)
  
• One 16x SuperDrive
  
• Apple Mighty Mouse
  
• Apple Keyboard (English)
  

normally im gung ho for hackintosh.. and maybe building a octo core hack would be fun.. but it is clear that it isnt much more. (You can probably subtract hte cost of the os from the first selection, haha)

 

also.. it is definately worth it if you only do the 2.33 ghz quad instead of the octo core.. i was just trying to be fair. You may not need the 2.8Ghz processor.. and apple doesnt give you an option to reduce that.

[vladthebad]

just a couple minor nitpick problems with that config....

 

you're using 5000v chipset, apple never used 5000v..... and 5000v was worse than the 5000x that apple used in the original mac pro..... (only dual channel FB-DIMM instead of 4 channel)... board has no PCIe x16 slot for graphics cards, just two x8 slots (x4 electrically)

 

Processors that won't work on the older board.... board only takes dual core processors, and I believe it to only support 5000 series (Dempsey) and 5100 series (woodcrest)

 

then you've got an EATX board...... and an ATX case.....

 

Ram that won't fit the board (you mentioned that one)

 

 

 

Again, thats nitpicky stuff from someone thats been looking at Xeon stuff for quite a while.......

 

Anyways, I threw together something a lot more like what I want to build (In two steps.... current plan is to do a cheap core2 and decent core2 board + graphics+drives+case+power supply..... then later come back through and drop in xeon board and xeons and FB-DIMM)

 

 

Overview:

Monster Beefy 5400 chipset (same as new mac pro) Tyan board, with SAS... supports 1600mhz FSB/800mhz FB-DIMM.... just like new mac pro, but in this case, we'll be going 1333 FSB/667 FB-DIMM (for $$$ reasons.... by the time I get to phase 2, the 1600/800mhz parts will most likely be cheaper... other possibly option is 1333FSB processor, 800mhz FB-DIMM and try the pin mod so it thinks the chips are 1600 FSB.... that would take the 2ghz chips below to 2.4ghz and 1600 FSB.

 

 

Pair of Harpertown E5405's, 4 cores each, 12mb L2 cache each, 1333 FSB.

Total of 8 cores, 24mb L2 Cache (almost as much L2 cache as my quadra 950 had in RAM!!!)

 

Nice beefy Pedestal/Rackmount convertable case. Very nice looking case.... Newegg doesn't sell all of the featured stuff, but you can replace the two screw in bays with hot swap SCSI or hot swap SATA or hot swap SAS bays.... it is also possible to buy a redundant power supply setup for this case. (either a fairly rowdy double, or a nice decent tripple) then you can have a power supply fail, and the machine doesn't even turn off......

 

This budget doesn't include extra loot for the fancy redundant power supplies though.... so lets just throw in a nice Antec 850.... modular cabling, ATX/EPS12V standards.... nice stuff.

 

8 gigs of ram... 4 two gig sticks. Yes, they are dual rank sticks..... Yes we'll be filling all 4 channels..... and YES... we have TWELVE slots left. (Nice future upgrade would be another matching four 2 gig sticks to use the first two slots in each channel to get more bandwidth, as well as to bump ram to 16 gig.

 

A pair of XFX 8600GT's.... Yeah, I know they're not 8800's... and they only have 256MB VRAM.... but oh well... should be more than plenty... unless I ever decide to get into multi-monitor gaming at 2048x1536 per monitor across 4 heads.... Another good possible option here would be a single 8800, or waiting until we find out more on the 9600 and if it runs in OSX86 because of how closely related it is to the 8 series cards.

 

Four 500 gig western digital SATA drives, 16mb cache each, they're RE2 series... rated for 24/7 usage in machines with multiple hard drives and in rackmount systems (vibration can become a real issue, as can long term heat for many drives), with 5 year warrantee. (NOTE: the only drives I'll spend real money on.... are Western Digital Enterprise grade drives... (RE/RE2, etc) or Seagate Enterprise grade drives (ES, ES2, etc). If you've ever had a drive fail with very valuable data on it... its worth the extra $20-40 per drive in my opinion. Drives that have SMART status that work are also essential. (To anyone reading this that doesn't know what SMART status is.... Its worth finding out.... most drives will outright TELL YOU before they die. Listen to them. If a controller doesn't support SMART status, its pretty much not worth using.

 

And we'll throw the same superdrive in that Mtotho used.

 

(Ideas on future upgrades for this kind of setup:

Use 800mhz ram if you can to start with, then you can always either pinmod if you want to overclock, or later buy 1600mhz FSB Xeons.

 

onboard SAS controller for ultrafast storage if you need it down the road (or if someone figures out how to boot off of other controllers, or if we figure out how to possibly run the bootloader from 1 drive... and kick the boot to read filesystem and boot off of the faster drive (or possibly RAID)... OR if SAS is too pricey.... then you can always just use the SAS controller as 8 more SATA ports.

 

1 PCIe x8 slot open (x4 electrically) for future growth

2 PCI-X133 slots (In my case, my LSI U320 card... also, most PCI cards will work in PCI-X slot as well.)

1 PCI slot

 

 

Here is the newegg wishlist:

 

 

1 CHENBRO SR10769-BK-H Black SECC Pedestal and Rackmount Convertible Server/Workstation Chassis - Retail

Model #: SR10769-BK-H

Item #: N82E16811123126

$130.00

 

1 TYAN S5397WAG2NRF Dual 771 Intel 5400 Extended ATX Server Motherboard - Retail

Model #: S5397WAG2NRF

Item #: N82E16813151167

$639.99

 

Update

2 XFX PVT84JUDD3 GeForce 8600GT XXX 256MB 128-bit GDDR3 PCI Express x16 SLI Supported Video Card - Retail

Model #: PVT84JUDD3

Item #: N82E16814150229

$199.98

 

Update

1 Antec TPQ-850 ATX12V / EPS12V 850W Power Supply - Retail

Model #: TPQ-850

Item #: N82E16817371009

$179.00

 

Update

2 Intel Xeon E5405 Harpertown 2.0GHz LGA 771 80W Quad-Core Processor Model BX80574E5405A - Retail

Model #: BX80574E5405A

Item #: N82E16819117151

$470.00

 

 

4 Transcend 2GB 240-Pin DDR2 FB-DIMM DDR2 667 (PC2 5300) ECC Fully Buffered Server Memory Model TS256MFB72V6U-T - Retail

Model #: TS256MFB72V6U-T

Item #: N82E16820208074

$295.96

 

 

4 Western Digital Caviar RE2 WD5001ABYS 500GB 7200 RPM SATA-300 Hard Drive - OEM

Model #: WD5001ABYS

Item #: N82E16822136205

$479.96

 

 

1 LITE-ON 20X DVD±R DVD Burner with LightScribe Black SATA Model LH-20A1L-06 - Retail

Model #: LH-20A1L-06

Item #: N82E16827106072

$32.99

Subtotal: $2,427.88

 

 

And the TWO things that aren't on the wishlist because Newegg doesn't carry them, but are almost must haves in my book:

 

 

(Yes, those are Swiftech's.... fins on pins.... slammed into a half inch thick solid copper base... then lapped within 0.0003" of perfectly flat with a surface finish of 8. (Near godly).... and they weigh about a pound and a half each.... DEFINATELY better than the stock intel heatsink setup... and lets you run a whole lot more quiet.

 

 

Really you've got $1400 in one of the nicest Xeon boards out there.... and 8 cores and 8 gigs of ram.... plus all the fixins.

 

If you've already got all the fixings... well, that makes it a whole lot more semi-affordable.

[deleted_account]

just a couple minor nitpick problems with that config....

 

you're using 5000v chipset, apple never used 5000v..... and 5000v was worse than the 5000x that apple used in the original mac pro..... (only dual channel FB-DIMM instead of 4 channel)... board has no PCIe x16 slot for graphics cards, just two x8 slots (x4 electrically)

 

Processors that won't work on the older board.... board only takes dual core processors, and I believe it to only support 5000 series (Dempsey) and 5100 series (woodcrest)

 

then you've got an EATX board...... and an ATX case.....

 

Ram that won't fit the board (you mentioned that one)

 

 

 

Again, thats nitpicky stuff from someone thats been looking at Xeon stuff for quite a while.......

 

 

That's not nitpicky at all! You saved him and his build, these are crucial factors and I was about to respond to that configuration post but forgot to. You also need FB-DIMMs for that chipset. Now, I hope he didn't get that config.

 

Also, you can run 2 video cards in a motherboard and OS X as long as they're not sli'd, meaning each card represent each monitor? Is that what your purpose is for?

[vladthebad]

well, lets start a bit before your question with another question:

 

What is SLI, what is Crossfire:

 

Because some people have more money than brains.... one highest end video card isn't enough....

So they take TWO and use both cards to run 1 monitor.... basically like taking two 4 cylinder engines and making a V8 out of them. (or for Tri-SLI or 3 way crossfire, taking three 4 cylinder engines and making a V12)

This gives you more performance in games, and other very very graphically intense programs, it also only works on windows.

 

People have installed multiple video cards in computers for years though, I remember a machine with two video cards and two monitors back in 1995-96...

 

Now, most cards can run 2 monitors. So if you only need 2 monitors, you only need 1 card.

 

But what if you want more performance? You could buy 2 cards, and run 1 monitor on each card.

 

What if you needed more monitors? You could buy 2 cards and run 4 monitors, or 3 cards and run 6 monitors, or 4 cards and run 8 monitors. If you only needed 1024x768 on each monitor, you could then use Matrox's tripplehead to go.... and run 24 monitors off of your 4 video cards and have a wall of video. (you know, if you're building your own war room or something)

 

I could really use 4 monitors.... I've got a matched pair of 19" LaCie Electron Blue IV's (got them second/third hand CHEAP... I love them), also have a nice beefy IBM 21, and access to a series III 19" LaCie Electron Blue. With two cards, that would give me the option of 8192x1536 overall resolution if I put all 4 in a row. But then I wouldn't have an output for the bigscreen TV. So most likely, all 3 LaCie's as monitors 1,2,3 on the desk... splitter and run the monster IBM in another room as monitor 1, and bigscreen as monitor 4.

 

I haven't seen any luck with people running 3 cards yet in a hackintosh, I also haven't seen anyone with a PCIe card and an old school PCI card, but I've got a PCI Geforce FX5200 that isn't a bad card at all, so of course I'll most likely try getting it to work as well, and try for 6 monitors. (Add a matched pair of 17's? who knows, I could find a use)

[Team Scream]

just a couple minor nitpick problems with that config....

 

 

Subtotal: $2,427.88

 

 

And the TWO things that aren't on the wishlist because Newegg doesn't carry them, but are almost must haves in my book:

 

 

(Yes, those are Swiftech's.... fins on pins.... slammed into a half inch thick solid copper base... then lapped within 0.0003" of perfectly flat with a surface finish of 8. (Near godly).... and they weigh about a pound and a half each.... DEFINATELY better than the stock intel heatsink setup... and lets you run a whole lot more quiet.

 

 

Really you've got $1400 in one of the nicest Xeon boards out there.... and 8 cores and 8 gigs of ram.... plus all the fixins.

 

If you've already got all the fixings... well, that makes it a whole lot more semi-affordable.

 

Those HSF's wont work on a Xeon based board, those swiftechs are made for socket 775 not 771.

As I mentioned earlier in this thread you need to use HSF's that are specifically designed for Xeons, and very few companies make them for the after market.

Then if you want near silence you have yo go with something like THESE HERE

[deleted_account]

Team Scream, I personally like these thermalright socket 771 HSF: http://www.sidewindercomputers.com/thhrforinxe5.html

They're a bit cheaper/inexpensive as well.

 

vladthebad, not too sure why/how you went off that far, I'll just take that assumption you're running 2 video cards to run your 4-monitors. I've installed 2x 7300GTs in a Mac Pro, only for the reason of display multilple monitors. But however, they do not combine performances of both cards like sli (yes, windows only). A lot of workstations require multiple, and that does explain the reason why PCI cards had its use from the start, finding multiple AGPs were rare, but PCI was commonly used in the workstation world, and for years, like you've mentioned.

[vladthebad]

Team Scream: Those are Xeon heatsinks... those are the socket 771 Xeon version..... they ALSO make a version for 775.... but those are the xeon version, in the picture they're on a xeon board.

 

Gramarye: I went the long way to note that OSX DOESN'T gain any SLI/Crossfire performance.... people that need 2 monitors at highest performance, will be better with 2 cards running 1 monitor each...

 

And yes, I've got two card.... AGP 6600GT and a PCI FX5200... haven't been able to get both working at the same time though.... I've gotten very very close in 10.4.8 but end up with having to manually disable the outputs on 1 card with my customized natit.kext or get a kernel panic... looking in system profiler, I'd get both cards, I'd get vram, everything..... disable the other cards outputs in natit, reboot, hit bios, switch primary graphics card, and the other card would come up in dual monitor mode, fully working.... try and get 4 outputs = panic at loginwindow. A bit of tweaking and for a while I could get all 4 outputs to show up in single user mode, even after loading dock.app to get into the gui, all 4 displays would then show up, but the 2 on the card that loaded second would stay black and never come up.. Then some of the NVinject guys were getting dual cards to work with that.... but only in 10.4.10 from what I'd seen.... and the machine never made the update.. update killed my install, haven't really monkeyed with it much since...... now I'm just waiting for $$$ so I can buy some non-junk hardware... I'm frankly sick my socket 478 celeron in my bucket of non-performance hand me down parts mixed with salvaged computer recycling center $5 and $10 parts.

[Team Scream]

Yeah back in the Pre-PCI Express days we all had to use dual video cards to get dual monitors, that goes back to at least 1995 if I remember correctly, but the badass set up back then was (2) 16mb ATI Rage3 cards.

I had that setup in my 8600 and 9600 Mac Towers running Media 100 to edit video with.

Man those were the days....that was when we had to accelerate After Effects renders with an "Ice" card which was over $5000.00 a copy.

I had 2 of them in my edit suite at the time, and not more than 2 years later I sold them on ebay for like $500.00 each or something ridiculous.

That was also when 32 Gig Seagate SCSI hard drives were like $600.00 each as well and I had at least 10 of them between my 2 systems at any given time.

[vladthebad]

I've still got my fathers Quadra 950.... still gets booted every once in a while.. with its blazing fast 33mhz 68040. LOL I keep hoping to find some nice ram for it at the recycling center one of these days, I'd love to find even a bunch of 8's.... filled full of 8's I'd get 128mb, that'd officially be a "BOATLOAD" for OS 7.1 (doubly so since it wouldn't be running photoshop or any of the power hungry old pro apps.) All it runs now are the occasional vintage game when I get a hankering for some classic OS 7 stuff like the goldbox SSI games, although my last vintage gaming obsession was Wizardry 6: Bane of the Cosmic Forge for about 4 months.... followed by Wizardry 7: Crusaders of the Dark Savant for a month or so... still need to get back into Wiz7 and finally beat it... I've never come anywhere close... but I refuse to use a hints book or walkthrough.... ruins the challenge.

 

In the power PC days, my pinacle of multiple monitor achievement was when people were on vacation for a week, so I used the powers of eminent domain to get myself three IMS TwinTurbo 8mb cards for some triple head fun. Two 21's and a 17 on a PowerCenter Pro 210. Having to run off the onboard SCSI as opposed to the adaptec card though slowed things down a bit.

 

Out of curiosity, does the Tyan board sleep correctly (and wake correctly) in normal use? Does it spool all of the SATA's simultaneously, or does it stagger the spoolup by a half second or a second a drive?

 

I really wish there was a lot better speedstep support and more sleep options for generic intel hardware....

 

The ability to "sleep" one core on every dual core die after say 5 minutes of less than 25% CPU usage would be fantastic.... as would the ability to sleep graphics cards+displays and save that power, and to select drive spindown on a per drive basis... AKA: if the machine is just being used to stream video to the TV and run bittorrent, sleep 4 cores, sleep every drive that is meant to sleep that isn't being used.

 

That would let me for example never sleep a few of my SCSI drives that have a tendancy to not wake up fast enough... (slow spool 24/7 rated enterprise drives. Durring bios+SCSI bios = plenty of spool time... coming out of sleep or trying to wake up drives = drives that start hanging and show up but don't work or just error out and unmount when they try and spool up)

[kilven]

I have my 8-way running. Tyan Tempest i5400xt with 2 e5405's, 4GB RAM, and a 8600gt. It works pretty good.

 

Right now i have Kalyway 10.5.1 vanilla flavored kernel with the 10.5.2 combo update. Leopard Graphics update. NVinject 0.2.1.

 

The good.

Sleep (s3: suspend to ram) works fine. Only thing is the cpu fans are automatically set to full speed after resuming. The bios update is supposed to fix that.(i have yet to update the bios)

IDE fine

SATA fine

Ethernet x2 fine

3D acceleration. works.

there's no randomly broken applications

QuartzGL: can be forced on, at which point it ... works ... i guess.

 

The bad.

CAN shutdown. (small non-issue...) supposedly a netkas kernel fixes what's not broken, but disables sleep. I like sleep a lot though. (It can shutdown. I was wrong the first time i posted.)

i have yet to fix the graphics lag at boot time. supposedly a netkas kernel fixes it, but disables sleep. I like sleep a lot though.

Havent fixed the blinking cursor without install DVD yet. But.. it can be done now can't it!

No sound. but thats why Griffin's imic was created now isnt it.

The ethernet randomly and frequently drops the connection if you put the PCIE graphics card in the wrong slot. It has to go into the black one... or else.... Well now it works just fine, havent lost connection since!

 

The horrible!!!

All of leopard's crazy animations, in the dock, genie minimizing, dashboard, expose, spaces, and less noticeably in EVERY application such as a now-unusable 3d modeler, are low frame rate and laggy. It's not always the case. sometimes they are very very smooth as i've always remembered. other times its horrible. When the cpu is utilized it gets much worse. The more applications are open, the worse it is. I'm not experiencing virtual memory thrashing. It's lagging right now, and i have almost 2 gb free.

 

My old machine, good ol QX6700 GA 965P DS3 had very good framereate (with tiger....) all the time, except when it thrashed the VM. (admittedly more often, it had only 2 gb.) It had a 7300gs, which was carried over into the 8 way until i thought it might have been slowing things down. The new 8600gt didn't help a thing.

Very very annoying. Pretty horrible. Not ok.

iATKOS had the 100% exact same problem.

 

Now i can't stand this lagginess much more, after which i have nothing else to use, any suggestions?

[Wenle Z.]

which dual cpu mobo has fully working audio now? because you can get a 8 core mac pro for $2800 from apple now.

[karterilla]

Hi guys just to add some more info.

 

I've tried to install Leo 10.5.1 (Kalyways DVD and a self made installer) on this config:

 

Asus DESB-DG MoBo

2x Intel 5410 2.33GHz

4 Giga Kingston RAM

a SATA DVD-RW

a pair of SATA HD's

 

Well in any possible different BIOS configuration the darn thing just wont boot...

I've also tried to "upgrade" the installation media to 10.5.2 with no luck.

 

Tried also old installation DVDs (10.4.8, 10.4.9 and 10.4.10): no way alway reboot or freeze the sooner it has finished to load kexts (-f option in darwin boot).

 

I do not know if depends from the MoBo or the Xeons 5410 but I'm unable to boot the installer so no way.

I'm trying to find a couple of 5300 Xeons but I'm not sure if is really a MoBo problem or something else.

No clues anyway.

 

So before buying stuff be sure you are able to install Leo on the MoBo CPU combination or at least boot the installer!!

 

Naturally with windoze (any flavor) and Linux (Slack, Ubuntu, Fedora) the board is working fine.

[ubombmimac]

just get one of those new Skulltrail motherboards....

8 penryn cores with FB dimms 32 gigs or ram and 8 core overcolcked to 5 GHz each.....

2 8800gtxs a 1200watt power, 6 500gb Hdds, 4dvd burners w/ lightscribe....

about 10 k but still less than a fullblown mac pro, the ram will be $9200

[deleted_account]

Hmm...for 10k I'd still recommend a real Mac Pro, sorry not convinced. For your information, the RAM/Memory costs would be the same since both require the exact same FB-DIMMS that would essentially be the same requirements of 800 MHz (240-pin ECC). Oh yeah, how about the total costs of a 2x 2.8 GHz processors + Heatsink Fan costs + a capable dependent motherboard.

 

You obviously didn't read through the first few pages of this thread. (It's interesting how this thread always becomes these not-so thought out comparisons, what is this thread about again?) Furthermore, just a suggestion, try to, try to read through the thread before posting, "skulltrail" alone has been mentioned numerous times.

 

"dual-processor Skulltrail rig would cost nearly $3,000 for the processors alone"

 

"Each QX9775 Extreme Quad-Core processor, clocked at 3.2GHz, will be sold to retailers for $1,499 each. That means that the price to you will be slightly higher - possibly around the $1,650 mark. The D5400XS motherboard, which was rumored to be sold at $500 upon release, is actually a bit higher, at $649."

 

"...The D5400XS motherboard alone costs about $650, while the processors will cost you some extra $1500 for each unit. Of course, pre-built Skulltrail systems have started to emerge on the market, but they come with dazzling price tags. For instance, a Skulltrail-based system offered by Falcon Northwest costs no less than $10,034.57. It features a 1000 watt power supply, 4 GB of memory, two GeForce 8800 Ultra graphics cards, two 1 TB hard drives, a DVD burner and Windows Vista Ultimate (64-bit)."

 

+ many other reputable sources justifying the above statements.

 

 

Enough said.

 

 

Anyway, back to the 8-core motherboard discussion:

Anyone have found an 8-Core motherboard with only PCI-Express slots? sans PCI-X and PCI. The logic board in the Mac Pro, for example, consists of all PCI-Express 2.0 slots.

[vladthebad]

skulltrail only has 4 FB-DIMM slots.... at 4 gigs per slot going with the baller priced memory, thats 16 gigs. Good luck finding 4 gig FB-DIMMs at 800mhz.....

 

anyways... in regards to the PCIe only board... its not the PC board makers like tyan and supermicro that have it wrong.. its APPLE that has it wrong. The chipsets... both 5000x like the original mac pro (and 5000v and 5000p in the same family) OR the newer 5400 chipset support the PCI-X bus for FREE, its already in the chipset, the bandwidth and pins are already there...... might as well add the slot. PLUS you can use PCI devices in PCI-X slot (PCI-X on a good board will gracefully downgrade from PCI-X133 64 bit (1066MB/sec) to 100 mhz 64 bit, to 66 mhz 64 bit (533MB/sec) to 33mhz 64 bit (266MB/sec) or to 66mhz 32 bit (266MB/sec) or all the way down to bog standard PCI (32 bit, 33mhz) the OTHER bonus with PCI-X is that PCI-X cards will fail gracefully in almost all cases as well...

so put that PCI-X133 card into a bog standard 32 bit 33mhz PCI slot today... and get 133MB/sec

in the next box... drop it into a 64 bit 33 mhz slot and get 266MB/sec... then later, into a full blown PCI-X133 slot (PCI-X 2.0 266 mhz slot if you're a major baller and buying "Mr Fancy Pants" IBM chipsets and IBM raid cards... yeah, 2133MB/sec.... thats as much as PCIe 8x)

 

So with PCI-X you can move cards forward to the new server... or buy a card for the new server and use it on your old one... or if the new server breaks or you upgrade it, you can move the card into the old server... etc.

 

the OTHER thing about PCI-X that is handy in a few situations, is because its a shared bus, you can have an on board PCI-X LSI1068 controller for SAS/SATA... and add the hardware PCI-X zero channel hardware raid card later.... (then the PCI-X card controls the onboard PCI-X 1068) No need to move cables even. In some cases (I don't know about the LSI in specific here) you can even migrate a software RAID into hardware RAID by adding the zero channel raid card and running a driver disk. (Often the green PCI-X slot is for your zero channel raid controller)

 

As far as I'm concerned, PCI-X is FAR MORE USEFUL than a PCIe 1x or 4x slot in most cases. DOUBLY SO when moving an older server onto a new board for higher performance.

 

The other downside to doing things like apple did with the first mac pro, is all the extra PCIe switches to be able to reconfigure slots cost latency, as well as a good chunk of cash.

 

I do agree that many of the nicer boards could be quite a bit better even with a few tweaks....

 

Like the newer Tyan 5400 chipset boards.... why use an x8 physical slot? use a full x16 physical... even if its only going to be x8 or x4 electrically. If someone wants to throw another full length x16 graphics card, or major beefy x16 raid card in... (or x16 host adapter for a PCIe breakout expansion chassis) let them.

 

My other minor beef is that riser card options for PCIe are fairly limited these days, and will likely be limited for quite a while.

 

one of the nicer PCIe risers available is this one:

http://www.cyclone.com/products/expansion_...es/pcie4233.php

 

minor quibble number 1: use x16 physical slots.... (yes, that requires moving the PCIe bridge chipset to the other side of the card, or using a longer card. No, that shouldn't be a real problem because if you look at the chassis design it was originally intended for, there is no use of a slot on the back side where the heatsink would become blocking.

 

Minor quibble number 2: why is the rear offset from the added PCIe slots different from the rear offset of the slot it slides into.... this is really an issue with the motherboard used in that chassis... but seriously, use the standard offset EVERYWHERE and you'll have less issues and more compatability.... Supermicro and you're backwards PCIe x8 "UIO" slot, I'm looking at you also!!!!!

 

also, adding more PCIe slots doesn't increase the number of lanes available unless you use PCIe switching chips like the one on that riser card.

Unlike PCI or PCI-X where you can have a bus with 1 slot, or the same bus across 13/14 slots.... PCIe is more point to point. each card gets its own bandwidth and is on its own slot. bridges and switch chips change this a bit, but it means there really are fewer options for PCIe passive risers. This makes 1U and 2U boards quite a bit more of a challenge without fancy custom goldfingers for riser cards... and THEN makes the board quite a bit less usable in a full size case.

 

as far as a "perfect" slot configuration/board configuration with the 5400 chipset... I would like to see:

 

5400 chipset, dual socket 771, 1600/1333/1066 mhz FSB support, quad channel FB-DIMM, 16 slots... on a pair of risers like THIS BOARD:

http://www.tyan.com/product_board_detail.aspx?pid=439

 

(Optional?.... add 150 or so to board cost) Onboard PCI-X LSI 1068 SAS controller (and green marked PCI-X slot that I'll mention later for Zero Channel Raid card)

 

(Optional?... add $250 or so to board cost) Onboard PCI-X LSI 7104 Fiber channel controller (Single 4Gb/sec port... add it to the backplate)

 

Slot configuration of 7 slots as such:

 

Starting at center of board moving outward:

1: PCIe2.0 x16 (x16 electrically)

2: PCI (bog standard, 5v support would even be nice) OR PCIe2.0 x8 (if PCIe2.0 x8, then slot 4 would become x8 also)

3: PCIe2.0 x16 ("x16" electrically from PCIe2.0 48 lane switch chip (See note below)

4: PCIe2.0 x16 ("x16" electrically from switch chip, x8 if slot 2 was PCIe instead of PCI)

5: PCIe x16 (x8 electrically)

6: PCI-X133 (White slot)

7: PCI-X133 (Green slot for Zero Channel RAID card)

 

 

slots 3 and 4 run by PCIe2.0 48 lane switch chip (16 lanes to northbridge, 16 to slot 3, 16 to slot 4.... so yes, slot 3 and 4 REALLY only truly have x8.... BUT with PCIe2.0, you can effectively get x16 speeds for PCIe 1.0 devices)

 

This gives you a possible x16(double wide), x16(double wide) x8 config or... if the PCIe2.0 switch chip was chosen correctly....

Nforce 200 would work well... that would allow SLI on slots 3 and 4, with single slot cards... BUT the Nforce200 talks to northbridge with a PCIe 1.0 x16 link.... and thus, wouldn't quite fit the full bill.... (and now its too "skulltrailish") The PEX 8648 by PLX would work well... and is roughly $75 each in quantity.... (so add another $75 to the board cost) BUT the PLX chip would allow to do slot 3 as PCIe x16, slots 2 and 4 as PCIe x8 (OR if slot 2 wasn't being used, a bios setting to disable slot 2 and turn slot 4 into PCIe x16)

 

 

So...

 

barebones board = $350-ish + $75 for the PCIe switch = 425

= 575 with SAS

= 800ish with SAS+Fiber channel

 

more likely: 450, 600, 850 for board costs.

 

ideal backplane in my opinion would be:

 

2USB stacked with firewire

serial port stacked with VGA (onboard XGI X9 like every other server board it seems?)

2USB stacked with gigE

2USB stacked with gigE

sound (speakers, headphones, mic.... everything else including S/PDIF on headers?)

fiberchannel stacked with firewire 800 (we are dreaming right?)

 

 

switching to memory risers really saves a TON of board room if you want real memory options.. and saves room onboard for more good fixings and options. Look at skulltrail..... only 4 FB-DIMM slots... what a waste of the format. At that point they might as well have built it on an overclocked 5100 MCH chipset.

[kilven]

Hey anyone know why my graphics performance is so laggy (intermittently)? i have the tempest i5400xt and 2 e5405's and a 8600gt all running kalyway 10.5.1 updated to 10.5.2.

[vladthebad]

go into bios, check to see if the snoop filter is disabled. as well see if you have any odd settings for memory in bios. How much ram do you have on the board, and how is it set up?

 

also check to see what version of the graphics drivers you're running possibly.

 

 

Out of curiosity: does your 8 core monster sleep?

[kilven]

the snoop filter was enabled, now its off but from my highly unscientific analysis it didnt help anything.

i have 4 of 667 mhz 1GB FBDIMMs. installed in the only acceptable way for 4 sticks according to the manual.

Hey i bet pictures of settings could help, take a look!

 

 

yea sleep works perfectly fine but i need to update the bios to make the fans throttle down after resuming...

Archive.zip

[vladthebad]

snoop filter should be turned on.

 

Turning it off can really blow away your performance on some multi-threaded stuff.... and since openGL is multi-threaded now.... i didn't know if it might be majorly affected by it.

 

Hmmm.... Wonder if its a geforce 8 thing? got a 7300 or 7600 you could throw in and test? or maybe its specific graphics driver?

 

 

good to know sleep works on that board as well.

[kilven]

Well the snoop filter doesnt seem to make any difference whether on or off..

See i had a 7300gs with the exact same issue, i thought maybe leopard needed more gfx horsepower so i bought 8600gt. no change!!!!!!!!

[deleted_account]

+1 vote for Memory Risers! They are so nice, and adding memory would probably be the most fun in building the computer!

 

 

Just a side note:

My ideal 8-Core motherboard setup would include: CEB Form Factor (12" x 10.5", I know its crippled vs. E-ATX) motherboards with Dual Socket 771 (8-Core compatible), SAS, at least 2 or 3 (PCIe x16 slots), with at least one x8 slot, the rest PCI-X 133 (people tend to forget PCI-X has more bandwidth than PCIe x4). Intel 5400 chipset would be a plus along with 800 Mhz FB-DIMMs to top it off. However, all this wouldn't matter if OSx86 didn't recognize the hardware. I sure hope so. [The closest configuration I see around is this:

 

 

+ SAS Ports. [Maybe even some blue-dye and black PCI slots while we're at it] This would be very nice. 

 

~

 

vladthebad, I forgot to ask, what is your Geekbench for your 8-Core? (if you don't mind sharing)

[vladthebad]

I dont own a real piece of modern hardware yet, let alone an 8 core.... been delaying for one reason or another and seems like finances keep getting in the way. Plus the fact that I'm going to have to buy EVERYTHING at once if I go 8 core.

 

Threw my PCI FX5200 into a friends hack running kalyway 10.5.2 last night.... 3 monitors easy. swapped third monitor from port 3 to port 4..... hit detect displays, pops right up. So at looks like i'll only really need to buy one new video card.....

 

I hope to be throwing something pretty spiffy together here before too long... but i've been hoping and planning quite a while, so no guarantee on timeframe... but when I get something rockin, I'll be sure to post bench's.

 

And yeah, we need to figure out how to boot SAS or U320 SCSI off of a LSI FusionMPT supported controller....... hehe.

 

Oh, another thing to consider when buying ram..... dual rank FB-DIMM's give higher total throughput....

 

AND filling each memory channel with 2+ FB-DIMM's also improves throughput.... although latency goes up a hair (but then scales better)

 

Anyone bitching about the "horrible latency problems" with FB-DIMM's hasn't really looked at the issue... UNLESS they're talking latency while at nearly idle. YES, at idle, the FB-DIMM's have a higher latency. Start pulling some memory bandwidth.... even 25% or so, and DDR2 has worse latency than FB-DIMM at that point... and FB-DIMM just makes bigger and bigger gains from there on out. (and has twice the total bandwidth in a balls to the walls config)

 

I'm still debating on if I should build a dirt cheap 2/4 core desktop board and get everything else I'll need... then just swap in the 771 board, xeons and FB-DIMM's and do it in two stages.... of if I should just put my face to the grindstone and build what I really want anyways....

 

(And where are the memory riser 16 slot 5400 chipset boards with 1600/800 support? also easier to cool....) BAH!