2CPU.com » News » October 2003 » Building the Ultimate High-End Gaming Workstation

The folks over at Firing Squad have put together an impressive guide for building a cutting-edge dual Opteron 246 gaming workstation. Definitely worth drooling over, this article isnt for the faint of heart and especially something us financially-challenged duallie enthusiasts aspire to build when that lottery check finally comes in

As you can see, the reviewer didnt go overboard on cost but also didnt cut any corners in building this dream rig:

In this second season of

05/21/2002 12:45 AM: RAID 0 on 64-Bit PCI Slots and Building a PC around It by Hooz
Catchy title, no? Heh. I'll let this quote speak for itself... This is the story of three men's brave attempt to coax the SiSoft Sandra File System Benchmark near the 50,000 mark using nothing more th...

11/28/2001 07:08 PM: Building a better webserver by Cory
It's not really SMP-related, but I thought some of you might enjoy this new article over at Ace's Hardware about their move to a new webserver:When we first launched the new and improved Ace's Hardwar...

06/11/2001 08:16 AM: Building a better Memory Benchmark by nitro_fish
Good ole Bill of CPUReview has just put the finishing touches on his latest version of MemTach Benchmark while this is not really Duallie related. I can say that Bill has put a lot of thought and w...

10/06/2000 08:35 AM: Building the Dream System by nitro_fish
The Tech Zone has a 10 page write up on what they consider their dream machine. I know there are some fr34ky peeps out there who would like more but the stuff they pick is a little more realistic (pf...

09/09/2000 05:00 PM: Building your own Temp Probe by nitro_fish
Ahh yes the weekend is here. The weekend is always a good time to work on all those crazy projects that you were thinking about over the past week. The PC-Workshop has a nice little write up on a m...

jamesavery22 Registered User Posts: 1567 Joined: 2002-08-07

#24794 Posted on: 10/21/2003 12:14 AM That does look awesome. but just for the sake of defending my xeons , are there any good comparisons b/w the opteron's and DP Xeons in terms of workstations? Last time I checked the Xeons were the better route. But I think the Opteron did better in a few games. My Heatware

get quad Registered User Posts: 3090 Joined: 2001-05-11

#24795 Posted on: 10/21/2003 12:36 AM yeah, but will your xeons run XP64 or *nix64? "Once the game is over, the king and the pawn go back into the same box." - von Goethe "Those who despise science and learning are not anti-elitist. They are morally and intellectually slothful people who are secretly envious of the educated and the cultured." - Hitchens http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kndX3tVxCt8

ayt999 Registered User Posts: 3038 Joined: 2002-10-28

#24796 Posted on: 10/21/2003 02:08 AM but you need 64 bit programs to run on that 64 bit OS... and none of the ones I use have 64 bit versions. it would be nice to be the first one you know to have a 64bit OS and CPU though. get quad, if you sell that arm of your's... how are you going to fully utlilize the power of the computer you get with only the other arm? I think you should go with a leg. SETI@home|folding@home|RC5|find-a-drug|DPAD|ZetaGrid|climateprediction.net| communityTSC|BOINC|Predictor@home|seventeen or bust|ECC2-109

jamesavery22 Registered User Posts: 1567 Joined: 2002-08-07

#24797 Posted on: 10/21/2003 02:20 AM Originally posted by ayt999 but you need 64 bit programs to run on that 64 bit OS... and none of the ones I use have 64 bit versions. it would be nice to be the first one you know to have a 64bit OS and CPU though. get quad, if you sell that arm of your's... how are you going to fully utlilize the power of the computer you get with only the other arm? I think you should go with a leg. What kind of drive is there for products to start coming out for XP64bit as well as normal 32? My Heatware

wipeout wired for fun Posts: 137 Joined: 2001-10-27

#24798 Posted on: 10/21/2003 05:46 AM That has to be one of the best articles I've seen in some time, particularly in the way that it highlights a lot of things that are normally overlooked, even by enthusiasts. Now I just have to get that Matrix Orbital Primary PC: Lian Li PC-60USB|Antec TruePower 550W|Tyan Tiger MPX 2466N-4M|Athlon MP 2800+ (x2)|1GB Reg'd ECC DDR SDRAM|128MB Radeon 9800PRO|Adaptec 39160 |18.2GB Seagate Cheetah 15K.3|36GB Seagate Cheetah 15K.3|8x Pioneer 107D|16x Pioneer 104f|SoundBlaster Audigy DE|Leadtek WinFast TV 2000 XP|Hitachi CM772 19" CRT

ShaneBrooks Unregistered

#24799 Posted on: 10/21/2003 06:00 AM I agree. I enjoyed this article a lot. I liked the brief discussion on using dual rotated 17" panels. It got me thinking that the ideal monitor would be a single large widescreen format LCD with a driver that would let you "maximise" to only half the screen (the left side or the right side)..or hold ctrl to maximise to the entire LCD. You'd have the added usability of dual screens without the frame down the middle. I guess I understand why they didnt spend much time on the display device... but given the treatment every other periferal got the article did seem lacking in the display dept.

Mr Bill two by two, hands of blue Posts: 2946 Joined: 2002-02-16

#24800 Posted on: 10/21/2003 10:20 AM Originally posted by jamesavery22 That does look awesome. but just for the sake of defending my xeons , are there any good comparisons b/w the opteron's and DP Xeons in terms of workstations? Last time I checked the Xeons were the better route. But I think the Opteron did better in a few games. I think I liked the Tech_report review best. Here... http://www.tech-report.com/reviews/2003q3/athlon64/index.x?pg=1 Edit: oops you want the workstation review here... http://www.tech-report.com/reviews/2003q3/workstation/index.x?pg=1 and the update with the opteron 146 here... http://www.tech-report.com/reviews/2003q3/opteron-146/index.x?pg=1 Its too bad they don't have the TYAN board to compare that dual memory... AnandTech did a direct comparison here... http://www.anandtech.com/cpu/showdoc.html?i=1816 My SMP rig [URL="http://personal.palouse.net/billshan/ghost.htm#A_Merlin"]Merlin[/URL]

CHAPS >Vader SMP< Posts: 480 Joined: 2002-08-08

#24801 Posted on: 10/21/2003 05:36 PM I really liked it for the most part. The way that they portrayed SCSI ... something about not being able to have an array that survives if 2 drives go down. Must never have heard about RAID 50 or 0/5 or 10 or 0/1 or ... well you get the picture. Tyan Thunder K8W (S2885) | Opteron 244's | 1GB of PC3200 | LSI MegaRAID 320-2 | 7 - 73 GB 10K's U160 in RAID5 | 6800GT 256 | Onboard Audio MSI MS-9204 | P4 Xeon's 2.0Ghz/400fsb | LSI MegaRAID 320-1 | 4 -18GB 10K's in R5 | 2 73 GB in R1

jamesavery22 Registered User Posts: 1567 Joined: 2002-08-07

#24802 Posted on: 10/21/2003 06:16 PM Originally posted by Mr Bill I think I liked the Tech_report review best. Here... http://www.tech-report.com/reviews/2003q3/athlon64/index.x?pg=1 Edit: oops you want the workstation review here... http://www.tech-report.com/reviews/2003q3/workstation/index.x?pg=1 and the update with the opteron 146 here... http://www.tech-report.com/reviews/2003q3/opteron-146/index.x?pg=1 Its too bad they don't have the TYAN board to compare that dual memory... AnandTech did a direct comparison here... http://www.anandtech.com/cpu/showdoc.html?i=1816 Edit----- hrmmm why did I just post a blank post?? Anyways, thanks for the links Mr. Bill I had never read those before. They give good support on my theory too. Opterons are just ok for workstation stuff and awesome for servers. The Xeon seems best for workstation apps, so why did they go with Opterons :confused: Just cause they wanted to waste the extra money? My Heatware

morpheus777 Burninating the peasants Posts: 1667 Joined: 2002-07-02

#24803 Posted on: 10/21/2003 06:21 PM Very nice looking machine over @ FiringSquad. 20" iMac, 2.66GHZ Core 2 Duo, 2GB RAM, 500GB HDD, ATI Radeon HD 2600 Pro 256MB, OS X 10.5.3 Leopard Apple MacBook 1.83GHZ Core Duo, 1GB DDR2, OSX 10.4.11 Tiger

Mr Bill two by two, hands of blue Posts: 2946 Joined: 2002-02-16

#24804 Posted on: 10/21/2003 07:24 PM jamesavery22, The review at Ace's may give you an idea why Firing Squad went with the Opterons... The memory latancy and bandwidth has huge potential and the 64-bit OS may open that up even more, especially when scaling to more CPU's. Athlon 64, Athlon 64 FX and Pentium 4 Extreme Edition http://www.aceshardware.com/read.jsp?id=60000253 nVENTIV Mach II: The Athlon 64 FX at 2.8 GHz http://www.aceshardware.com/read.jsp?id=60000268 Then of course these two already linked at 2CPU Dual Opteron Done Right : Tyan My SMP rig [URL="http://personal.palouse.net/billshan/ghost.htm#A_Merlin"]Merlin[/URL]

jamesavery22 Registered User Posts: 1567 Joined: 2002-08-07

#24805 Posted on: 10/21/2003 08:10 PM Originally posted by Mr Bill jamesavery22, The review at Ace's may give you an idea why Firing Squad went with the Opterons... The memory latancy and bandwidth has huge potential and the 64-bit OS may open that up even more, especially when scaling to more CPU's. Athlon 64, Athlon 64 FX and Pentium 4 Extreme Edition http://www.aceshardware.com/read.jsp?id=60000253 nVENTIV Mach II: The Athlon 64 FX at 2.8 GHz http://www.aceshardware.com/read.jsp?id=60000268 Then of course these two already linked at 2CPU Dual Opteron Done Right : Tyan My Heatware

Mr Bill two by two, hands of blue Posts: 2946 Joined: 2002-02-16

#24806 Posted on: 10/21/2003 11:32 PM Don't forget most of the testing was done with 32-bit OS and apps. There is quite a potential performance boost to be had when 64-bit OS and apps come on line over the next 6 months. The Xenon is a top predator in a 32-bit world. The opteron reaches that performance in 32-bit and will really hit its stride in 64-bit. My SMP rig [URL="http://personal.palouse.net/billshan/ghost.htm#A_Merlin"]Merlin[/URL]

jamesavery22 Registered User Posts: 1567 Joined: 2002-08-07

#24807 Posted on: 10/22/2003 02:19 AM Originally posted by Mr Bill Don't forget most of the testing was done with 32-bit OS and apps. There is quite a potential performance boost to be had when 64-bit OS and apps come on line over the next 6 months. The Xenon is a top predator in a 32-bit world. The opteron reaches that performance in 32-bit and will really hit its stride in 64-bit. I was talking about these: http://www.x86-secret.com/articles/cpu/k8-2/a64-6.htm They used XP 64bit My Heatware

spikegifted I do what? Posts: 6144 Joined: 2000-07-24

#24808 Posted on: 10/22/2003 04:37 AM I've always like the folks over at FiringSquad, their articles are usually informative and well researched. This is another awesome article from. Good work. spikegifted.net "At the very beginning of the 19th century chemists generally thought that compounds from living organisms were too complicated in structure to be capable of artificial synthesis from non-living things, and that a 'vital force' or vitalism conferred the characteristics of living beings on this form of matter." Well, how wrong were they? So much for dogma...

MichaelMR2 Eve Sucks :) Posts: 1904 Joined: 2001-07-02

#24809 Posted on: 10/22/2003 07:59 AM I think the Xeons bandwidth get's SMASHED by the Opterons..having a simple look at the 3dmarks tells the story..especially 2001, where bandwidth was more important than your simple GPU like 2003. That and look at the core figures..the Xeons have a max of 4.3gbps from Northbridge to Ram (for BOTH cpu's) The Opteron has 10.6 GB between each CPU (with separate bus's so no swapping memory between CPU's) http://www.amdboard.com/opteron_competition.html SOOOOO, at the end of the day, Opterons have more than double the bandwidth available to them..and it becomes more like 6 times the bandwidth when you go Quad Workstation: Q6600@3GHZ|Asus Striker Extreeme|4GB DDR2 800|4 x 15k5 73GIG Raid 0|Adaptec 32105|XFX 8800GTX x 2|1000w Galaxy DXX Servers: 1 x 3.0GIG P4|1GB mem|3ware 7500|11 x 200GB in Raid 5 2 x AMD 252|4GB mem|Areca 1260|16 x 400GB in Raid 5

Mr Bill two by two, hands of blue Posts: 2946 Joined: 2002-02-16

#24810 Posted on: 10/22/2003 11:00 AM Hey all, read "Building the Ultimate High-End Gaming Workstation: Stage 2." Especially this part... What if you want more than 2 DIMMs? That's where things get interesting. Adding extra memory to your PC can slow it down http://firingsquad.com/hardware/building_gaming_opteron_2003_Part2/page14.asp My SMP rig [URL="http://personal.palouse.net/billshan/ghost.htm#A_Merlin"]Merlin[/URL]

burmese SMP Qualified Posts: 186 Joined: 2002-01-20

#24811 Posted on: 10/22/2003 05:40 PM Yeah, those 'real-world' tests make SiSoft Sandra's memory bandwidth tests look pretty stupid. The fact that low-latency memory paired with a slightly slower cpu (P4 2.8 GHz) would beat a faster cpu paired with higher-latency memory is probably well-known to the enthusiast crowd, but the huge performance drop when adding in an extra pair of memory dimms on the canterwood chipset was an eye-opener. ~\_/~\_O Burmese

A Reader Unregistered

#24812 Posted on: 10/22/2003 06:10 PM Hi, I am disappointed about that website since some time. i discovered it 2 years ago and I liked it because it showed news about workstations and servers with 2 and more CPUs as one of the first. Now I read more and more about gaming PCs, there are advertisings for single CPU producs... no more interests in real man's big servers and workstations? Somebody posted here pictures and specs from MSI's new 1U dual Opteron, and he got flamed by others. Yes, it was in an IBM power CPU thread, but... No other reaction? Disappointing.

jamesavery22 Registered User Posts: 1567 Joined: 2002-08-07

#24813 Posted on: 10/22/2003 07:01 PM Originally posted by MichaelMR2 I think the Xeons bandwidth get's SMASHED by the Opterons..having a simple look at the 3dmarks tells the story..especially 2001, where bandwidth was more important than your simple GPU like 2003. That and look at the core figures..the Xeons have a max of 4.3gbps from Northbridge to Ram (for BOTH cpu's) The Opteron has 10.6 GB between each CPU (with separate bus's so no swapping memory between CPU's) http://www.amdboard.com/opteron_competition.html SOOOOO, at the end of the day, Opterons have more than double the bandwidth available to them..and it becomes more like 6 times the bandwidth when you go Quad Synthetic benchmarks really dont mean anything. Look at the link I posted above. Opterons rock in all the synthetic benchies but get crushed in all the real world benchmarks. What does matter is the architexture and how a specific application performs on that architexture. And Opteron's huge bandwidth only gives applications who like the architexture huge benifits, namely server apps, like running Anandtechs SQL server, and not any of the workstations apps that Ive seen benched on it. I mean look at Athlon XPs and P4s. P4s have way more bandwidth but some how Athlons still come on par or even better than P4 with equivalent "ratings." Bandwidth is DEFINITELY not a measure of a processors performance... This is simple stuff... My Heatware

imposter nope, it's not me Posts: 379 Joined: 2001-12-10

#24814 Posted on: 10/23/2003 12:20 AM Originally posted by jamesavery22 I was talking about these: http://www.x86-secret.com/articles/cpu/k8-2/a64-6.htm They used XP 64bit They did? I can't read all the french in there, so I might have missed it, but from what I did read and the screenshots of XP it seems they're just using SP1. It also looked like they were comparing dual Xeons to a single Opteron.

get quad nope, it's not me Posts: 3090 Joined: 2001-05-11

#24815 Posted on: 10/23/2003 03:13 AM http://www.x86-secret.com/pics/cpu/k8-2/windows8.gif Yep, its only the 32 bit version of XP SP1 in those French tests. Want to read it in English? (quite a biased article really) http://translate.google.com/translate?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.x86-secret.com%2Fpopups%2Farticleswindow.php%3Fid%3D91&langpair=fr%7Cen&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&prev=%2Flanguage_tools "Once the game is over, the king and the pawn go back into the same box." - von Goethe "Those who despise science and learning are not anti-elitist. They are morally and intellectually slothful people who are secretly envious of the educated and the cultured." - Hitchens http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kndX3tVxCt8

proffesso Winner of the Internet Posts: 1532 Joined: 2001-06-25

#24816 Posted on: 10/23/2003 03:40 AM its hardly 'the ultimate highend' dont you think? the only 'real' highend stuff he chose was the board, chips and ram. 'well I got the 8 X15 drives hanging off the u320 controller in raid0 cos I wanted that massive throughput. you wont see sata do that.' 'the 10k rpm drive beats the scsi 15k drives, thanks to our friends at SR' wow, thanks for the explination as to why. in the article, the writer didnt explain that the 5900 is clocked higher than the fx2000, and would play 'games' faster anyway. (oh, and the internet is faster with Nvidia boys and girls...) now, as to why he showed a pic of $68,000 speakers I dont know. hell, I dont know why he even mentioned it. I am however going to go buy a line conditioner, those look good. /mode #2cpu endrant chasing tokyo girls

Mr Bill two by two, hands of blue Posts: 2946 Joined: 2002-02-16

#24817 Posted on: 10/23/2003 11:09 AM MS over at lostcircuits is going to look into this number of dimms thing with a few of his rigs. My SMP rig [URL="http://personal.palouse.net/billshan/ghost.htm#A_Merlin"]Merlin[/URL]

MichaelMR2 Eve Sucks :) Posts: 1904 Joined: 2001-07-02

#24818 Posted on: 10/23/2003 01:49 PM Synthetic benchmarks really dont mean anything. Look at the link I posted above. Opterons rock in all the synthetic benchies but get crushed in all the real world benchmarks. What does matter is the architexture and how a specific application performs on that architexture. And Opteron's huge bandwidth only gives applications who like the architexture huge benifits, namely server apps, like running Anandtechs SQL server, and not any of the workstations apps that Ive seen benched on it. It makes a Massive difference with Battlefield 1942..and this is labeled as "Ultimate Gaming workstation" so I would consider my statements as extremly relevant.. I don't know a SINGLE game that dosen't get a very tangable benefit from (in the case of a Uni-CPU system) going from a 533Mhz FSB to 800Mhz in the Case of P4's, and that applies to Dual CPU systems just as much, especially for gaming (more FSB intensive than most "Server" apps I know of) Workstation: Q6600@3GHZ|Asus Striker Extreeme|4GB DDR2 800|4 x 15k5 73GIG Raid 0|Adaptec 32105|XFX 8800GTX x 2|1000w Galaxy DXX Servers: 1 x 3.0GIG P4|1GB mem|3ware 7500|11 x 200GB in Raid 5 2 x AMD 252|4GB mem|Areca 1260|16 x 400GB in Raid 5

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