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2CPU.com » News » September 2001 » Tiger MP grilled over at Anandtech

Tiger MP grilled over at Anandtech

Posted by: dadmin on: 09/26/2001 06:51 PM [ Print | 29 comment(s) ]

Well, it seems as if Anand himself has taken a good, hard look at the TigerMP. With one of his usual comprehensive and well-written reviews, he goes over all the good and bad things about the board, tests, etc... Thanks to Remedy for the quick link

See what he thinks

Comment

ReMeDy

Posts: 12521
Joined: 2001-02-10

#11857 Posted on: 09/26/2001 10:56 PM

good review can't complain. Those damn durons are peppy!:eek:

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KlockWurk
SMP n00b

Posts: 26
Joined: 2001-09-05

#11858 Posted on: 09/27/2001 12:04 AM

He got unregistered RAM to work, too.

>>insert witty comment here<<

Comment

voltron
Master Dualie

Posts: 1254
Joined: 2000-12-22

#11859 Posted on: 09/27/2001 12:09 AM

AMD once again made a mistake by not holding the hand of the manufactors.

For the smp athlon to be taken seriously it must be compatible with basic standards.

1)Unregistered memory must be supported. There is no reason for it not to be. Unregistered will hold up fine if you buy good stuff. For instance the msuhkin 2400 I bought uses the same chips as their ecc stuff but without the ecc part. I am sure other manufactors are similar.

2)AthlonMP was a bad bad bad bad bad bad bad idea. AMD needs to consolidate its chips not make more typtes. If I was AMD I would dump the MP line and focus on the AthlonXP.

Comment

snowsquirrel
Sheik of SMP

Posts: 190
Joined: 2001-03-26

#11860 Posted on: 09/27/2001 01:31 AM

Voltron: I totally agree. By focusing on two lines (duron and athlon) manufacturing costs, and marketing costs are lowered, not only for amd but also for board and chipmakers. This means more motherboards, which mean more variety for the end user all at a lower cost. Remember that low cost is what got amd a foothold in the market. Performance has gained them some market share, but Intel is a giant, and amd will need both of these weapons (low cost and performance) to compete with Intel.

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Jim_
Administrator

Posts: 3464
Joined: 2000-03-15

#11861 Posted on: 09/27/2001 02:32 AM

Originally posted by snowsquirrel
Voltron:
I totally agree. By focusing on two lines (duron and athlon) manufacturing costs, and marketing costs are lowered, not only for amd but also for board and chipmakers.

This also means that AMD can't benefit from the premium they can charge on 'server-oriented' processors. Business/Corporations will pay that without even batting an eye. The only ones who complain are... enthusiast (go figure).

The whole memory argument is getting a little long in the tooth. AMD has a strong foothold in the enthusiast market with their uniprocessor swag. 760MP was intended to begin their attack on the server market, a market which they previously had no real product for.

Entry into this market is difficult because a lot of companies purchase on reputation and experience. As such AMD wanted to ENSURE that all prospective clients UNDERSTOOD that this product was clearly aimed at the server market and the server market only. As such, they only want registered/ecc memory used with the platform.

You, me, and little billy down the street purchasing 760MP machines are ONLY icing on the cake. We're not the target market. Not even CLOSE. We have no right to sit back and tell AMD that they dropped the ball by not pushing for proper unbuffered memory support. AMD is probably urging/pushing manufacturers to NOT include support for it, even though the chipset is capable of it on some level or another.

The bottom line is... AMD could care less if Mr. Enthusiast is unhappy that they're forced to purchase registered memory for their 760MP board.

It's similiarly priced... it's not much slower... I really don't understand what the fuss is about. Grow up. If you want to play with the big boys and own gear intended for servers and high-end workstations... sometimes you have to pay the price.

Enthusiasts seem to think they're the center of the IT universe... when in reality they're an outer, obscure, and relatively unimportant star.

[url="http://www.2cpu.com"][size=1]2CPU.com[/url] - Because two are always better than one! [url="http://www.jimkirk.org"]jimkirk.org[/url] - Not a Myth any Longer. Just a Dad.[/size]

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ReMeDy
Administrator

Posts: 12521
Joined: 2001-02-10

#11862 Posted on: 09/27/2001 02:37 AM

Totally agree with Jim.

Voltron i really don't see your logic in beleiving they should drop Registered Memory and Athlon MP line.

That's like saying, well Intel needs to drop the P4 Xeon line even though its the same P4. Just mean't for server use. Ummm They made MP athlons for server use. It was the features of Palamino core which made it a canidate for the server market. The P4 Xeon has minor changes. Eeprom support and etc. But it is the same P4, only smp capablities. Did anyone get aroused about that? No.

Now the registered memory conflict. Pulllease, AMD is building their rep for the server and workstation market by having stability at all means. With the Registered memory, they have less and less issues to deal with. Now you want to mix performance and stability in the same sentence. Well sacrifices have to be made. That means no overclocking(similiar to serverworks), no tweaking. Wanna overclock, go call abit. I even doubt Abit wants any overclocking options either as they never touched 8 layers before. So they want the samething amd wants. A better name for themselves. Once again, sacrifices have to be made. No fiddling with the bios and such.

Remember there are IT execs who need to buy up 30 to 60 DP servers, there is no room for tweaking and there is no room for mistakes such as pussy footing with unbuffered memory because some hobbyist thinks he or she wants extra performance gains.

Imagine if HOOZ was to pick up a 760MP to setup one of his servers at his job with a 1.3 Terabit Storage array. The 760MP is all setup, but guess what, its up 3 days later it begins crashing and acting eratic because of some memory issues of buffered and unbuffered conflict. This in case the company loses all its data Hmm Hooz could lose his job for not making a wise decision and AMD gets the boot. All because some hobbyist thinks there should be an option of memory configurations rather than stability out of the box for the market it was aimed at.

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Jemmott
Unregistered

#11863 Posted on: 09/27/2001 03:50 AM

Good review,

Jim & ReMeDy are right! Very well put btw.

The 760MP is oriented towards the workstation/enterprise buyer. My friend just took delivery of a Quad xeon Dell server at work. Anyone here wanna tell him that he should order a solution that uses/can use 2Gig of unbuffered ram/non-ecc ram?
I don't think so. His job depends on it.

Registered/ECC ddr is the price of admission. Everytime I see someone on this board complaining about the registered ram requirement, I find my self uttering the F word in disgust! :mad:

Comment

voltron
Master Dualie

Posts: 1254
Joined: 2000-12-22

#11864 Posted on: 09/27/2001 05:26 AM

You don't see, its very simple.

1)AMD isn't known for server premium prices for premium chips and they are hardly making any money that way now. Intel established that line but those chips also have more cache and other features which the MP lacks. Sure it performs better than the Athlon but not in the right arena.

AMD's best option is to go with 3 lines; Duron, AthlonXP, mobile Athlon or mobile AthlonXP.

2)AMD should work more with SiS because their technology is far better than Via's but with a few issues that could be resolved easy with AMD's help. Via also competes with AMD or wishes to so its not in AMD's best interest to stay with them as the primary chip partner.

Jemmott;

ECC doesn't offer that big of a performance plus. In fact it can have several negatives. If you buy high quality regular memory you will be fine.

I have been advising my mom on server hardware paths at her work where she is an IT manager. She does mostly software and code... not hardware. Their servers run great with my recommended hardware choices.

Comment

ReMeDy
Master Dualie

Posts: 12521
Joined: 2001-02-10

#11865 Posted on: 09/27/2001 06:06 AM

/bangs head on desk. Your not getting it Voltron, althought i love the way you defend your ground for discussion.

/me scoffs @ SiS. What has SiS done for AMD lately? Not a whole lot except push 65 dollar solution out the door for the consumer. Not enterprise.

AMD wants to put a nice dent into intels market share with a solid solution. No mistakes about it. No room for it. The market is slow right now as far as oem buying chips. Gateway dropped Amd this week, and IBM dropped them last month. The whole game is slow. No reason to concentrate on a slow market right now. Worrying about XP processors isn't the best idea right now. They have bigger fish to fry. Server fish. All the money is there waiting for them.

They can fight with intel for who has the highest GHZ but neither one of those arguments are getting them better noise in the DP arena.

AMD has their foot in the door now. Little to no RMA's have been done for bad QA with the Tyan Thun&tiger series. This is a good impact.

In short, you don't bring a knife to a gun fight and you don't goto war with rocks.

You bring the proper tools to build a reputation;

8 layers
64bit PCI slots
Top Tier Manufacs to build
The right southbridge (MSI, Asus hello)
Registered memory. for 3-5 years of stability and uptime.

Wanna goto war with anything less? You can, but who would take you seriously?

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Jim_
Administrator

Posts: 3464
Joined: 2000-03-15

#11866 Posted on: 09/27/2001 06:10 AM

Originally posted by voltron

1)AMD isn't known for server premium prices for premium chips and they are hardly making any money that way.

They aren't known for server premium prices? Of course not. This is their first true offering aimed at the server market (If you even say K6-3, I'll slap you).

Originally posted by voltron
2)AMD should work more with SiS because their technology is far better than Via's but with a few issues that could be resolved easy with AMD's help. Via also competes with AMD or wishes to so its not in AMD's best interest to stay with them as the primary chip partner.

Work with SiS? You're kidding right? I think AMD knows better then anyone how to create a chipset for their own processor.

Originally posted by voltron
I have been advising my mom on server hardware paths at her work where she is an IT manager. She does mostly software and code... not hardware. Their servers run great with my recommended hardware choices.

With all due respect, what on EARTH does this prove? One single company running servers using unbuffered memory without any problems. As Chris Rock once eloquently said "You could drive a car with your feet if you want to. That doesn't mean it's to be done."

You can't stop thinking as an enthusiast. It's unfortunate that you can't see the big picture from AMD's perspective instead of only your own.

Jim

[url="http://www.2cpu.com"][size=1]2CPU.com[/url] - Because two are always better than one! [url="http://www.jimkirk.org"]jimkirk.org[/url] - Not a Myth any Longer. Just a Dad.[/size]

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ReMeDy
Administrator

Posts: 12521
Joined: 2001-02-10

#11867 Posted on: 09/27/2001 06:17 AM

ROFLMAO@jim chris rock's voice is enough to think about

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JackieO
Editor - Accelenation.com

Posts: 308
Joined: 2000-06-20

#11868 Posted on: 09/27/2001 06:32 AM

I just want to point out to all the nay-sayers that unregistered RAM does work in the Tiger MP, so don't bitch and whine.. It on;y works in two banks, but still, the damn boards are for servers and workstations, not little Jimmy's Quake 3 rig...

JackieO Editor http://www.accelenation.com

Comment

ReMeDy
Editor - Accelenation.com

Posts: 12521
Joined: 2001-02-10

#11869 Posted on: 09/27/2001 06:40 AM

Kev, mister dreadlock

One editor i think it was lost circuits said that, the first 2 dimm theory is a myth. 2 sources say no(one of them being in our forum who tested it monday) and 2 sources say yes.

I wonder tyan has a funky batch out there that is capable of doing this.

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Jemmott
Unregistered

#11870 Posted on: 09/27/2001 07:51 AM

Voltron, I hope you did not mistake the frustrated tone in my last post as an attack on you, as it was not meant as such.
I am too old for such petty behavior

anyway.. It was my humble understanding that the registers on the Dimms reduced the electrical load on the memory circuitry thus providing a more stable / error-free environment. Exactly what you need for a server with large amounts of ram.

In the case of my friend, if 4000 students can't get their email & campus info, because he chose an unreliable server solution then :
my friend = has no job = fuct !

In the enterprise (reliability + support) = key.

To get back to the topic of the Tiger MP & 760MP, I once asked him if he would ever use a AMD solution, and he said yes! But only if it proved reliable & hand good vendor support.

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voltron
Master Dualie

Posts: 1254
Joined: 2000-12-22

#11871 Posted on: 09/27/2001 08:08 AM

I think people are forgetting that you guys are right only if AMD has the $ and time to continue on its path. However if you look at the news it doesn't, it must consolidate to survive.

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Jim_
Administrator

Posts: 3464
Joined: 2000-03-15

#11872 Posted on: 09/27/2001 08:39 AM

Sometimes I feel like I'm teaching Special Ed. I talk and talk and talk, make absolute sense, but the class either ignores me or doesn't understand me.

[url="http://www.2cpu.com"][size=1]2CPU.com[/url] - Because two are always better than one! [url="http://www.jimkirk.org"]jimkirk.org[/url] - Not a Myth any Longer. Just a Dad.[/size]

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BuyALambo
Administrator

Posts: 95
Joined: 2000-03-28

#11873 Posted on: 09/27/2001 08:41 AM

Do you feel like that teacher from Charlie Brown?

WA WA, WA WA WA

:confused:

Comment

Tester99
SMP Newbie

Posts: 21
Joined: 2000-10-10

#11874 Posted on: 09/27/2001 08:58 AM

There should be at least a beta BIOSto support unregistered DDR-RAM. In the beginning of the beta BIOS, a warning message can appear: "Experimental BIOS. Warning!!! Unapproved DDR memory brand detected. Plz use only&only Registered DDR DRAM with Crucial, Micron, and Corsair Brand memory. Usage of other memory types will result in instant void of guarantee!!!!! You've been warned."

Aah,...At least the plain Tiger MP should support it for a poor man WS. Aaw, c'moon. We're a bunch of responsible adult and i assume the majority will not use Beta stuff at work

Comment

ReMeDy
SMP Newbie

Posts: 12521
Joined: 2001-02-10

#11875 Posted on: 09/27/2001 09:12 AM

Poor? I find it hard to believe a 'poor' person can afford funds for 2 MP athlons and a a module of Registered DDR memory, then comes the board itself.

Poor is for the SiS 735 crowd.

The price of Registered DDR isn't much more than unbuffered. I think its like 10 dollars or somthing to that nature. In any event if you buy a high quality board why go half ass on memory? This is tyan we're talking about. They want stability, unlike their Tiger133a.

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Cobalt
SMP Newbie

Posts: 14
Joined: 2000-06-22

#11876 Posted on: 09/27/2001 09:38 AM

GOOD LORD...

This registered vs. unregistered debate is rediculous.

Prices as of right now at crucial.com for 256MB DDR DIMMS, with free fscking shipping:

$33.29 = CT3264Z265 DDR PC2100 ? CL=2.5 ? Unbuffered ? Non-parity ? 2.5V ? 32Meg x 64

$40.49 = CT3272Y265 DDR PC2100 ? CL=2.5 ? Registered ? ECC ? 2.5V ? 32Meg x 72

So you're all telling me that $7.20 is too much extra to spend to get better RAM? Good God that is petty. If you can drop the money for a Tiger MP (which I plan to do soon), spend the 7 bucks and get some quality RAM...

Remember, back in the day (not too long ago), it cost nearly 200 bucks for a 4MB SIMM...

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voltron
Master Dualie

Posts: 1254
Joined: 2000-12-22

#11877 Posted on: 09/27/2001 10:03 AM

Originally posted by Cobalt
GOOD LORD...

This registered vs. unregistered debate is rediculous.

Prices as of right now at crucial.com for 256MB DDR DIMMS, with free fscking shipping:

$33.29 = CT3264Z265 DDR PC2100 ? CL=2.5 ? Unbuffered ? Non-parity ? 2.5V ? 32Meg x 64

$40.49 = CT3272Y265 DDR PC2100 ? CL=2.5 ? Registered ? ECC ? 2.5V ? 32Meg x 72

So you're all telling me that $7.20 is too much extra to spend to get better RAM? Good God that is petty. If you can drop the money for a Tiger MP (which I plan to do soon), spend the 7 bucks and get some quality RAM...

Remember, back in the day (not too long ago), it cost nearly 200 bucks for a 4MB SIMM...

The debate wasn't just over that, Also registered with the same specs is slower than unregistered bear that in mind.

Really though I would like to know how the athlonxp does. I suspect it will make the athlonmp obsolete unless amd adds more cache to it.

Comment

ReMeDy
Master Dualie

Posts: 12521
Joined: 2001-02-10

#11878 Posted on: 09/27/2001 11:28 AM

What does cache have to do with the AthlonMP's performance when it is in fact a palamino core on the MP?

That core doesn't need more cache. Its fine where it is, which is the reason why they added cache coherency and better data prefetch to it in the first place.

I want you to show me a benchmark where ECC memory poses a poetential bottleneck against unbuffered dimms. Don't show me Quake3 SMP marks either. Show me some DBSM benchs and some video encoding.

If you can't show me that then all your beleif's are flawed from the time you type.

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Granite
Aspiring Duallie

Posts: 11
Joined: 2000-01-27

#11879 Posted on: 09/27/2001 02:47 PM

Those of you in "the know" know that the Camaro and Firebird are referred to as F-Bodies. Let's draw a comparison between F-Bodies and Athlons.

GM spent a lot of time and money engineering the F-Body for performance enthusiasts. Today, for a hair over $20k, you can go out and buy a Z-28 that does 0-60 in a hair over 5 seconds, high 12's in the Quarter Mile, tops out at around 160, and outhandles Ferrari's from a decade ago. Many improvements were made to satisfy enthusiasts, from bigger brakes to a 6-speed tranny.

What happened? Those same enthusiasts that bitched loudly at GM for not making the F-Body fast/badass enough didn't buy once the changes were made. Either the practicality of a sports car didn't work for them, or more likely, they were a bit older and wanted luxury with their performance, so they bought BMW's.

So, to make a long story short, GM is killing the F-Body because their SUV's sell better. Is it fair to enthusiasts? No. Is it good karma? No. Is it good business? Yes.

Let's compare the sports car buying segment with PC Enthusiasts, and the SUV segment with corporate IT buyers.

If AMD makes compromises in reliability, comfort, or compatibility simply to appease enthusiasts (who bitch a lot, but don't spend a lot of money as a whole), they'll end up building a product that won't sell to the IT crowd, which spends all the money.

Yes, we're passionate about our PC's. Yes, we value performance over anything else. But, we don't put enough money where our mouth is. Voltron, if AMD designed their next proc EXACTLY as you wanted, would you pay a $200 premium for it over a regular Athlon? Probably not. Even if you did, would you buy 50,000 of them? If so, we need to talk.

The sad truth is that companies have only one obligation: To make money for their stockholders. Doing something "cool" is only appropriate if it is the most profitable of all options.

Intel makes a lot of cash of the Xeon line, and they'll soon rake it in from Itanium. *WE* know the Xeon is pretty much just a P4 with a huge price premium, but since Intel says its for servers, corporate IT will buy it in their servers. If Dell came out with a new PowerEdge that ran P4's instead of Xeons, the Enterprise wouldn't touch it. Cost-conscious buyers would. While selling to small businesses makes Dell money, they'd much rather sell to the Enterprise.

Look at Seagate: They make a "special" Cheetah for Compaq that does nothing other than have a "Compaq" BIOS instead of a Seagate BIOS. It costs 3-5 times more than a Seagate drive with the EXACT same specs, which is indeed, the EXACT drive. Why do people buy it?

People don't. Corporate IT does. They buy it because Compaq says that they will ONLY support those drives.

Corporate IT places reliability above all else, and will pay an enormous premium for it. Why the hell else could Sun charge 2-300% more for their stuff than an Intel server that would perform similarly? Because Sun has a reputation of being more reliable.

Bottom line? AMD needs money more than enthusiasts. Why? Because in the end, we're just like F-Body "enthusiasts": We bitch, we moan, we complain that Chevy needs to put a 500 horse big block in the Z-28, and even if they did, we wouldn't buy nearly enough of them. Companies aren't in the business to coddle those who would act as cheerleaders for their product. They're in the business to make money.

"Never Take No For An Answer From Someone Who Doesn't Have The Authority To Say Yes."

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taco
Revolucionario de SMP

Posts: 115
Joined: 2001-06-10

#11880 Posted on: 09/28/2001 12:36 AM

Damn Granite you nailed it.

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dudeX
Aspiring Duallie

Posts: 55
Joined: 2000-06-02

#11881 Posted on: 09/28/2001 07:32 AM

I don't understand why people complain about Registered Memory.

Crucial has GREAT prices for Registered DDR DIMMS. It's like 5 bucks more. If you can afford Dual, you can afford an extra 5-50 dollars for premium memory.

Registered Memory has the benefit of being stable as well. turn on ECC and you got a pretty cool SMP platform.

Dude X

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Tiger MP grilled over at Anandtech

Posted by: dadmin on: 09/26/2001 06:51 PM [ Print | 29 comment(s) ]

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