Author: Mike Byrne
Date: 19:42:43 02/19/05
is a beautiful thing running on an Opteron... it is actually faster if don't tun the FSB at max setting -- must be impacted negatively by the auto memory timings. On my machinem FSB ==225 appears to be the best setting. With big hashtables and a clean start, it cranks through the crafty bench command in 19 seconds with 4.136M nps. It is about 4x faster than my old Dell dual 1.7 Ghz Xeon. Crafty v19.19 (2 cpus) White(1): hashp 96M pawn hash table memory = 96M bytes. White(1): mt 2 max threads set to 2 White(1): info Crafty version 19.19 hash table memory = 384M bytes. pawn hash table memory = 96M bytes. EGTB cache memory = 48M bytes. 60 moves/30 minutes 0 seconds primary time control 30 moves/15 minutes 0 seconds secondary time control frequency (freq)..............1.00 static evaluation (eval)......0.50 learning (learn)..............1.00 CAP (CAP score)...............0.70 White(1): bench Running benchmark. . . ...... Total nodes: 78583303 Raw nodes per second: 4135963 Total elapsed time: 19 SMP time-to-ply measurement: 33.684211 White(1): I have spent this weekend just basically tweaking the hardware -- not only for performance, but for noise control and cooling. High Performance means more heat less cool. Lower noise means more heat less cool. Less cool means lower performance. So these 3 objective are not in sync. I have replaced every fan except for the power supply --and I'm thinking about that replacing that one as well. The case came with an air duct on the side panel and a telecsopic tunnel that bore straight to the cpu area. I noticed a 60MM fan could fit perfectly on the inside airduct, but then the telescopic tunnel extended too deeply into the case. So I added fan to the inside of the air duct and then cut the tunnel in half and attached that to the fan. I use this fan to blow cool air in , and the two rear fans are blowing out. This setup is keeping the system temperture in the low 30's C (below the stated 45 C requirement - which does sound high to me). CPU #1 is running about 47C and the CPU # 2 is running about 52 (this is while both CPUs are going full throttle). The #1 CPU is cooler because it has a better heatsink/fan combinatin and addition the tunnel is really aimed more the #1 CPU than anything else. The design of the MSI motherboard does not permit a better heatsink/fan combination than what was delivered with the board. The original heatsink/fan combination ran the #2 CPU at in the 45 C area. But the fan attached was a 6800 rpm screamer that was way too loud for home use. So , in that case, I degraded the cooling quality by replacing the fan with lower dbl rating but also with less cooling ability. Initially, CPU #2 was running at 57 C with this setup. Although within the 70 C tolerance that AMD has for the Opteron, I was not comfortable running that close to tolerance. Adding the fan to the side panel to blow cooler air in the tunnel, dropped both CPUs about 5 C. The real test of course is to run it playing chess for several days with this configuration and make sure it is stable. My only other comment so far is that Windows Xp 64 is very stable and cleary very responsive. I have not added/tried many programs yet - but both Shredder 8 (Fritz GUI) and Chessbase are running smooth. Shredder is about 3x faster on this machine faster than the 1.7 Ghz Xeon. I also have Winboard 64 bit installed. No other chess programs have been added thus far. If anybody does get an Opteron, I strongly suggest the Tyan motherboard sight unseen. The MSI motherboard has very small form factor and was really intended for industrial use ( and that is also the reason why the fans are so loud ). MSi supplies two totally different heat sink/fan combination with this dual mother board and it does not use the standard Opteron clips. In addition, the motherboard is rated as type "A" equipment by the FCC which means it is not intended for home use and it if it does cause radio frequency interference, the user is obligated to correct the interference at their own expense. Best, Michael
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