I've noticed theres been some sudden intrest it seems like on this forum for these kinds of boards. I can't figure out why but I guess theyre still more intresting than the stuff of today.

Warlord wrote on 2023-07-02, 12:17:

I've noticed theres been some sudden intrest it seems like on this forum for these kinds of boards. I can't figure out why but I guess theyre still more intresting than the stuff of today.

My primary interest as far as computer collecting is concerned has for a long time been heavily focused on the likes of SGI, SUN and DEC. So in my case it only makes sense to have more interest in the workstation class of PC.

This type of system is a hell of a lot more interesting than the stuff of today, in my opinion!

As far as a P4-type system goes, a board such as this one will be hard to beat, as it’s running two of the fastest net burst cores available (3.8GHz was the official limit for the P4 and over locking doesn’t interest me at all), and features all the peripherals you could wish for!

Warlord wrote on 2023-07-02, 12:17:

I've noticed theres been some sudden intrest it seems like on this forum for these kinds of boards.

Maybe I kicked that off with my SuperMicro quad-socket board. 😀

I actually got into socket 604 boards, because I got a Tyan Thunder i7501 Pro for just 10€ and then started to look into what other socket 604 stuff is out there.

The i7501Pro can only take 32bit Xeons, which makes it a lot more limited than this board here. It also doesn't have PCI Express.
AntiX Linux works great on it, though.

What also helps with collecting socket 604 hardware is that at the moment, all of this stuff is still very cheap. A lot of these old server boards basically just go into the trash, unless someone picks them up.

schmatzler wrote on 2023-07-02, 13:38:

Maybe I kicked that off with my SuperMicro quad-socket board. 😀

Is this similar to your quad socket board?

Irinikus wrote on 2023-07-02, 09:24:

I've just committed to purchasing this brand new motherboard, including 2 x 3.8GHz Socket 604 Xeon's with copper coolers, 8GB E […]
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I've just committed to purchasing this brand new motherboard, including 2 x 3.8GHz Socket 604 Xeon's with copper coolers, 8GB ECC RAM, an Adaptec 2420SA SATA II Raid card and an Adaptec 2020ZCR SCSI RAID add-on card (Basically a one-stop-shop!!!)

The motherboard has the following specs:

I have an unused GTX 690 sitting doing nothing on my desk, so I'll fit it into this system and have SLI on a "P4 System" (I know that the GTX 690 will be completely bottlenecked by the PCIe gen 1.0 slot as well as the net burst CPU microarchitecture, but it will be a killer system in its own right none the less!!!)

My Supermicro P4DC6+ /Dual XEON /Socket 603 /RDRAM Build is going to have to take a backseat to this build and this one's going to be far more exiting!

Looks like another nice setup you've got on the way - by coincidence I'm just about to make my latest submission to The Retro Web of a board from the same chipset era...a Supermicro X6DH8-XG2

Its Lindenhurst chipset only supports Noconas & Irwindales - as your board has the top end Tumwater chipset, does it have BIOS support for dual-core Paxvilles?

Seems I'm somewhat similar to yourself, with a growing collection of dual 603 / 604 boards 😀

Irinikus wrote on 2023-07-02, 13:59:

Is this similar to your quad socket board?

That is a very beautiful board! Which model is it?

schmatzler wrote on 2023-07-02, 14:10:

That is a very beautiful board! Which model is it?

Tyan S4881G2NR Thunder (S4881) Server Motherboard

A bit off topic, but this is a truly beautiful P4 motherboard! (Way ahead of its time, but not a Christmas-tree like todays boards!)

I think I'm going to be needing one of these!!! (You'd have to be extremely careful as to aesthetics of the cards you choose to slot, not to destroy its character!)

PC Hoarder Patrol wrote on 2023-07-02, 14:03:

Looks like another nice setup you've got on the way - by coincidence I'm just about to make my latest submission to The Retro We […]
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Looks like another nice setup you've got on the way - by coincidence I'm just about to make my latest submission to The Retro Web of a board from the same chipset era...a Supermicro X6DH8-XG2

Supermicro X6DH8-XG2 Datasheet.pdf

Its Lindenhurst chipset only supports Noconas & Irwindales - as your board has the top end Tumwater chipset, does it have BIOS support for dual-core Paxvilles?

Seems I'm somewhat similar to yourself, with a growing collection of dual 603 / 604 boards 😀

That's indeed also a pretty cool board! (It's only weak point is the fact that it only features 8x PCIe in a 16x PCIe slot!)

I don't know whether the TYAN will support dual-core Paxvilles!

The only problem with the dual-core Paxvilles is that they clock at a considerably lower speed, meaning that the individual core performance will be drastically reduced. I intend to try Crysis on this system and Crysis could only leverage 2 cores. I'm going to start out with my GTX 690, but may consider slotting a TITAN Z for shits and giggles! (This is simply a curiosity exercise!)

The TYAN has a true 16x PCIe slot:

This video shows the performance of a modern GPU in a single P4 @ 3.8GHz 32-bit machine to be rather dismal:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NGmF1ucjWNw

It will be very interesting to see how a dual 64-bit Xeon operating @ 3.8GHz compares (I would imagine that it would have a performance similar to a 2.4 GHz Core2Duo)

I have placed the GTX 690 into a 3GHz Core2Duo before and its performance was actually quite respectable, all considered!

This two video series shows a dual 3.8GHz P4 Xeon, equipped with 16GB RAM and an Nvidia 7950GX2 running Crysis, and the performance @ medium settings surprised me. (I can't wait to see what a GTX 690 can do!)

Part 1: (Shows the machine and the upgrade process)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m3uduzIzK9o

Part 2: (Shows windows installation and benchmarks including Crysis)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iIbEVc3KMQg

I used a 3.8 p4 xeon as my daily driver during the great AGP/PCI-E transition.

It ran like a hot damn, and was an excellent minecraft server in the early days. I still have all the parts, and I have "plans" to rebuild it in the future. This was the days where everything was still single core, and 3800 mega-rip em's was the way to go.

Once multi core became "mainstream", I shelved the old bird. And opterons were really good and a better deal. I was lucky to have Intel Sample chips I got for a song on ebay. This was also before everyone else realized ES chips existed and the price was 1/10th of retail.

this is my baby: https://www.supermicro.com/products/archive/m … rboard/x6dae-g2

That’s also a very cool board with full 16x PCIe support! 😀

It will be very interesting to see how the bottlenecking affects the performance of the GTX 690 in this system. (The SLI setup may render the system very jerky (Due to micro stutter), but I won't know until I try it!)

I may have to go through a number of cards to see where the sweet spot sits.

I still have my 8800 GTX fitted with a Thermalrite HR-03 Plus, which I purchased in 2006: (This may indeed end up being the best suited card for this system!)

I remember having a server board in 2008 and I "borrowed" some GTX 260's from my friends to setup a quad sli setup with dual cpus.

total waste.

thankfully I only borrowed the cards to see what it would be like.

The 8800 GTX also operates on a 16X PCIe 1.0 interface, meaning that it shouldn't suffer any bottlenecking by the PCIe interface on the board:

luckybob wrote on 2023-07-06, 15:39:

I remember having a server board in 2008 and I "borrowed" some GTX 260's from my friends to setup a quad sli setup with dual cpus.

total waste.

thankfully I only borrowed the cards to see what it would be like.

That's my thought exactly! And the 8800GTX is also more period specific!

In the video demonstrating Crysis on such a system, I noticed that the demonstrated system suffered from micro stutter on the 7950GX2 when the settings were turned from medium to high!!!

Irinikus wrote on 2023-07-06, 15:40:

luckybob wrote on 2023-07-06, 15:39:

I remember having a server board in 2008 and I "borrowed" some GTX 260's from my friends to setup a quad sli setup with dual cpus.

total waste.

thankfully I only borrowed the cards to see what it would be like.

That's my thought exactly! And the 8800GTX is also more period specific!

In the video demonstrating Crysis on such a system, I noticed that the demonstrated system suffered from micro stutter on the 7950GX2 when the settings were turned from medium to high!!!

I tried quad GPU setup on several occasions . And to be honest, scaling was super disappointing.
But very fun nonetheless

acl wrote on 2023-07-06, 16:49:

I tried quad GPU setup on several occasions . And to be honest, scaling was super disappointing.
But very fun nonetheless

This was my Quad GPU setup: (2 x XFX HD 5970 Black Editions)

Cable management was a nightmare, as the Power Supply wasn't modular and the Cooler Master Cosmos wasn't designed for effective cable management!

I've done it once and do not recommend it! (I often ended up disabling the second card to avoid negative scaling!)