Is there a modern BP6 equivalent?

Neil305 · Post by **Neil305** » Thu Apr 22, 2004 10:03 am

I've got an old BP6 system that I've used for years. 6 months ago I finally upgraded to an nForce2 Athlon 2500 system. Whilst the Athlon is undenaibly quicker for most things, I really miss the advantages of a dual CPU system.

Is there a modern equivalent cheap dual CPU board available?

BCN · Post by **BCN** » Thu Apr 22, 2004 11:10 am

there is ASUS dual board for xeons on canterwood (875P) chipset, it is not cheap, but it is awesome, I guess.

there are boards for PIII-S, they are around 100€ but the PIII-S are expensive... I would go with asus if dual and FAST.

at the moemnt I will stick with my BP6 and P4

Dave Rave · Post by **Dave Rave** » Fri Apr 23, 2004 7:25 am

if you'd bought a Piv HT, you'd be dual cpuing already.
might be twice the cost of an Athlon, but it's twice the cpu.

BCN · Post by **BCN** » Fri Apr 23, 2004 6:35 pm

virtual dual though, but better than one

Neil305 · Post by **Neil305** » Sat Apr 24, 2004 2:12 am

Fair point about the P4, but does it give you the actual benefits of dual processors, or just some of them and only partially?

The sort of thing I really like about my BP6 is when doing some task that needs not to be interrupted, I an isolate it on a CPU (with SMP seesaw). I can then cary on with anything else on the PC knowing that my other task will not be affected.

With a P4 HT would this still hold true? Do it's 2 "virtual" processors get 50% of the resources each, or if there's something processor intensive going on on one of them does it not impact the other?

Holodeck2 · Post by **Holodeck2** » Sat Apr 24, 2004 3:13 am

The popular and reasonally priced dual processing is in Athlon MP systems
look for MP motherboards offered by various venders, I think MSI has a good one or Iwill.
Google! you can also mod an athlon XP in to an MP by connecting couple lines to save some cost.

I'm saving up for my dual opteron workstation

PIMP!

Dave Rave · Post by **Dave Rave** » Sat Apr 24, 2004 5:47 am

any dual cpu system is going to cost mega for the board.
my xeon cost aud$500
and the cpus were over $300, I think it was 700 for the two

a good dual athlon MP (Tyan 2466) will be aud$350+
a plain athlon or piv board can be had for a bit over $100

then one MP cpu is more than $200 for each
if you want some power, a cheap board and a Piv HT gets it to you.

My HT runs two setis fine, 3hrs 50 instead of 3hrs 10 on my non HT
but it's a dual cpu. just like my xeons
and my bp6s

hyperspace · Post by **hyperspace** » Sat Apr 24, 2004 6:34 am

K7D Master L

Click on pix for specs

I paided $160 for it. That was some time ago. These may be cheaper, now. Only real downside is, it uses registered RAM.

Dave Rave · Post by **Dave Rave** » Sat Apr 24, 2004 3:15 pm

the K7D Master is listed currently at aud$499 rrp (shop buy price $299 ex gst)
a value gigabyte 800fsb piv board is under aud$130

big bickies !!

Wolfram · Post by **Wolfram** » Sun Apr 25, 2004 7:25 am

hyperspace wrote:K7D Master L

Click on pix for specs

I paided $160 for it. That was some time ago. These may be cheaper, now. Only real downside is, it uses registered RAM.

Well, you can use up to two sticks of unregistered and non-ECC-RAM. Officially supported. I do on my K7D, one 512 and one 256MB stick of el-cheapo-no-name.

And I got an unused replacement board for 130 Euros (~same in USD) from Ebay. Have seen used boards for as low as 80 Euros.

hyperspace · Post by **hyperspace** » Sun Apr 25, 2004 7:30 am

Xcellent news, Wolfram !

Thanx for the information. Time to find some RAM.

Billl · Post by **Billl** » Mon Nov 15, 2004 5:10 am

Neil305 wrote:Fair point about the P4, but does it give you the actual benefits of dual processors, or just some of them and only partially?

The sort of thing I really like about my BP6 is when doing some task that needs not to be interrupted, I an isolate it on a CPU (with SMP seesaw). I can then cary on with anything else on the PC knowing that my other task will not be affected.

With a P4 HT would this still hold true? Do it's 2 "virtual" processors get 50% of the resources each, or if there's something processor intensive going on on one of them does it not impact the other?

I can tell you that I have two AMD 2800+ systems and a P4 2.8C 800 MHZ with hyper threading enabled. Running at 3300 MHZ. The P4 is exactly twice as fast at crunching Seti as the AMD's. It literally produces as many work units per day as both AMD's do together. Only differences in the systems are memory size ( and of course mother boards

). The P4 has 1 GIG versus the AMD's with 500 MEGS. The P4 is so damn fast that I rarely stop crunching to play games! It truely is an awesome processor. In my opinion it's well worth the extra money spent. As to your question of assigning CPU's to a task I see no reason you couldn't do so, I assigned one cpu for each work unit I crunch ( I crunch 2 work units at once on all 3 machines). The OS actually thinks there are 2 cpus. I just pulled up task manager and assigned the process to a cpu. It was as simple as that.

Billl

Dave Rave · Post by **Dave Rave** » Mon Nov 15, 2004 7:21 am

I can add some more to that....
apart from I've already mentioned (elsewhere?) that my 2.4g and 2.4g HT do different amounts of seti, they're now both boincing.
and the RAC for the single is still higher than the HT cpu. this, I can't figure out yet.
I will have to browse through the results section to see what RAC I've been getting

RRLedford · Post by **RRLedford** » Wed Nov 17, 2004 2:56 am

The ASUS dual xenon board comes closest to your term "modern" (USB 2.0, DDR memory etc.) . They also have a dedicated site like the BP6.COM site.
I got one of the MSI-9105 Dual P3 boards for $140 with integrated LAN + Promise RAID ATA100 just before they all disappeared. No USB 2.0 with it though. With a Geforce FX5900 card and 1GB of RAM, over the last year, this system has stood up to some heavy gaming from (3) teenage boys & friends (many with faster single P4 systems that still suck by comparison).

purrkur · Post by **purrkur** » Wed Nov 17, 2004 12:25 pm

Hmmm. My .05c...

If we are talking about a "modern BP6" then we need to take a look at what the BP6 was at the time it was released. It was a board that allowed enthusiasts to run a dual CPU setup without going broke. So basically it was an enthusiast board on a budget. I don't think that boards for dual XEON processors fit into that category.

I think that the best bang for the buck when it comes to dual cpu setup today is buying a board for two Athlon MP processors. I would still consider Intel based dual boards as well as Opteron based boards to be too expensive for the average enthusiast today. I also think that when looking into the future, dual Opteron boards will give you most bang for the buck.

All of this might also change when dual core CPU's start showing up. If they are not priced to high heaven then I would assume that demand for real dual cpu setups would decrease.

Billl · Post by **Billl** » Sat Nov 27, 2004 6:17 am

I still stand by what I said earlier. And I agree with Purrkur to a point. Like the BP6, the P4 offers the most bang for the buck for the enthusiast. It certainly isn't going to replace a true dual processor board for performance in a server. But it does come damn close. The dual Athlon MP's may actually be faster though I'd have to see it to believe it. Also consider this, the P4 is almost always very overclockable. This gives it another real advantage. My system is running at 3.3GHZ! I seriously doubt you will ever get that kind of overclock out of the Athol MP. This isn't a knock against the MP. AMD has always binned their CPU's tighter then Intel. Thus you don't have the head room to overclock. I'd be willing to put my P4 2.8C up against an AMD 2800 MP system anytime. I'd have to see it out perform this machine to believe it.

Billl

Wolfram · Post by **Wolfram** » Sat Nov 27, 2004 11:23 am

Billl wrote:Also consider this, the P4 is almost always very overclockable. This gives it another real advantage. My system is running at 3.3GHZ! I seriously doubt you will ever get that kind of overclock out of the Athol MP. This isn't a knock against the MP. AMD has always binned their CPU's tighter then Intel. Thus you don't have the head room to overclock.

But at least Athlon XPs clearly have a better price/performance ratio. I run an overclocked Duron 1600 in my gaming PC, with full L2 cache enabled (so it's an XP Thoroughbred now), at 2320 Mhz, and I suspect it's still limited by the motherboard or the RAM (Shuttle AK32A / KT266A and two no-name DDR sticks at 145 Mhz FSB with fastest timings). That is with a cheap Thermalright TR2M3 air cooler. That CPU cost 45 Euros in October 2003.

In another PC I have two modified XP 1800+ on an MSI K7D. If there is an equivalent for the BP6 now, then it would be this combination, even better/cheaper with Applebred Durons modded to MPs, but that doesn't seem to be possible anymore, you can't enable the full cache anymore on the "superlocked" types introduced in late fall 2003.

The BP6 is still more original because it was intentionally designed to use CPUs the were not meant to run on dual boards by the manufacturer.

Like always, in a given product line of CPUs the lowest rated models are the best overclockers. The XPs were great because the multiplier could be unlocked. The mobile XPs are said to be even better overclockers. Unfortunately it's not that easy with Athlon64s.

Right now, the Athlon64/FX seems to be the best gaming CPU, while the high end P4s are better for everything else.

BP6.Com

Is there a modern BP6 equivalent?

Is there a modern BP6 equivalent?

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