New Intel P4 800 MHZ FSB/PCI Express Mobo - Opinions Please

[bradl]

At work we happened to take possession of a brand new computer built by the IT dept. It consists of an Intel D915PCY (http://www.intel.com/design/motherbd/cy/index.htm)motherboard with 2GB of RAM and a 3.X P4 CPU (whatever the latest is). This board has PCI-Express 16x for graphics and 1x for components, 4 32-bit PCI slots as well as an 800 MHZ FSB.

I am thinking about putting my new VT4 Pro board in this until we purchase a new Xeon system (could be months...). How do you think it will perform?

Not having Xeons, dual CPU's, 64-bit bus or SCSI sounds pretty bad at the moment. It does have two SATA drives stripped together for the video drive. I can add some components to this system if it would help (SCSI or more drives, etc). I assume there isn't any PCI-Express SCSI boards yet and if they are coming would they fit the tiny 1x slots and how would it perform?

Thanks,

Brad

Form Factor:
ATX (12.00 inches by 9.60 inches [304.80 mm by 243.84 mm])

Processor:
Support for an Intel® Pentium® 4 Extreme Edition processor in an LGA775 socket with a 800 MHz system bus
Support for an Intel® Pentium® 4 processor in an LGA775 socket with a 533/800 MHz system bus
Support for an Intel® Celeron® D processor in an LGA775 socket with a 533 MHz system bus

Memory:
Four 240-pin DDR2 SDRAM DIMM sockets
Support for DDR2 533 MHz and DDR2 400 MHz DIMMs
Support for up to 4 GB of system memory

Chipset:
Intel® 915P Chipset

I/O Control:
LPC Bus I/O controller

Audio:
Intel® High Definition Audio subsystem using the Realtek ALC860 audio codec.

Video:
One PCI Express* x16 bus add-in card connector

LAN Support:
10/100 Mbits/sec LAN subsystem using the Intel® 82562EZ Platform LAN Connect (PLC) device

Peripheral Interfaces:
Eight USB 2.0 ports
One serial port
One parallel port
Four Serial ATA interfaces
One Parallel ATA IDE interface with UDMA 33, ATA-66/100 support
One diskette drive interface
PS/2* keyboard and mouse ports

Expansion Capabilities:
Four PCI Conventional* bus connectors
Two PCI Express x1 bus add-in card connectors
One PCI Express x16 bus add-in card connector

[Bobt]

This is a cool chart here.
PCI Exporess 1 times is ~2 times as fast as existing PCI slots.
And PCIExpress 16x is ~8 times as fast as AGP was. So dont let
the size fool you :D

PCI 132 MB/s
AGP 8X 2,100 MB/s
PCI Express 1x 250 [500]* MB/s
PCI Express 2x 500 [1000]* MB/s
PCI Express 4x 1000 [2000]* MB/s
PCI Express 8x 2000 [4000]* MB/s
PCI Express 16x 4000 [8000]* MB/s
PCI Express 32x 8000 [16000]* MB/s
IDE (ATA100) 100 MB/s
IDE (ATA133) 133 MB/s
SATA 150 MB/s
Gigabit Ethernet 125 MB/s
IEEE1394B [firewire] 100 MB/s

[bradl]

So.... PCI Express 1x can theroretically out perform 64-bit PCI SCSI controller?

Are there any controllers on the market yet. I went to Adaptec site and I didn't see any...?

[PIZAZZ]

So.... PCI Express 1x can theroretically out perform 64-bit PCI SCSI controller?

Are there any controllers on the market yet. I went to Adaptec site and I didn't see any...?

Hey Brad,

That system will do pretty well as long as you are not doing too much layering and similar work. Make sure the 2 SATA drives are striped in the OS not the onboard RAID. For some reason you get a little more bandwidth that way. We have a very similar board in one of our POC systems and it works pretty well. Nothing like a Dual Xeon and a slew of SCSI drives. So if you are looking for something to get by with for a little while then it should work pretty well.

It will be nice when the PCI-Express storage cards come out. That will effectively be the same thing as having a separate 64bit bus for storage like we do in the Xeon systems. For most applications the separate 64bit storage buss is the primary reason for going to the Xeon based motherboards. The other reason is definitely the onboard SCSI adapter. The PCIExpress route will totally change those advantages. Of course you will top out the throughput on 2 SATA drives fairly fast no matter what adapter you use. The onboard adapter on some motherboards are separate from the main PCI bus. So the bus saturation with the VT card and storage being on one bus is most likely better in the new motherboards with the SATA connectors onboard.

[Bobt]

I think its so funny that tech has really caught up.
What are we talking about here.. Well for X dollars
you can do 3 or 4 layers of uncompressed video and for
X dollars more you can do 6 or 7. WOOOO!...
Remember not too long ago getting 2 was uphill. Gotta
love tech.

Bob

[David]

"SAS technology extends SCSI interface solutions beyond Ultra320 to the next-generation Direct Attach Storage (DAS) server and workstation markets while retaining device-level backward compatibility. SAS physical layer is compatible with Serial ATA, which enables users to establish storage systems with either SATA or SAS hard disk drives, or a combination of both. Boasting features that liberate SCSI from its parallel predecessor, Serial Attached SCSI delivers new levels of speed and connectivity while retaining the functionality and reliability of SCSI."

SAS hard drives will initially operate at 3Gb/sec, which-because SAS is full duplex-translates to a data transfer rate of 300MB/sec in each direction. The SAS roadmap takes the data transfer rate to 6Gb/sec in its next release and to 12Gb/sec in 2012. Meanwhile, Serial ATA (SATA) is also expected to increase in speed and will continue to be the low-cost, high-density solution for consumer and low-end enterprise products.

With a Dual Opteron or Xeon(800GB FSB) and SAS things are going to get interesting!

[David]

Maybe Toaster will work like it was originally designed to then, no stutter all streams realtime(no green light problem), forget smart rendering just "rendering." Wishful thinking because by then people will be trying to do 15 HD streams realtime. Enough is never enough!!!

[David]

No Responce.

Serial Attached SCSI is a big technological advancement!

300MB/sec in both directions and it uses the same connectors as serial ATA!

Toaster should benefit greatly!

[bradl]

I'm excited about it. Still not sure how or when it will become available. Adaptec has several white papers...

Will it 'attach' to this MOBO?