Gigabyte GA-7PESH1 Review: A Dual Processor Motherboard through a Scientist’s Eyes
by Ian Cutress on January 5, 2013 10:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
- Gigabyte
- C602
Gigabyte GA-7PESH1 Software
Typically when a system integrator buys a server motherboard from Gigabyte, a full retail package comes with it including manuals, utility CDs and SATA cables. Gigabyte have told me that this will be improved in the future, with SAS cables, header accessories and GPU bridges for CF/SLI. But due to the nature of my review sample, there was no retail package as such. When I received a sample from Gigabyte, there was no retail box with extras, nor were there driver CDs or a user guide and manual. Good job then that all these can be found on the Gigabyte website under the download section for the GA-7PESH1. In my case, this involves downloading the Intel .inf files, the ASPEED 2300 drivers, and the Intel LAN drivers. Also available on the website are the LSI SAS RAID drivers, and the SATA RAID driver.
When it comes to software available to download, the river has run dry. There is literally not one piece of software available to the user – nothing relating to monitoring, or fan controls or the like. The only thing that approaches a software tool is the Advocent Server Management Interface, which is accessed via the browser of another computer connected to the same network when the system has the third server management NIC connection activated.
When the system is connected to the power supply, and the power supply is switched on, the motherboard takes around 30 seconds to prepare itself before the power button on the board itself can be pushed. There is a green light physically on the board that turns from a solid light to a flashing light when this button can be pushed - the board then takes another 60 seconds or so to POST. During this intermediate state when the light is flashing, the server management software can be accessed through the web interface.
The default username and password are admin and password for this interface, and when logged in we get a series of options relating to the management of the motherboard:
The interface implements a level of security in accessing the management software, as well as keeping track of valid user accounts, web server settings, and active interface sessions.
The software also provides options to update the firmware, and to offer full control as to the on/off state of the motherboard with access to all voltages, fan speeds and temperatures the software has access to.
The system log helps identify when sensors are tripped (such as temperature and fans) as well as failed boots and software events.
Both Java KVM and Have VM environments are supported, with options relating to these in the corresponding menus.
It should also be noted that during testing, we found the system to be unforgiving when changing discrete GPUs. If an OS was installed while attached to a GTX580 and NVIDIA drivers were installed, the system would not boot if the GTX580 was removed and a HD7970 was put in its place. The same thing happens if the OS is installed under the HD7970 and the AMD drivers installed.
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mayankleoboy1 - Saturday, January 5, 2013 - link
Ian :How much difference do you think Xeon Phi will make in these very different type of Computations?
Will buying a Xeon Phi "pay itself out" as you said in the above comments ? (or is xeon phi linux only ?)
IanCutress - Saturday, January 5, 2013 - link
As far as we know, Xeon Phi will be released for Linux only to begin with. I have friends who have been able to play with them so far, and getting 700 GFlops+ in DGEMM in double precision.It always comes down to the algorithm with these codes. It seems that if you have single precision code that doesn't mind being in a 2P system, then the GPU route may be preferable. If not, then Phi is an option. I'm hoping to get my hands on one inside H1 this year. I just have to get my hands dirty with Linux as well.
In terms of the codes used here, if I were to guess, the Implicit Finite Difference would probably benefit a lot from Xeon Phi if it works the way I hope it does.
Ian
mayankleoboy1 - Saturday, January 5, 2013 - link
Rather stupid question, but have you tried using PGO builds ?Also, do you build the code with the default optimizations, or use the MSVC equivalent switch of -O2 ?
IanCutress - Saturday, January 5, 2013 - link
Using Visual Studio 2012, all the speed optimisations were enabled including /GL, /O2, /Ot and /fp:fast. For each part I analysed the sections which took the most time using the Performance Analysis tools, and tried to avoid the long memory reads. Hence the Ex-FD uses an iterative loading which actually boosts speed by a good 20-30% than without it.Ian
Klimax - Sunday, January 6, 2013 - link
Interesting. Why not Ox (all optimisations on)BTW: Do you have access to VTune?
IanCutress - Wednesday, January 9, 2013 - link
In case /Ox performs an optimisation for memory over speed in an attempt to balance optimisations. As speed is priority #1, it made more sense to me to optimise for that only. If VS2012 gave more options, I'd adjust accordingly.Never heard of VTune, but I did use the Performance Analysis tools in VS2012 to optimise certain parts of the code.
Ian
Beenthere - Saturday, January 5, 2013 - link
Business and mobo makers do not use 2P mobos to get high benches or performance bragging rights per se. These systems are build for bullet-proof reliability and up time. It does no good for a mobo/system to be 3% faster if it crashes while running a month long analysis. These 2P mobos are about 100% reliability, something rarely found in a enthusiasts mobo.Enterprise mobos are rarely sold by enthusiast marketeers. Newegg has a few enterprise mobos listed primarily because they have started a Newegg Biz website to expand their revenue streams. They don't have much in the line of true enterprise hardware however. It's a token offering because manufacturers are not likely to support whoring of the enterprise market lest they lose all of their quality vendors who provide customer technical product support.
psyq321 - Sunday, January 6, 2013 - link
Actually, ASUS Z9PE-D8 WS allows for some overclocking capabilities.CPU overclocking with 2P/4P Xeon E5 (2600/4600 sequence) is a no-go because Intel explicitly did not store proper ICC data so it is impossible to manipulate BCLK meaningfully (set the different ratios). Oh, and the multipliers are locked :)
However, Z9PE D8 WS allows memory overclocking - I managed to run 100% 24/7 stable with the Samsung ECC 1600 DDR3 "low voltage" RAM (16 GB sticks) - just switching memory voltage from 1.35v to 1.55v allows overclocking memory from 1600 MHz to 2133 MHz.
Why would anyone want to do that in a scientific or b2b environment? The only usage I can see are applications where memory I/O is the biggest bottleneck. Large-scale neural simulations are one of such applications, and getting 10 GB/s more of memory I/O can help a lot - especially if stable.
Also, low-latency trading applications are known to benefit from overclocked hardware and it is, in fact, used in production environment.
Modern hardware does tend to have larger headrooms between the manufacturer's operating point and the limits - if the benefit from an overclock is more benefitial than work invested to find the point where the results become unstable - and, of course, shorter life span of the hardware - then, it can be used. And it is used, for example in some trading scenarios.
Drazick - Saturday, January 5, 2013 - link
Will You, Please, Update Your Google+ Page?It would be much easier to follow you there.
Ryan Smith - Saturday, January 5, 2013 - link
Our Google+ page is just a token page. If you wish to follow us then your best option is to follow our RSS feeds.