Asus PC-DL Deluxe: 875 with Dual Xeons
by Wesley Fink on September 6, 2003 12:06 AM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
Final Words
The Asus PC-DL is a product that both excites and disappoints. As the first in what will likely be a long line of Xeon 875 boards, we are very excited about where this branch of development is headed. There is a lot of promise in the prospect of Dual 800FSB Xeons. It is also easy to get excited about the idea of a future PC-DL BIOS upgrade with the full range of tweaking and overclocking options we have today on another Asus Canterwood board — the P4C800-E. When we see how well the Dual-Xeon is executed and how stable the current PC-DL is with two Xeon 3.06 1Mb Cache processors, it makes us hopeful about what is coming.On the other hand, if we take a close look at the current PC-DL as it exists today, it is hard not to be disappointed. Overclocking options consist of only a very modest FSB adjustment and multipliers that can only be adjusted down on 3.06 processors. There is no PCI/AGP lock, so even these modest options perform poorly. Perhaps worst of all, the modest overclocking options are turned off when any SATA drive is attached to the PC-DL and SATA is enabled in the BIOS.
We also have reservations about where Dual Xeon will really go in the competition with Opteron and Athlon64. There are things that could be better in the execution of Opteron/Athlon64, but one area no one questions is that Opteron scales much better than Xeon. As Anand Shimpi showed in his April launch review of the Opteron, the Opteron CPU gains almost 24% in performance in the move from 1 to 2 CPUs while Xeon gains just 11.4%.
With a single Opteron 2.0GHz already very competitive in most areas with this Dual-Xeon setup, we would expect Dual Opteron to dramatically out-perform this Dual-Xeon setup as we move ahead.
In the things it does very well — Media Encoding and Multimedia Content Creation — the Asus PC-DL is easy to recommend. Also, as a fast workstation or a cost-effective SOHO server, the PC-DL would be a very good choice. However, as a gaming platform or Computer Enthusiasts “brag” box, the Asus PC-DL has a long way to go. The promise is certainly there, but the hardware needs to evolve with Xeons competitive with current Pentium 4 processors. Asus also needs to work on the tweaking and overclocking options, to bring them to the level that will genuinely excite gamers and enthusiasts. Perhaps they can do that with a BIOS upgrade. We certainly hope so.
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Anonymous User - Monday, September 8, 2003 - link
Xeon DPs are still at the 533 right now. Xeon MPs are worse off at just 400. Faster Xeons are just around the corner though.sprockkets - Monday, September 8, 2003 - link
Aren't the Xenons at 667FSB? But as usual, they share the bandwidth, which is really bad since they crave bandwidth, but good for memory access. But clearly the HT idea is faster.Running though at 800 maybe really too hard to do, or not ?
Anonymous User - Monday, September 8, 2003 - link
Remember Xeons were built for the server market where stability is king. Intel knew this and this is why the 533MHz FSB has stuck around so long. As Intel rolls out more 800Mhz FSB chipsets and P4 chips the 800Mhz FSB Xeon should follow several months later. The same process could be seen back when the 400Mhz FSB Xeons were around.Anonymous User - Monday, September 8, 2003 - link
Well don't take my word for it, wait for the results yourself and then you can admit you are a fool! Clueless kids looking to argue... What a waste of time.Anonymous User - Sunday, September 7, 2003 - link
Is HyperThreading enabled for those Dual Xeons?Anonymous User - Sunday, September 7, 2003 - link
@13 "it would not improve performance enough to even be competitive"lol... what reviews have you been reading? the extra fsb makes a huge difference! THG overclocked the Xeons by 7 mhz and averaged somewhere around 4-4.5% performance increase! That's pretty damn significant. Even bringing the Xeons up to 667 FSB would make it a very good performer!
Anonymous User - Saturday, September 6, 2003 - link
Don't believe everything you read... ESPECIALLY from Intel. Go read THG's review and *maybe* you'll have a better appreciation for why Intel ain't likely to release a 800 MHS FSB Xeon any time soon and it would not improve performance enough to even be competitive when a 2.0 Gig. Opteron/A64 blows the doors off a dual 3.06 Gig. Xeon. If you wanna feel bad... look at how the dual Opteron beats up on a dual Xeon.Anonymous User - Saturday, September 6, 2003 - link
Read the news -- Intel has said it WILL produce 800Mhz FSB Xeons (when is a bit of a question: the last report I read over a month ago said Q1 '04 but they may have moved it up -- that's what this article seems to imply).Anonymous User - Saturday, September 6, 2003 - link
There are technical reasons why the Xeon can't do 800 MHz FSB. Tom's Hardware went into some of the reasons in their dual Xeon test where Opteron also smoked the Xeon even with the new L3 cache. The reality is that Intels current processors have just become obsolete with Opteron and A64. The benches for A64 will show equal or better performance for a single CPU than Opteron. For multi-processor systems above (4) CPUs the Opteron has an advantage over the A64. As the benches show Intel simply has nothing to compete in either the desktop or server segments and soon the A64 will be available in laptop to so Intel needs to get it in gear. Needless to say all Opteron/A64 CPUs will run both 32-bit and 64-bit O/S's. Linux has been available and Windoze will be available soon. AMD has definitety made a qunatum performance leap over Intel this time, no doubt.Anonymous User - Saturday, September 6, 2003 - link
Remember that server boards have to go through more stringent evaluation then desktop boards. I don't think Intel even considers 800Mhz FSB stable enough for their Xeons yet, and it's a shame. There is only so much increasing your L2 cache size can do for you. I don't think you can use 2.4Cs on this board even if you could find a socket adapter -- remember the 'overclocking settings' were limited to 133->165 (that's almost the 667Mhz FSB that Intel might move the Xeon to soon). So you'd be underclocking it by at least 17%, and at that point why bother? That's if you can find some video card that will take a 79Mhz AGP speed -- good luck with that.