Why don't you use Linux, it will be better faster and cheaper. But then again if a big corpration is promoting hardware for Anandtech to use so ...
Anyway but you should use what ever you feel like. After this is a job and in the end you gotta get the job done.
This looks like a very good video editing system to me. Could you include Adobe Premiere Pro in your upcoming review to see if it is.
Preferably with some HDTV footage, as this is getting more common in large screen live video presentations and it takes long enough to edit to see very large improvements here.
Good Article Jason
Most of you guys have not really respond to Jason's request. I will particularly like to see benches on
scientific computing(say parallel Molecular Dynamics). GROMAC is freely available and runs fine on windows. This will task the FPU and NUMA capability of Nacona and Opteron dualies. Nacona with Hypertrading turn on can also be compared with HT turned off. If you can, try to bench any Chess program with parallel CPU support to gve us an idea of the Integer Unit performance.
Ecmaster76: My professor once said us: independent journalist is the one who takes from both :-).
And nooo, i am realy not dreaming about to have such a system at home... Noooo sure not!
Valerie
This is interesting, but setting up the 2003 server seems like overkill. I have been able to do multiple site .NET development on XP IIS pretty easily. All that you have to do is make a folder under the web root of the site and then turn that folder into an application by opening the IIS manager and going to properties of that folder and clicking the create button under application settings. That way http://localhost/foldername) would be an individual project. You could repeat this as many times as you wanted.
Since they are applications, your bin folder and web.config files should sit in the root of these folders like any other .NET application. Maybe I missed something, but the only way that this wouldn't work is if you had some sort of per project need for host headers, custom error pages, or performance throttling. I have to say that only use VS.NET to build my assemblies and I use Dreamweaver MX for my layouts and bindings. I tried using VS.NET for everything but Dreamweaver is head and shoulders better when it comes to HTML / CSS. I say that to say that again, I may be missing something.
Whatever the case, clearly you guys had the resources to splurge so go for it. I would love to have a setup like that (though with dual Optys :)).
Thanks for the article! I find it really awesome that you guys put these together and actually talk about Anandtech's experience with hosting such a site.
It's like reading a really good white paper that just keeps going; a good story that never ends.
mikepeck, it certainly is overkill, we're speed nuts like the rest of you. Compile time for building isn't much at all, but compile time after a change (as .NET re-compiles all of the files) does take some time. As said in the article the opteron did just fine, but 7200 RPM IDE drives aren't all that quick during heavy compilation. This article was more information, not a benchmark or comparison between opteron/nocona as a workstation.
We are interested in doing some real workstation benchmarks, but need some input as to what people would like to see.
Wow. This is what happens when you have a hardware nut from a hardware site put together a "workstation". Also, not sure how a measly dual opteron wouldn't hack it. How long of compiles are you talking about here? I've done serious .NET development on systems FAR less than what you speak of. Perhaps it is a bit of jealousy, but for a .NET development machine, ya, just a BIT of an overkill.
I know this is a bit off topic, but I've looked around for some good how-to's for building your own high-end workstations and/or servers, and haven't found much. There's tons of info out there about building your own PC, but not much for servers. Hell, I wouldn't even know where to go to buy the hardware - Newegg doesn't seem to carry much server stuff.
Say I wanted to build the equivalent of a Dell PowerEdge 6600... anyone know of any good resources for someone wanting to get into that type of thing?
One thing this article brings up is the need for workstation articles. If any of you are interested, what benchmarks would you like to see, besides compiling.
Ryan, we keep most of the hardware we test around the labs for future articles/comparisons. Spare is a term to be used lightly in the lab, until its needed :).
I was under the impression that AMD K8 processors (Opteron, Athlon 64) are considerably faster than than Intel's best Pentium 4's for compiling. Given that a 3.6GHz Nocona is to all intents and purposes a P4 560, with 64-bit support which Windows Server 2003 does not use, and an Opteron 250 is equivalent to an Athlon64 FX53 (S940); the 3.6GHz Nocona is a long way behind the Opteron 250 in the Visual Studio compile test.
I've got one word for any web developers out there that use Windows XP Pro rather than a server OS:
IISAdmin
It allows you to easily switch between websites in IIS. Of course, you are still limited to one website at a time, but if you work on multiple sites on your home computer, this little program works wonders.
Hmmm.... Anandtech makes an article about picking Opterons for their server farm and less than a month later a Nocona system falls of the back of a truck.
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21 Comments
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a3217055 - Sunday, September 12, 2004 - link
Why don't you use Linux, it will be better faster and cheaper. But then again if a big corpration is promoting hardware for Anandtech to use so ...Anyway but you should use what ever you feel like. After this is a job and in the end you gotta get the job done.
Questar - Friday, September 10, 2004 - link
Please test workstations in the manner they are used, i.e. heavy multitasking situations.gherald - Friday, September 10, 2004 - link
I would like to see an Opteron vs Nocona article using Gentoo AMD64 with GCC 3.4.2 andCFLAGS="-O2 -pipe -funit-at-a-time"
USE="nptl" when compiling glibc would also be nice.
ncage - Friday, September 10, 2004 - link
Jason i know what i would like included in the benchmarks if you have time to do it:1) SQL Sever 2000 DEFINITLY; Preferably with Net Server
2) SUSE 64 bit Linux with 64 bit MySQL would be an awesome test too.
T8000 - Friday, September 10, 2004 - link
This looks like a very good video editing system to me. Could you include Adobe Premiere Pro in your upcoming review to see if it is.Preferably with some HDTV footage, as this is getting more common in large screen live video presentations and it takes long enough to edit to see very large improvements here.
fritz64 - Friday, September 10, 2004 - link
Good Article JasonMost of you guys have not really respond to Jason's request. I will particularly like to see benches on
scientific computing(say parallel Molecular Dynamics). GROMAC is freely available and runs fine on windows. This will task the FPU and NUMA capability of Nacona and Opteron dualies. Nacona with Hypertrading turn on can also be compared with HT turned off. If you can, try to bench any Chess program with parallel CPU support to gve us an idea of the Integer Unit performance.
val - Friday, September 10, 2004 - link
Ecmaster76: My professor once said us: independent journalist is the one who takes from both :-).And nooo, i am realy not dreaming about to have such a system at home... Noooo sure not!
Valerie
RZaakir - Friday, September 10, 2004 - link
This is interesting, but setting up the 2003 server seems like overkill. I have been able to do multiple site .NET development on XP IIS pretty easily. All that you have to do is make a folder under the web root of the site and then turn that folder into an application by opening the IIS manager and going to properties of that folder and clicking the create button under application settings. That way http://localhost/foldername) would be an individual project. You could repeat this as many times as you wanted.Since they are applications, your bin folder and web.config files should sit in the root of these folders like any other .NET application. Maybe I missed something, but the only way that this wouldn't work is if you had some sort of per project need for host headers, custom error pages, or performance throttling. I have to say that only use VS.NET to build my assemblies and I use Dreamweaver MX for my layouts and bindings. I tried using VS.NET for everything but Dreamweaver is head and shoulders better when it comes to HTML / CSS. I say that to say that again, I may be missing something.
Whatever the case, clearly you guys had the resources to splurge so go for it. I would love to have a setup like that (though with dual Optys :)).
STaSh - Friday, September 10, 2004 - link
You don't need to edit any ini files to connect to session 0 (the console) on a 2003 machine. That ability is already there.Just type "mstsc /console" from the run line.
Or you could type "mstsc /console /v:servername" to connect directly to the machine.
Brickster - Friday, September 10, 2004 - link
Jason,Thanks for the article! I find it really awesome that you guys put these together and actually talk about Anandtech's experience with hosting such a site.
It's like reading a really good white paper that just keeps going; a good story that never ends.
Keep up the good work!
Cheers,
Brickster
JasonClark - Friday, September 10, 2004 - link
mikepeck, it certainly is overkill, we're speed nuts like the rest of you. Compile time for building isn't much at all, but compile time after a change (as .NET re-compiles all of the files) does take some time. As said in the article the opteron did just fine, but 7200 RPM IDE drives aren't all that quick during heavy compilation. This article was more information, not a benchmark or comparison between opteron/nocona as a workstation.We are interested in doing some real workstation benchmarks, but need some input as to what people would like to see.
mikepeck - Friday, September 10, 2004 - link
Wow. This is what happens when you have a hardware nut from a hardware site put together a "workstation". Also, not sure how a measly dual opteron wouldn't hack it. How long of compiles are you talking about here? I've done serious .NET development on systems FAR less than what you speak of. Perhaps it is a bit of jealousy, but for a .NET development machine, ya, just a BIT of an overkill.Booty - Friday, September 10, 2004 - link
I know this is a bit off topic, but I've looked around for some good how-to's for building your own high-end workstations and/or servers, and haven't found much. There's tons of info out there about building your own PC, but not much for servers. Hell, I wouldn't even know where to go to buy the hardware - Newegg doesn't seem to carry much server stuff.Say I wanted to build the equivalent of a Dell PowerEdge 6600... anyone know of any good resources for someone wanting to get into that type of thing?
JasonClark - Friday, September 10, 2004 - link
One thing this article brings up is the need for workstation articles. If any of you are interested, what benchmarks would you like to see, besides compiling.JasonClark - Friday, September 10, 2004 - link
Ryan, we keep most of the hardware we test around the labs for future articles/comparisons. Spare is a term to be used lightly in the lab, until its needed :).RyanVM - Friday, September 10, 2004 - link
You know, if dual Opteron 246s, 1GB memory, and a 120GB SATA hard drive are "spare parts", I want to rummage through you guys' junk pile! :PPrinceGaz - Friday, September 10, 2004 - link
I was under the impression that AMD K8 processors (Opteron, Athlon 64) are considerably faster than than Intel's best Pentium 4's for compiling. Given that a 3.6GHz Nocona is to all intents and purposes a P4 560, with 64-bit support which Windows Server 2003 does not use, and an Opteron 250 is equivalent to an Athlon64 FX53 (S940); the 3.6GHz Nocona is a long way behind the Opteron 250 in the Visual Studio compile test.http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?...
That gap will almost certainly widen in a dual-processor system.
JasonClark - Friday, September 10, 2004 - link
Exmaster76, you'll see an article very shortly about Opteron 250 vs Nocona 3.6..Cheers
JasonClark - Friday, September 10, 2004 - link
daniel, I had a look at that app as well, not bad but I wanted everything running at the same time as some sites depend on others.Cheers
daniel1113 - Friday, September 10, 2004 - link
I've got one word for any web developers out there that use Windows XP Pro rather than a server OS:IISAdmin
It allows you to easily switch between websites in IIS. Of course, you are still limited to one website at a time, but if you work on multiple sites on your home computer, this little program works wonders.
Ecmaster76 - Friday, September 10, 2004 - link
Hmmm.... Anandtech makes an article about picking Opterons for their server farm and less than a month later a Nocona system falls of the back of a truck.