PCIe x8 Quandry

[mdjtlj]

Greetings,

Working on putting together a pretty heavy duty machine, whose main purpose will be running Visual Studio .NET, SQL Server, and other development duties.

I've pretty much settled on the following specs:

- Intel SE7230NH1-E Motherboard (7230 Chipset)
- Intel Pentium® 4 650 Processor Prescott 3.4GHz, 800MHz FSB, Socket 775, 2MB Cache
- 4 GB RAM (Kingston 667 mhz - 4 1GB sticks), possibly going to 8 GB, if I can find 2GB sticks which are reasonably priced
- 4 x 250 GB SATA II Drives (RAID 1 - Effective 500 GB Available)
- Win2003 OS

However, I'm having a difficult time with the video card on the setup. This setup is going to drive an existing monitor that I have (HP 2335 23" Widescreen). With this in mind, it should be digital output and support 1920x1200.

The board that I'm proposing does not have a PCIe x16, it has PCIe x8, PCIe x4, and PCI 32-bit/33MHz slot. What type of video card would be recommended for this type of configuration?

As a sidenote, I have another machine (based on the Intel D925XCV board) which also has 4 GB RAM, and the last PCIe Video card (Asus AX300SE) I put in this thing robbed it of available RAM, making the highest most addressible memory at the 3 GB mark.

Or is my best bet to move back to a desktop board with an equivalent spec?

Michael

[hockey man]

If you are going all out, look into a dual CPU with a 955X MOBO. That will give you great perfomance at "work stuff," and allow for future upgradeability. If need be, drop down to 2^1gig sticks of RAM. Windows can't effectivly utilize more than 2 gigs anyway. For video card, you don't need to go to overboard. A 6600Gt would probably be adequate for all of your workstation needs. Also, what is your budget?

[saphalline]

Yeah, unless you're going to be doing any gaming, even a cheapo PCI vid card will work for that stuff. It's just that finding a PCI vid card with a DVI port capable of that sort of resolution will be nearly impossible.

Otherwise, I would second the recommendation by hockey man and just go with a desktop mobo. And the dual-core Pentium D's are most definitely going to be a better CPU choice for that level of workload! For the vid card, you can get by very well on just a Radeon X550. For the RAM, unless you'll be OC'ing (doubtful if you pick another Intel mobo) then you can save some money by getting DDR2-533. It's more than fast enough and it will probably be easier to find 2GB sticks at a decent price.

WinXP can't effectively use more than 2GB for programs, but Windows Server 2003 is another story! What OS will be used on this dev monster?

[mdjtlj]

Greetings,

Have taken another look at things, and will take your advice on the reconsideration of the MOBO, albeit I've chosen another server board. The new board takes care of the video problem, but I'm not convinced that I won't get robbed of RAM, but we'll see. This may not be too much of an issue, as I could push SQL Server off to another machine, as this is the hog.

Board Intel SE7525RP2 - Dual Xeon Board (8GB Max), PCIe x16 slot!
Chassis Intel SC5295-E
CPU Intel BX80546KG3000FA Xeon 3.0 Ghz 800 mhz
CPU Intel BX80546KG3000FA Xeon 3.0 Ghz 800 mhz
Memory Kingston KVR400D2N3K2/2G - 2 x 1GB sticks DDR2-400
Memory Kingston KVR400D2N3K2/2G - 2 x 1GB sticks DDR2-400
VidCard Asus EAX550GE/TD/256 - PCIe Card - Basic, but supports DVI and resolution that I need.

Windows 2003 Server will be the OS. The whole rig comes in just under $1600 with shipping, which seems reasonable. I'll use the 2x250 GB SATA HDD's that I've got idle right now to finish off the machine.

At this time, since there are only four memory slots, I'll stick to 1GB sticks, as the 2 GB sticks are going for a grand a pop, way too much....

Anything I missed, or should do different?


Michael

[hockey man]

WOW. Dual Xeons is getting outside my area of knowledge :( . I'll let Saphalline guide you through the server world :p .

[saphalline]

Well, two single-core Xeons aren't going to be that much better than one dual-core Pentium D. It's getting to the point these days where high-end PC's are just as good as mid-range servers! :eek: Intel's new multi-core microarchitecture is coming within the next 6 months, otherwise right now both Intel and AMD have dual-core 64-bit capable CPU's for PC's. While it's true that most desktop mobo's are still limited to a max of 4GB of RAM (or 8GB in 64-bit mode) it doesn't look like you're going over that anytime soon. Plus the next batch of high-end DDR2 dual-core chipsets will probably reach well into 8GB or 16GB over the next year.

On the other hand, if you want a server mobo for all the cool extras like PCIe x8 and PCI-X, go ahead with that. I'm just saying that I could configure a PentiumD 830 system using the i945P chipset for less than $1600, and still have the same performance as your two Xeons on a server mobo. Even for server duties. I've seen much lesser machines (like a single PIII 700 w/128MB of RAM) used for server duties so I know it can be done.