I'm looking for input from anyone in the club who may be knowledgable, eyeballing, or has purchased a "workstation" system recently with ECC memory. (Note, ECC is imperative!) I don't need dual-socket, crazy speed, just something like a mid-range modern i7 with modern RAM, slots, etc. (i3 speeds won't cut it.)
By "workstation" I mean it has to have at least one PCIe x16 (full 16 electrical) slot so it can have a good video card installed (and handle upgrades in the future). So some "servers" will qualify, although most do not have a true x16 slot (they'll say x16 but the small print will say x8 or x4 electrical), especially on the low end. I also need tower form factor, as rackmount will (unless 4U) be a pain to fit cards in, etc. Lastly, I really want a DIY setup where I buy the board, cpu, etc individually, though if a perfect premade system (i.e. Lenovo) exists that fits the bill I might consider it (must use no propreitary form factor parts, including mobo & PS).
It's basically impossible since the discontinuation of the Intel D975 chipsets (nearly 10 years ago) to do Intel with ECC without buying a Xeon CPU. So I'm probably stuck buying a Xeon CPU and getting slower than i7 for double the price. Ugh.
I'd really love to hear from the AMD nuts out there if there are any good AMD options, especially ones that are more enthusiast/desktop oriented rather than same-price-as-Xeon competitors. If I'm going to spend big bucks, I'll buy Intel: AMD needs to offer a compelling price advantage to pull me over.
I still believe AMD could carve a niche for itself by offering desktop enthusiast chips / mobos with ECC at desktop, rather than server, prices. Maybe add $50 each to a mobo and cpu as the price premium. Not the 100% premium Intel wants just to get ECC. (I miss the old days when getting ECC was cheap/easy.) If AMD already has such a thing (I'm hoping!), great!
I know I'm not the only one in the club interested in these answers. P.S. being a computer reseller, I don't need prices or store suggestions, I can just buy it all wholesale :-) It's the "this chipset plus that CPU" that I'm really looking for.
Thanks!
Just for the record here (i.e., moral support for you, Trevor), I too have always been a strong believer in ECC. And heck, the original IBM PC had ECC (or did it just do parity checking, and crash if parity error?).
Hartmut W Sager - Tel +1-204-339-8331
On 28 January 2017 at 00:46, Trevor Cordes trevor@tecnopolis.ca wrote:
I'm looking for input from anyone in the club who may be knowledgable, eyeballing, or has purchased a "workstation" system recently with ECC memory. (Note, ECC is imperative!) I don't need dual-socket, crazy speed, just something like a mid-range modern i7 with modern RAM, slots, etc. (i3 speeds won't cut it.)
The original PC had parity checking only. I don't know how long ago that stopped. Or did it?
Kevin
On Sat, Jan 28, 2017 at 1:36 AM, Hartmut W Sager hwsager@marityme.net wrote:
Just for the record here (i.e., moral support for you, Trevor), I too have always been a strong believer in ECC. And heck, the original IBM PC had ECC (or did it just do parity checking, and crash if parity error?).
Hartmut W Sager - Tel +1-204-339-8331 <(204)%20339-8331>
On 28 January 2017 at 00:46, Trevor Cordes trevor@tecnopolis.ca wrote:
I'm looking for input from anyone in the club who may be knowledgable, eyeballing, or has purchased a "workstation" system recently with ECC memory. (Note, ECC is imperative!) I don't need dual-socket, crazy speed, just something like a mid-range modern i7 with modern RAM, slots, etc. (i3 speeds won't cut it.)
Roundtable mailing list Roundtable@muug.ca https://muug.ca/mailman/listinfo/roundtable
Ah, so the original PC did simple parity checking only. And I believe that the PC AT did the same (definitely not less). However, very many PC clones right from the beginning never did even simple parity checking (and often had no DMA either, which the PC and PC AT had), and that set the trend toward no checking at all in the whole realm of consumer computers. By the time laptops came along, this was the norm, and only a few really high-end laptops ever did even simple parity checking (let alone ECC).
By the way, ECC in the PC realm uses the same 9-bit RAM as for simple parity checking, but uses the parity bits over a whole block of bytes to do ECC. Doing ECC on a per byte basis would require 11-bit RAM.
Hartmut W Sager - Tel +1-204-339-8331, +1-204-515-1701, +1-204-515-1700, +1-810-471-4600
On 28 January 2017 at 08:00, Kevin McGregor kevin.a.mcgregor@gmail.com wrote:
The original PC had parity checking only. I don't know how long ago that stopped. Or did it?
Kevin
On Sat, Jan 28, 2017 at 1:36 AM, Hartmut W Sager hwsager@marityme.net wrote:
Just for the record here (i.e., moral support for you, Trevor), I too have always been a strong believer in ECC. And heck, the original IBM PC had ECC (or did it just do parity checking, and crash if parity error?).
Hartmut W Sager - Tel +1-204-339-8331 <%28204%29%20339-8331>
On 28 January 2017 at 00:46, Trevor Cordes trevor@tecnopolis.ca wrote:
I'm looking for input from anyone in the club who may be knowledgable, eyeballing, or has purchased a "workstation" system recently with ECC memory. (Note, ECC is imperative!) I don't need dual-socket, crazy speed, just something like a mid-range modern i7 with modern RAM, slots, etc. (i3 speeds won't cut it.)
Roundtable mailing list Roundtable@muug.ca https://muug.ca/mailman/listinfo/roundtable
Roundtable mailing list Roundtable@muug.ca https://muug.ca/mailman/listinfo/roundtable
On 2017-01-28 Kevin McGregor wrote:
The original PC had parity checking only. I don't know how long ago that stopped. Or did it?
Ya, pretty much everything was parity in 30-pin SIMM days, and even mahy/most 72-pin. So it was during/after the 486 days that parity disappeared. So the Pentium was the first to make it "difficult" to get ECC. This if from my personal experience/memory.
Then Intel realized they could gouge businesses by coming out with the Xeon at the same time as the P2.
On 2017-01-28 Kevin McGregor wrote:
It seems like the AMD FX-series CPUs would do, coupled with something like the ASUS M5A99FX PRO R2.0 which supports ECC RAM.
Off the top of your head, are these types of boards "normal" "desktop" prices plus a bit ($100-$200 CAD) or are they like Xeon "server class" board pricing ($250+)?
Does AMD position these as enthusiast class or strictly business?
Do you need it right away? If you can wait until the end of March, the AMD Ryzen-series CPUs will be out, which are expected to have
Nope, no rush at all, but I'm getting real close... starting to reach the maximum of my current ECC workstation (quad core 2.4G), where I'm spending several seconds waiting for things a thousand times a day, which cuts into my bottom line. I'll watch for the Ryzen debut and pricing...
On 2017-01-28 Brock Wolfe wrote:
rendering and transcoding. The major difference is whether you want to support multiple video cards X3 or X4 to support multi-GPU processing (ie.OpenCL). If not, then a mid-range board (ASUS etc.) that supports ECC (or not) processor is good enough.
With 1 vid card allowing 3 heads (plus!) these days, I don't need multiple x16 slots. Of course, CPU/mobo must be ECC.
What did you go with for your solution? AFAIK in the Intel world it's the CPU (with builtin mem controller now) that determines if you get ECC or not, and there is no "mid range" Intel ECC CPU. It's Xeon or no ECC (excluding the weird i3 low end which purported to allow ECC in some weird setups).
The more important question is how much money you want to put into the processor.
The idea is to spend as much as a mid-range i7 plus maximum $50 extra for ECC. AFAIK that's not possible in Xeon world without a) spending double for the board, and b) only getting the lowest-end Xeon.
As for my application... it's just my main workstation doing my daily stuff and daemons. No 3D, no CAD, no cluster apps. I need high clockspeed on a single core to at least speed up web page rendering (one of my bottlenecks now), so that means Intel Turbo boost would be nice. The number of weird home-made programs I run regularly now eat up 100% on 2-3 cores at least 50% of the day, but they are all niced up the wazoo, so while I like them to be fast, they aren't my main concern. I just need snappy 2D desktop use that never makes me wait. My current box has done that for many many years, but I find myself starting to wait more and more. And this is even with NoScript and ABP blocking 90% of web garbage^H^H^H^H^H^H content. Stupid web 2.0...
My goal is to double my current effective speed, which should be possible with modern 4+ GHz CPU, turbo boost, and DDR4. If only I didn't understand ECC, life would be so easy, just buy any cheap i7 system! Ignorance is bliss. :-)
If only I didn't understand ECC, life would be so easy, just buy any
cheap i7 system! Ignorance is bliss. :-)
Yes, that would be like saying, "The ECC with that!"
Hartmut W Sager - Tel +1-204-339-8331 <(204)%20339-8331>, +1-204-515-1701 <(204)%20515-1701>, +1-204-515-1700 <(204)%20515-1700>, +1-810-471-4600 <(810)%20471-4600>
On 28 January 2017 at 17:42, Trevor Cordes trevor@tecnopolis.ca wrote: [..... deleted .....]
The AMD FX series is definitely "enthusiast" as are the AM3+ boards that support it. The AMD Opterons are the server-class models. The FX series definitely supports ECC; I use them with ECC with no trouble. The FX-9590 (8 cores) is the top of the line (unlocked so you can play with clock multipliers), but is rated to run at 4.7 GHz with Turbo mode to 5.0 GHz. Priced around $300. Most AM3+ boards are $100-$200 with a few outliers.
Though if you wait for the Ryzen series, performance will be even better.
On Sat, Jan 28, 2017 at 5:42 PM, Trevor Cordes trevor@tecnopolis.ca wrote:
On 2017-01-28 Kevin McGregor wrote:
The original PC had parity checking only. I don't know how long ago that stopped. Or did it?
Ya, pretty much everything was parity in 30-pin SIMM days, and even mahy/most 72-pin. So it was during/after the 486 days that parity disappeared. So the Pentium was the first to make it "difficult" to get ECC. This if from my personal experience/memory.
Then Intel realized they could gouge businesses by coming out with the Xeon at the same time as the P2.
On 2017-01-28 Kevin McGregor wrote:
It seems like the AMD FX-series CPUs would do, coupled with something like the ASUS M5A99FX PRO R2.0 which supports ECC RAM.
Off the top of your head, are these types of boards "normal" "desktop" prices plus a bit ($100-$200 CAD) or are they like Xeon "server class" board pricing ($250+)?
Does AMD position these as enthusiast class or strictly business?
Do you need it right away? If you can wait until the end of March, the AMD Ryzen-series CPUs will be out, which are expected to have
Nope, no rush at all, but I'm getting real close... starting to reach the maximum of my current ECC workstation (quad core 2.4G), where I'm spending several seconds waiting for things a thousand times a day, which cuts into my bottom line. I'll watch for the Ryzen debut and pricing...
On 2017-01-28 Brock Wolfe wrote:
rendering and transcoding. The major difference is whether you want to support multiple video cards X3 or X4 to support multi-GPU processing (ie.OpenCL). If not, then a mid-range board (ASUS etc.) that supports ECC (or not) processor is good enough.
With 1 vid card allowing 3 heads (plus!) these days, I don't need multiple x16 slots. Of course, CPU/mobo must be ECC.
What did you go with for your solution? AFAIK in the Intel world it's the CPU (with builtin mem controller now) that determines if you get ECC or not, and there is no "mid range" Intel ECC CPU. It's Xeon or no ECC (excluding the weird i3 low end which purported to allow ECC in some weird setups).
The more important question is how much money you want to put into the processor.
The idea is to spend as much as a mid-range i7 plus maximum $50 extra for ECC. AFAIK that's not possible in Xeon world without a) spending double for the board, and b) only getting the lowest-end Xeon.
As for my application... it's just my main workstation doing my daily stuff and daemons. No 3D, no CAD, no cluster apps. I need high clockspeed on a single core to at least speed up web page rendering (one of my bottlenecks now), so that means Intel Turbo boost would be nice. The number of weird home-made programs I run regularly now eat up 100% on 2-3 cores at least 50% of the day, but they are all niced up the wazoo, so while I like them to be fast, they aren't my main concern. I just need snappy 2D desktop use that never makes me wait. My current box has done that for many many years, but I find myself starting to wait more and more. And this is even with NoScript and ABP blocking 90% of web garbage^H^H^H^H^H^H content. Stupid web 2.0...
My goal is to double my current effective speed, which should be possible with modern 4+ GHz CPU, turbo boost, and DDR4. If only I didn't understand ECC, life would be so easy, just buy any cheap i7 system! Ignorance is bliss. :-) _______________________________________________ Roundtable mailing list Roundtable@muug.ca https://muug.ca/mailman/listinfo/roundtable
On 2017-01-28 Kevin McGregor wrote:
The AMD FX series is definitely "enthusiast" as are the AM3+ boards that support it. The AMD Opterons are the server-class models. The FX series definitely supports ECC; I use them with ECC with no trouble.
I spent some time reading more about the upcoming Ryzen stuff and the consensus regarding ECC support on "desktop" and "power user" boards is that nobody knows. Most people think there will be ECC options because some previous gen boards did, but no company has committed to saying the support will be in Ryzen.
It does appear that ECC is guaranteed if you use a "server" or "workstation" board (i.e. probably over $200, or without x16 slot), but then that puts Ryzen in the same boat as Xeon and for the same money I'll just buy a Xeon.
So I guess we can hope, and wait and see. It's like the world is a big conspiracy to keep ECC out of "affordable" boards, when (from my reading and MUUG discussions) ECC on the desktop is desired by tons of people. You'd think there'd be a niche in there somewhere if some enterprising company can realize it...
Now that Ryzen has been officially released, I've found some answers.
Ryzen does support ECC. The current batch of models does. However, AMD has not "certified" it to work in the same way they test their server models (of previous gens). Future Zen-architecture models for the server market will be "certified" by AMD to work with ECC.
This is no different from past architectures, meaning that like in the past motherboard manufacturers will produce AM4 boards which fully support ECC (at a reasonable price) and are "certified" to work with ECC *by the motherboard manfacturer*.
So, I'm just going to wait a few months for the dust to settle then buy a Ryzen with an ECC-capable motherboard.
Kevin
On Tue, Feb 14, 2017 at 1:49 AM, Trevor Cordes trevor@tecnopolis.ca wrote:
On 2017-01-28 Kevin McGregor wrote:
The AMD FX series is definitely "enthusiast" as are the AM3+ boards that support it. The AMD Opterons are the server-class models. The FX series definitely supports ECC; I use them with ECC with no trouble.
I spent some time reading more about the upcoming Ryzen stuff and the consensus regarding ECC support on "desktop" and "power user" boards is that nobody knows. Most people think there will be ECC options because some previous gen boards did, but no company has committed to saying the support will be in Ryzen.
It does appear that ECC is guaranteed if you use a "server" or "workstation" board (i.e. probably over $200, or without x16 slot), but then that puts Ryzen in the same boat as Xeon and for the same money I'll just buy a Xeon.
So I guess we can hope, and wait and see. It's like the world is a big conspiracy to keep ECC out of "affordable" boards, when (from my reading and MUUG discussions) ECC on the desktop is desired by tons of people. You'd think there'd be a niche in there somewhere if some enterprising company can realize it...
On 2017-03-04 Kevin McGregor wrote:
This is no different from past architectures, meaning that like in the past motherboard manufacturers will produce AM4 boards which fully support ECC (at a reasonable price) and are "certified" to work with ECC *by the motherboard manfacturer*.
Do you know offhand which mobo makers usually "certify" (or at least make very clear) their support of ECC? I know in the past I've had issues with chipsets/cpus that support ECC and boards that *purport* to, but really didn't.
Also, do you know if these "enthusiast" AMD chipsets/chips usually get support in the edac package (which can query the chipset and report ECC error counts)? It seems to cover only about 75% of the ECC chipsets/chips out there, even ones that have been around a while. (It takes someone who cares to write in support for it.)
So, I'm just going to wait a few months for the dust to settle then buy a Ryzen with an ECC-capable motherboard.
Sounds great, I'll keep my eyes out (and you keep us posted too!). Maybe when the time comes I'll price out a Xeon vs Ryzen comparison and post it.
Long ago, when I was doing hardware, the Asus motherboards that properly supported ECC were clearly identified by Asus as such.
Hartmut W Sager - Tel +1-204-339-8331, +1-204-515-1701, +1-204-515-1700, +1-810-471-4600
On 4 March 2017 at 16:56, Trevor Cordes trevor@tecnopolis.ca wrote:
On 2017-03-04 Kevin McGregor wrote:
This is no different from past architectures, meaning that like in the past motherboard manufacturers will produce AM4 boards which fully support ECC (at a reasonable price) and are "certified" to work with ECC *by the motherboard manfacturer*.
Do you know offhand which mobo makers usually "certify" (or at least make very clear) their support of ECC? I know in the past I've had issues with chipsets/cpus that support ECC and boards that *purport* to, but really didn't.
Also, do you know if these "enthusiast" AMD chipsets/chips usually get support in the edac package (which can query the chipset and report ECC error counts)? It seems to cover only about 75% of the ECC chipsets/chips out there, even ones that have been around a while. (It takes someone who cares to write in support for it.)
So, I'm just going to wait a few months for the dust to settle then buy a Ryzen with an ECC-capable motherboard.
Sounds great, I'll keep my eyes out (and you keep us posted too!). Maybe when the time comes I'll price out a Xeon vs Ryzen comparison and post it. _______________________________________________ Roundtable mailing list Roundtable@muug.ca https://muug.ca/mailman/listinfo/roundtable
It seems like the AMD FX-series CPUs would do, coupled with something like the ASUS M5A99FX PRO R2.0 which supports ECC RAM.
Do you need it right away? If you can wait until the end of March, the AMD Ryzen-series CPUs will be out, which are expected to have equivalent performance to current Intel CPUs, but maybe slightly cheaper. At any rate, the FX-series may be on sale a lot as the clear them out. I think my next upgrade will be to a Ryzen in 2-3 months.
Kevin
On Sat, Jan 28, 2017 at 12:46 AM, Trevor Cordes trevor@tecnopolis.ca wrote:
I'm looking for input from anyone in the club who may be knowledgable, eyeballing, or has purchased a "workstation" system recently with ECC memory. (Note, ECC is imperative!) I don't need dual-socket, crazy speed, just something like a mid-range modern i7 with modern RAM, slots, etc. (i3 speeds won't cut it.)
By "workstation" I mean it has to have at least one PCIe x16 (full 16 electrical) slot so it can have a good video card installed (and handle upgrades in the future). So some "servers" will qualify, although most do not have a true x16 slot (they'll say x16 but the small print will say x8 or x4 electrical), especially on the low end. I also need tower form factor, as rackmount will (unless 4U) be a pain to fit cards in, etc. Lastly, I really want a DIY setup where I buy the board, cpu, etc individually, though if a perfect premade system (i.e. Lenovo) exists that fits the bill I might consider it (must use no propreitary form factor parts, including mobo & PS).
It's basically impossible since the discontinuation of the Intel D975 chipsets (nearly 10 years ago) to do Intel with ECC without buying a Xeon CPU. So I'm probably stuck buying a Xeon CPU and getting slower than i7 for double the price. Ugh.
I'd really love to hear from the AMD nuts out there if there are any good AMD options, especially ones that are more enthusiast/desktop oriented rather than same-price-as-Xeon competitors. If I'm going to spend big bucks, I'll buy Intel: AMD needs to offer a compelling price advantage to pull me over.
I still believe AMD could carve a niche for itself by offering desktop enthusiast chips / mobos with ECC at desktop, rather than server, prices. Maybe add $50 each to a mobo and cpu as the price premium. Not the 100% premium Intel wants just to get ECC. (I miss the old days when getting ECC was cheap/easy.) If AMD already has such a thing (I'm hoping!), great!
I know I'm not the only one in the club interested in these answers. P.S. being a computer reseller, I don't need prices or store suggestions, I can just buy it all wholesale :-) It's the "this chipset plus that CPU" that I'm really looking for.
Thanks! _______________________________________________ Roundtable mailing list Roundtable@muug.ca https://muug.ca/mailman/listinfo/roundtable
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Hartmut W Sager -
Kevin McGregor -
Trevor Cordes