Early Launch for AMD's 12-core Opteron Processor on eBay
Early Launch for AMD's 12-core Opteron Processor on eBay
Posted 02/16/2010 at 6:03pm
| by Ryan Whitwam
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Sure, you could buy that boring old Core i7. You could be like all those other sheep that shop for “released” and “fully tested” parts from Newegg. Or if you’re just the right mix of bold and rich, you can try buying a leaked 12-core AMD CPU from Ebay. The Opteron server chip is code-named Magny-Cours, and a set of four can be had for the low price of $7,700. The unreleased chip runs at 2.2GHz.
If you aren’t the do-it-yourself type, the same seller has a deal for you as well. They are selling a four socket server running the Magny-Cours processors. The server also packs 64GB of RAM. The going price is $20,000, but with 48 processing cores, that’s only about $416 per core. It’s not that unreasonable.
The Magny-Cours architecture doubles the core count on AMD’s current Istanbul Opteron chip. Power optimization was apparently paramount for AMD as the Magny-Cours is expected to use no more power than the Istanbul chips. We’re not going to encourage the purchase of these chips, but if you by them drop us a line, okay?
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Cache
February 17, 2010 at 8:34am
Hopefully their heatsinks use something better than the standard clumsy AMD retention mechanism.
alex911
February 17, 2010 at 6:50am
Most programs dont even use dual cores now. But when you run more program than one it is nice to have them load balance at the operating system level on the cores instead of shoving everything into one or two cores. Hell trying to use a single core processor is painful now, even a dual just feels sluggish compared to a quad in most tasks now.
I like the ability to play games, torrent, listen to music, and compile all at once without my game stuttering. On a server you dont have a single role machine anymore. Even if not virtualized you can now have your email, file, print server all on one box.
imagonex
February 16, 2010 at 11:53pm
I wish MAXIMUMPC would test some dual socket and quad socket boards. If Supermicro, Asus, Tyan, Gigabyte and other dual or quad socket mobo makers are reading this, well...send your hardware to MAXIMUMPC for a spin. Please!!
As far as these G34 socket chips go, they really are only going to shine in scenarios involving virtualization, render farms, data centers or that rare application that can actually handle that many cores. Unless you're running server software or finely optimized software that can handle so many sockets and cores, it's just a big waste of money.
Besides Windows Enterprise Server or server linux distros or UNIX, there's not much out there. As for consumers, good luck finding software that can handle 16+ cores!
Otherwise, MAXIMUMPC, if you're reading this, call Supermicro, Tyan or Asus or anyone that manufactures dual or quad socket boards and beg, borrow or steal them and test them!
lien_meat
February 17, 2010 at 4:18pm
Opteron is a server chip, why would you want to run anything but a server OS with it? And actually any modern linux will handle that many cores,but yeah, you would really need an application server or something to make use of all that power.
imagonex
February 17, 2010 at 7:55pm
Thanks for repeating the obvious.
I will cut-n-paste instead of retyping:
"As far as these G34 socket chips go, they really are only going to shine in scenarios involving virtualization, render farms, data centers or that rare application that can actually handle that many cores. Unless you're running server software or finely optimized software that can handle so many sockets and cores, it's just a big waste of money."
And, thanks for stating the obvious fact that Opteron is a workstation/server class CPU. Not news to 99.9% of MaximumPC readers (such as me) out there, no, wait, make that 100%.
Second, I never made any reference to NOT running a server or multiple socket OS. I'm pointing out the fact you NEED to run an OS (or any OS) that can run anywhere from 4 to multiple sockets (not to be confused with cores).
Please note that some OSes will run 4 socket motherboards out-of-the-box. Beyond 4 sockets you'll most likely have to do some compiling or configuring of some kind.
I re-quote myself:
"Besides Windows Enterprise Server or server linux distros or UNIX, there's not much out there."
And...again, being the parrot here,
"As for consumers, good luck finding software that can handle 16+ cores!"
Which obviously and implicitly underlines the fact one will use it in server or specialized environments.
Thank you. Goodnight. Thanks for commenting. :-)
Neufeldt2002
February 16, 2010 at 8:34pm
I would say that the sad part of this is that the consumer level O/S's can't handle that many cores.
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nekollx
February 17, 2010 at 8:52am
maybe that's the "Game changer" in Windows 8, OS level core distributing of single core apps. The apps still use single core but 8 will tell them WHICH core
------------------------------
Coming soon to Lulu.com --Tokusatsu Heroes--
Five teenagers, one alien ghost, a robot, and the fate of the world.
lien_meat
February 17, 2010 at 4:13pm
OS'es already do plenty of that, already. You could even manually set processor afinity for a program as far back as xp (maybe 2000, but I dont' know). Is there something NEW I'm missing, or are people actually touting a normal scheduler feature as a NEW feature? I'm curious...not mocking you.
nekollx
February 17, 2010 at 4:31pm
it's not quite there yet though. Sure you can tinker with affinities but more often then not it's not really doing enough. Try to run say a game in photoshop on a quad core, they both try and occupy the same cores and slow down while 2 cores idle
------------------------------
Coming soon to Lulu.com --Tokusatsu Heroes--
Five teenagers, one alien ghost, a robot, and the fate of the world.
lien_meat
February 17, 2010 at 7:20pm
I know setting afinities isn't the same, I just thought vista and 7 did a good job of automatically handling it these days. I run linux more than windows, so I don't really notice how well it does.
maybe linux tends to do a better job of balancing loads among cores...as my levels across cores are usually about equal. I don't run windows enough (I have 7 on my laptop, but I rarely boot it) to really notice how well it ballences loads on varrying workloads.
I was under the impression that anything post xp did well with 4 cores though... that's what I keep hearing anyway.
Sorry to waste your time.
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