Msi/Via goes dual Opteron
TheLostSwede
Trondheim, Norway Icrontian
- Supports AMD Opteron™ processors
- 800MHz HyperTransport FSB
- Support for AGP 2X/4X/8X/Pro
- Ultra V-Link 1.06GB/s high bandwidth North/South Bridge
interconnect
• VIA® VT8237™ Chipset
- A 33MHz/32bit PCI 2.2 compliant bus interface supports up to
6 external devices.
- Dual Channel Serial ATA/RAID (0, 1)
- Dual Channel ATA 33/66/100/133
- USB 2.0, 6 ports, UHCI compliant
- Advanced power management capabilities
- including ACPI/OnNow
- LPC bus to connect peripherals such as super I/O and BIOS.
- IO APIC controller.
Main Memory
• 144-bit DDR at 200, 266, 333MHz.
• Supports DIMM sizes from 64MB (128Mb x 16 DRAMs) to 2GB.
(1Gb x 4 DRAMs)
• Supports interleaving memory within DIMMs.
• ChipKill ECC allows continuous correction of 4-bit errors in a
failed x 4 memory device.
Slots
• 1 AGP Pro slot
• 4 PCI 32-bit/33MHz slots
Network
• Broadcom BCM5705 Gigabit LAN controllers
- Provides 1000, 100 and 10MB/s data rates
Power Management Features
• Wake up on LAN (WOL), USB, PCI, Mouse
• RTC alarm
• Supports ACPI S1, S2, S4 and S5 functions
System Management
• SMBus (I2C)
• Temperature, voltage, and fan monitors
• Chassis intrusion
BIOS
• 4Mb Flash EEPROM
• PCI 2.2 compliant, VPD, and DMI
• PnP 1.0A, SMBIOS 2.3, ACPI 1.0A, 2.0
• Supports PXE boot protocol
• APM 1.2, WOL
• PC2001 system design compliant
Onboard connectors
- Power connectors (24+8 SSI)
- Front panel connector
- Four 3-pin cooling fan locking header(2 for system & 2 for CPUs)
- 3-pin Clear CMOS header with a jumper
- Stacked Mouse and keyboard ports
- USB header (Front), Stacked 2 USB (Rear)
- RJ-45 with LEDs
- Stacked 2 serial and 1 parallel ports
Onboard I/O
- 1 PS/2 keyboard port
- 1 PS/2 mouse port
- 1 floppy port
- 2 IDE ports
- 2 serial ports
- 1 parallel port
- 4 USB ports (two on front and two on rear).
- 2 SATA ports
Dimension
ATX Form Factor: 25.4 x 30.5cm
Mounting
9 mounting holes (ATX Form Factor)
PC Health Monitoring
• Two onboard voltage monitors for CPU core/s, 2.5V, 3.3V, -12V,
+12V, 5V, 5VSB,VBAT status monitor
• CPU/Chassis temperature monitoring
• LED and control for chassis intrusion detection
• Support for system management software
What draws my attention here is the lack of 66mhz pci-slots. Must be a glitch, cause i cant`t believe making a dual board without 66mhz pci. GREAT memory controller though.
http://www.msi.com.tw/program/products/server/svr/pro_svr_detail.php?UID=484&MODEL=MS-9131
- 800MHz HyperTransport FSB
- Support for AGP 2X/4X/8X/Pro
- Ultra V-Link 1.06GB/s high bandwidth North/South Bridge
interconnect
• VIA® VT8237™ Chipset
- A 33MHz/32bit PCI 2.2 compliant bus interface supports up to
6 external devices.
- Dual Channel Serial ATA/RAID (0, 1)
- Dual Channel ATA 33/66/100/133
- USB 2.0, 6 ports, UHCI compliant
- Advanced power management capabilities
- including ACPI/OnNow
- LPC bus to connect peripherals such as super I/O and BIOS.
- IO APIC controller.
Main Memory
• 144-bit DDR at 200, 266, 333MHz.
• Supports DIMM sizes from 64MB (128Mb x 16 DRAMs) to 2GB.
(1Gb x 4 DRAMs)
• Supports interleaving memory within DIMMs.
• ChipKill ECC allows continuous correction of 4-bit errors in a
failed x 4 memory device.
Slots
• 1 AGP Pro slot
• 4 PCI 32-bit/33MHz slots
Network
• Broadcom BCM5705 Gigabit LAN controllers
- Provides 1000, 100 and 10MB/s data rates
Power Management Features
• Wake up on LAN (WOL), USB, PCI, Mouse
• RTC alarm
• Supports ACPI S1, S2, S4 and S5 functions
System Management
• SMBus (I2C)
• Temperature, voltage, and fan monitors
• Chassis intrusion
BIOS
• 4Mb Flash EEPROM
• PCI 2.2 compliant, VPD, and DMI
• PnP 1.0A, SMBIOS 2.3, ACPI 1.0A, 2.0
• Supports PXE boot protocol
• APM 1.2, WOL
• PC2001 system design compliant
Onboard connectors
- Power connectors (24+8 SSI)
- Front panel connector
- Four 3-pin cooling fan locking header(2 for system & 2 for CPUs)
- 3-pin Clear CMOS header with a jumper
- Stacked Mouse and keyboard ports
- USB header (Front), Stacked 2 USB (Rear)
- RJ-45 with LEDs
- Stacked 2 serial and 1 parallel ports
Onboard I/O
- 1 PS/2 keyboard port
- 1 PS/2 mouse port
- 1 floppy port
- 2 IDE ports
- 2 serial ports
- 1 parallel port
- 4 USB ports (two on front and two on rear).
- 2 SATA ports
Dimension
ATX Form Factor: 25.4 x 30.5cm
Mounting
9 mounting holes (ATX Form Factor)
PC Health Monitoring
• Two onboard voltage monitors for CPU core/s, 2.5V, 3.3V, -12V,
+12V, 5V, 5VSB,VBAT status monitor
• CPU/Chassis temperature monitoring
• LED and control for chassis intrusion detection
• Support for system management software
What draws my attention here is the lack of 66mhz pci-slots. Must be a glitch, cause i cant`t believe making a dual board without 66mhz pci. GREAT memory controller though.
http://www.msi.com.tw/program/products/server/svr/pro_svr_detail.php?UID=484&MODEL=MS-9131
0
Comments
1. why make it ATX? E-ATX is A-OK with me, especially since now that theyv'e made it ATX, they've left me a whopping 4 PCI slots...
2. What the hell kind of an idiot designed a modern dually chipset that doesn't support 66MHz/64-bit PCI?
I hope someone (preferably other than Via- I have no problem with MSI) does a better dual s940/agp board than this... otherwise, I'm gonna be using my K7D-L for a long, long time...
True dat, i haven`t used a pci-slot in a year now.
But the lack of 66mhz pci MUST be a typo.
And judging by the specs, I'd need the following PCI cards:
Sound (Audigy2... oh wait, it's a Via chipset... wonderful) and a SATA RAID card... that leaves me two (realistically 1) PCI card slots open. Add a honking big video card cooler, and I have zero slots. And it'd only have 2 PCI devices. I'd rather have a bigger form factor (e-atx; 12"x13") and more slots, especially since you're gonna want to put a system like that in a full tower anyhow (cooling) and there are a number of excellent full towers (PC-70, SX1240, the various cube cases, etc.) that will take e-atx boards.
/me waits for nVidia
Actually it comes with SATA RAID. And most of the consumers of this board will be using it for a server, so the no onboard sound problem either wouldn't be an issue, or they'd stick in an old $5 generic sound card.
But the lack of 64-bit slots is very disturbing. This board isn't appropriate for the home, and I don't see it being accepted 100% into the server market without 64-bit slots. Even a workstation could benefit from 64-bit slots.
The design problems were probably approached this way:
MSI is not a server board mfr mostly. 66 MHZ PCI sockets need more robust power management. Piping things like SATA and other things onboard gives better throughput and needs a base bus that is better than a shared 66 MHZ PCI bus would give.
With SATA and USB 2.0 onboard the base busses can be run with fewer traces closer together than the onboard builtin allows with controller chips located right, on busses specialized for the purpose. Less heat than a combined mixed mode bus for PCI would yeild also.
Server boards are bigger mostly because of heat and the mfrs trying to avoid signal crossover and needing many more layers to design the board right or space for trace spacing.
One or two layers are ground planes in the best boards. Server boards for ultra-modern servers are 6-8 layers and manufacturing and designing boards right cost 2X as much if you go from a 4layer design to a 6 layer design and really model for heat and signal crossover. The major server mfrs use very expensive computerized modelling to preproof designs before even building proof boards.
Fans create electronic fields and have to hav spacing around them for the fields to not interfere-- field interference thus dictates spacing and area just needed for CPUs becuase of fans in large part.
The larger size makes for better board running in and of itself,and easier board design when you have been working with things that radiate less heat to tightly manage power-- and with newer tech timing and voltage levels have to be tighter amd more ehat results (lots more).
Someday, Iwill start writing about board design and stick articles mostly in text form up on my site, with some diagrams I can get reprint rigths to that are very good. I can also talk a bit about marketing, but will simply say here that MSI is targetting extreme power end users and not server markets or cluster computing in their marketting position now.
Tyan does server boards, and their boards, for Opteron, are likely to be 6 or 8 layer boards and have builtin storage and I\O busses. The cost trend says that they are for folks who want extreme stable and modern high speed balanced designs. So, they also spend a lot more in design time and proofing and their boards lag 6-14months behind other mfrs for new tech and they spend a lot more on R&D and need to cover much greater costs. So expect to pay 2X to 3X as much for a server board than for a workstation board to get a good design.
I hope this perspective helps some.
I see that in your sig now. Good thing this board has PCI slots, eh?
Thanks for the perspective, Ageek. I'm just glad that MSI put SATA on the board. Power users are a pretty diverse group, but you can bet that many of them will appreciate the added speed of a WD Raptor, since they've been denied 64-bit RAID controllers.
I am also going to look more closely at what SATA channel structure is on the controller on the Opterons, SATA was speced to allow multiple drives per channel, and more drives per channel than IDE in a daisy chain off of each channel.
Happy to participate and share, I learn things about systems by seeing how things overclock and then figureing out why. So although I do not overclock, I do get ideas on what can be expanded and how by seeing extra capacity built into components beyond rated specs.
I cant believe that this board isn´t designed for server usage. No way a dual Opteron is made for Power users. Not yet anyway.
For example, fun to shove in a 1000 dollar scsi board and a couple of 15k drives? Bah.
Ok, if the SATA is embedded on the chipset you can get full advantage of all 150 mb/s, but not on a 32-bit. Limit is 133mb/s there. It is marketed as a Server board actually, not a power user board.