Xeon Owners Club

[johnspack]

Wow, dam! Yeah pretty sure I could do 5+ at 1.4.

 

[lyra]

what is a xeon phi and what can you do with them?

 

[dorsetknob]

what is a xeon phi and what can you do with them?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xeon_Phi

 

[lyra]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xeon_Phi

mm i have read that but i dont quite understand what a coprocessor is or what you can do with them apart from "supercomputing" and highly parallelised workloads. like what does that mean?

 

[dorsetknob]

Rough Bastardized Explanation
in the old days

A computer/Cpu unless it had a Companion CPU Dedicated to Floating point Maths took ages to do certain things
we are talking 386 CPU + 387 FPU
Intel later incorporated the FPU on Die in its CPU ( as did AMD but not Cyrex)
This is how things Currently Stand
untill
Nvidia and AMD with their modern Graphics Cards have Enabled through Software the use of their GPU to also tackle these mathmatical CPU use's

Now Intel Seeing their market Share dipping in this field have introduced the xeon phi ( a CPU add in Accelerator card )
in a Attempt to recover their position in the Market
This market being Super Computers /Heavy industural Database centers Ect and not for the home user

AS i Said A rough Bastard Explanation

ps some one else may explain it better in more Tech terms >>>> they are welcome

 

[alucasa]

mm i have read that but i dont quite understand what a coprocessor is or what you can do with them apart from "supercomputing" and highly parallelised workloads. like what does that mean?

If you are familiar with CUDA or OpenGL, it may be easier to understand.

Until like 10 years ago, GPU's primary usage was to game. GPU is a form of CPU but it is far better in a certain task (math) than generalized CPU (Jack of all trades).

Some saw possibilities of using GPU for data crunching and developed CUDA and OpenGL which is a layer application that enables users to use their GPU to perform certain tasks (Rendering, data crunching, image processing = basically math).

Nvidia invested heavily into CUDA while AMD was letting OpenGL to do the job for free. OpenGL is opensource.

Nowadays, a lot of people, including myself use GPU for things other than gaming. Bundle them together on a dedicated platform, they are far superior than a group of CPUs in the same estate required. Cheaper as well.

 

[lyra]

ahh right, i understand better now. i stumbled upon them whilst casually looking through ARK but got confused when i saw they here on PCIe cards, the heavilly bastardised explanation was very helpful in understanding where they came about from. pretty interesting stuff. i think im gonna go and plunge down the rabbit hole of what floating point operations are next so i can get a better idea about what they are for thanks guys

in kinda summary its somewhere between a cpu and a gpu for floating point maths, yeh?

 

[alucasa]

Nya (meow)

 

[lyra]

okay, so now i have what should be all the parts for my new build now that i have a new bios chip that supposedly has the latest bios on it.

i have an X5672 in an Asus P6X58D-E with a 980ti and 24gb (tried with 12gb and a single stick. still didnt work) of ECC ddr3

i press the power button and all the fans spin up and the hdd makes working noises then after a few seconds the gpu fans stop (apart from an occasional rotation or two) and the hdd falls silent. the DRAM light also comes on.

once it gets into this state nothing i do has any response. holding the memOK button does nothing, holding the power button does nothing. its the exact same situation i was in with the original bios chip.

i have tried with my E5520 also and got the same results even though the stepping is the same as an i7 920 :/

im really lost here. could it be cause i have a weird xeon? (it says N/A for the msrp on ARK so is it some kind of special oem cpu?) could the bios chip i got just have the standard original bios? could the motherboard be knackered all together?

pls help. i dont wanna have to go for plan b which was go over to the dark side and get an i5 D:

UPDATE: i went and got 3 2gb sticks of normal ddr3 and the exact same problem persists. this has really got me stumped

 

[FilipM]

Interesting, I'm pretty certain that the bios you got is not the latest version. Do you have a spare 920 so that you can flash the bios?

ECC ram might not work at all, I think you might need to mod the bios for that.

 

[lyra]

i can only imagine its not actually the latest bios. i picked up some normal ddr3 today to check if it works (its really cool, its old kingston hyperX with the huge heatsink and anodised blue, it looks cool with my old school baby blue motherboard)

i might be able to borrow a 920 off CAPSLOCKSTUCK and hopefully i can flash the bios with that

its getting stressful now cause im halfway through the window that ebay buyer protection give D: it was listed as working but if its hooperjooped i really dont wanna be stuck £80 down with a dead board

 

[johnspack]

Well, having fun with this system at 4.8. Much snappier than my x58 system was. Probably helps that my ssds have sata3 now. Now going to throw a wrench into it... I need more ram so
getting another matching 16gb kit. So I'll have 8 sticks total, hope my imc is as strong as my cpu's oc potential!

 

[FilipM]

I'll see what I can do with mine, as I've said LinX has been weird but I haven't had any problems or lock-ups yet for a few days...I've even lowered the voltage in the bios, still going strong. I'll get on it after the weekend, I hope for 4.5 hehe

 

[alucasa]

My plan for dual E5-2683 v3 rig has been put on halt for the moment.

... After Ryzen's release, high-end Xeon prices went up... It was 450 CAD but now it's 530 CAD. Darn it.

 

[lyra]

alrighty... i emailed the people who sold me my new bios chip and they confirmed that it is version 0803 which is the latest...

so does anyone wanna buy an x58 motherboard? or swap it for one that would work? cause i guess all hope is lost now. unless there is a way to force the cpu to work with some custom bios or something? gaaa i dont wanna have to get an i7 T^T

 

[FilipM]

Got the RAM from 1600 rated to 2100MHz at CL11 atm, gained about 1000-1500MB/s read and 3000MB/s on copy speeds...never thought it would do 2100

 

[FilipM]

This is what I settled on. Somehow still slower than my old ram @ 1600 (9-9-9-24). I can't find which combination of sub-timings is making all the difference.

 

[biffzinker]

Nvidia invested heavily into CUDA while AMD was letting OpenGL to do the job for free. OpenGL is opensource.

Mix up with OpenGL with OpenCL?

i think im gonna go and plunge down the rabbit hole of what floating point operations are next so i can get a better idea about what they are for thanks guys

in kinda summary its somewhere between a cpu and a gpu for floating point maths, yeh?

GPU's are also a big hit with the neural networking you've likely seen, and heard in the news.

 

[lyra]

I FINALLY DID IT!!!

the new chip i got had the right bios on and the board and chip and everything worked but i needed to have a cpu that the old bios worked with so that it could turn on and realise there was a new bios chip in it and it sort itself out with that done i just stuck my xeon in and it worked! my ECC ram doesnt seem to wanna work though so rip 24gb of ram, 6 will have to do for now

 

[FilipM]

Excellent! Usually ECC ram doesn't work with normal boards, but I think I saw someone running a modded bios on an X58 P6T Deluxe with ECC Ram, however I wouldn't recommend doing such things. Sell the ECC on ebay and buy normal Ram (atleast 12GB) with the money, babushka will love it

 

[lyra]

yeah i have 12gb coming in the post. should be here tomorrow. but damn, makes me sad that i had to spend about 70 quid on some memory when i got twice as much for half the price with my ecc memory oh well thats economics, there is a much bigger second hand market for non ecc memory than there is old server memory

 

[CAPSLOCKSTUCK]

Is anyone here running a 1366 Xeon at 5.0ghz ?

 

[johnspack]

Well guess my xeon has a pretty strong imc... 8 sticks of ram at full speed! Only 32gbs worth, but still better than 16...

I found out much to my horror that one stick is a ripjaws x, and the rest were z. Took mem ok button and some tweaking to do.
http://valid.x86.fr/uhxtx1

 

[FilipM]

Is anyone here running a 1366 Xeon at 5.0ghz ?

That's hard for a daily

 

[CAPSLOCKSTUCK]

I run my X5670 at 4.4 so i backed off a bit for everyday use. The must intensive thing i do is GTA V and the average cpu use is about 60% with h/t on and my temps still stay good with H100 pump and 120mm rad and 2 fans

I'm looking at quads, specifically X5677 and X 5687.....40 quid or 60.

The X5677 makes most sense but i really want a 5.0ghz cpu.