Quad Core Xeon plus Dual Core Xeon?

Hi,

I was recently looking at Dell servers and note their recommended config
is two sockets - with Quad core in one and Dual in the other.

Obviously this is somewhat non-symmetrical?

Any idea why they would suggest this layout, as opposed to two Quads or
two Duals?

--
Gerry_uk

There are several reasons I can think of. All of them would be poor design. The BIOS might not support two quad cores. The OS might support only six processors. There might not be enough power for two quad cores.

Gerry_uk wrote:

Hi,

I was recently looking at Dell servers and note their recommended config
is two sockets - with Quad core in one and Dual in the other.

Obviously this is somewhat non-symmetrical?

Any idea why they would suggest this layout, as opposed to two Quads or
two Duals?

--
Gerry_uk

--
Mike Walsh
West Palm Beach, Florida, U.S.A.

Gerry_uk wrote:
Hi,

I was recently looking at Dell servers and note their recommended config
is two sockets - with Quad core in one and Dual in the other.

Obviously this is somewhat non-symmetrical?

Any idea why they would suggest this layout, as opposed to two Quads or
two Duals?


Do you have a URL for that ? I'd at least like to see the
context of the statement.

Paul

Mike Walsh wrote:

There are several reasons I can think of. All of them would be
poor design. The BIOS might not support two quad cores. The OS
might support only six processors. There might not be enough power
for two quad cores.

Please control your output line lengths (fixed here). They should
not exceed 72, but 67 is better. Also please do not top-post (not
fixed). Your answer belongs after (or intermixed with) the quoted
material to which you reply, after snipping all irrelevant
material. See the following links:

--
http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html
http://www.caliburn.nl/topposting.html
http://www.netmeister.org/news/learn2quote.html
http://cfaj.freeshell.org/google/ (taming google)
http://members.fortunecity.com/nnqweb/ (newusers)



--
Posted via a free Usenet account from http://www.teranews.com

There are several reasons I can think of. All of them would be
poor design. The BIOS might not support two quad cores. The OS
might support only six processors. There might not be enough power
for two quad cores.

Please control your output line lengths (fixed here). They should
not exceed 72, but 67 is better. Also please do not top-post (not
fixed). Your answer belongs after (or intermixed with) the quoted
material to which you reply, after snipping all irrelevant
material. See the following links:

Do you have a blue flashing light in your hat? The only posts I have seen
from you lately are repremanding people for bad grammar, the wrong line
length or top-posting. Whilst I agree with your comments, it is becoming
very irritating!

Hi Paul,

The reason there's no URL is because my Dell site is a secure site for
ordering, but I can explain how to get to a similar page with the same
choices:

Go to the main Dell website, choose the type of "business" you want to
be, choose products, and then servers, then choose something like Dell
PE2950. Go to "Configure and buy" and note all the options you can
choose. The first choices are the type of processors you would like.

You should see some choices are in a different color and say "Dell
Recommended".

Paul wrote:
Gerry_uk wrote:
Hi,

I was recently looking at Dell servers and note their recommended
config is two sockets - with Quad core in one and Dual in the other.

Obviously this is somewhat non-symmetrical?

Any idea why they would suggest this layout, as opposed to two Quads
or two Duals?


Do you have a URL for that ? I'd at least like to see the
context of the statement.

Paul


--
Gerry_uk

On Thu, 26 Apr 2007 11:17:00 +0100, "GT"
wrote:

There are several reasons I can think of. All of them would be
poor design. The BIOS might not support two quad cores. The OS
might support only six processors. There might not be enough power
for two quad cores.

Please control your output line lengths (fixed here). They should
not exceed 72, but 67 is better. Also please do not top-post (not
fixed). Your answer belongs after (or intermixed with) the quoted
material to which you reply, after snipping all irrelevant
material. See the following links:

Do you have a blue flashing light in your hat? The only posts I have seen
from you lately are repremanding people for bad grammar, the wrong line
length or top-posting. Whilst I agree with your comments, it is becoming
very irritating!



If he only said "pretty please" would that be effective?

The problem is that more people aren't taking the time to
correct posters. Recognize that what makes usenet work is
that there are some conventions, which if not policed to
some degree, will be ignored by those too ignorant of them
or their value. "Some" people think it isn't a problem,
while trying to simultaneously ignore that the whole reason
usenet works is because others AREN'T ignoring the
conventions.

It's like littering - you might throw a bit of trash in your
yard and soon the wind blows it away never to be seen again,
but if everyone continually did this, the effect would be
trash everywhere. What if everyone posted without fixed
line breaks like Mr Walsh does? IF that is what everyone
did, then it would be a per-forum convention and everyone
would have to, and could then, expect to reformat every
message instead of having any preservation of what the
author intended.

At some point Mr Walsh made a brief claim that everyone's
newsreader should reformat his posts for him so he doesn't
have to follow conventions. He fails to realize not all
newsreaders do this function and some deliberately don't, to
preserve the author's intentions because in a modern society
where everyone has been exposed to the written word since
early childhood, it is fairly reasonable to assume that if
an author chooses a unique format that it is for some
benefit to the READER to preserve that format. Here it is
the opposite, the reader must reformat it just to make it
readable at all, nevermind any formatting for a normal level
of readability.

Don't be irritated, be glad that most people manage to
follow the conventions and only a few need reminded of them.

On Thu, 26 Apr 2007 16:34:01 +0100, Gerry_uk
wrote:

Hi Paul,

The reason there's no URL is because my Dell site is a secure site for
ordering, but I can explain how to get to a similar page with the same
choices:

Go to the main Dell website, choose the type of "business" you want to
be, choose products, and then servers, then choose something like Dell
PE2950. Go to "Configure and buy" and note all the options you can
choose. The first choices are the type of processors you would like.

You could have at least linked right up until the point
where it became an order if you couldn't get any further
link to work.


http://www.dell.com/content/products...spx/pedge_2950

For the benefit of others, a link to what was suggested
above is here,

http://configure.us.dell.com/dellsto...300&oc=becwfk2


Do you have a URL for that ? I'd at least like to see the
context of the statement.


It looks like it was just a misunderstanding of what
"recommended" means, since Dell has no idea of the use and
it was just a generic default choice on an add-on menu, most
likely they had it recommended prior to offering quad core
and merely forgot to change that "recommended" field to be
updated to dual vs quad.

In summary, remember that you need to know what you want to
buy or it is likely someone else should be placing the
order. A web page is designed and updated by humans, is
subject to errors at any moment. I would expect that even
if it had allowed buying one quad and one dual core, someone
would have caught the mistake before it shipped and would
have contacted the OP to determine if it should have 2 x
dual or 2 x quad CPUs.

Gerry_uk wrote:
Hi Paul,

The reason there's no URL is because my Dell site is a secure site for
ordering, but I can explain how to get to a similar page with the same
choices:

Go to the main Dell website, choose the type of "business" you want to
be, choose products, and then servers, then choose something like Dell
PE2950. Go to "Configure and buy" and note all the options you can
choose. The first choices are the type of processors you would like.

You should see some choices are in a different color and say "Dell
Recommended".

The description here of the PE2950, is implying matched pairs.

http://www1.ca.dell.com/content/prod...spec s#tabtop

And at least for me, when I "Configure" one, the two items for
processors (initial processor choice, and the "Additional Processor"),
don't have a green "Dell recommended" coloration. There is a
green band over top of the Windows Server 2003 R2 operating system
choice.

If I was spending the bosses money, I don't think I'd be caught
dead with mismatched processors :-) Certainly from a FSB protocol
point of view, I don't see a reason for a problem. The chipset
is 5000X. There is a block diagram showing the FSB connections
for the two processor sockets, are independent.

http://www.hardwarezone.com/articles...?cid=2&id=2002

When I look at the 5000X Northbridge datasheet, I notice there
is one clock (CORECLK) which looks to be used by both processor
busses. So mixing FSB speeds doesn't look like an option. If a dual
and a quad shared the same FSB speed, maybe that would work.
But I wouldn't take any chances, and would match them.

ftp://download.intel.com/design/chip...s/31307003.pdf

Paul


Paul wrote:
Gerry_uk wrote:
Hi,

I was recently looking at Dell servers and note their recommended
config is two sockets - with Quad core in one and Dual in the other.

Obviously this is somewhat non-symmetrical?

Any idea why they would suggest this layout, as opposed to two Quads
or two Duals?


Do you have a URL for that ? I'd at least like to see the
context of the statement.

Paul

Hi Kony,

The Premiere login (referenced in my original post) requires a password
at the FIRST page, you can't give a URL "just before the order".

Most of the Dell site will only work when you're in the correct country
and when you have cookies already in place, for example when I click
your second link below it just gives an error saying the Data cannot be
found, probably because I'm in the wrong country and don't have a cookie
in place.

kony wrote:
On Thu, 26 Apr 2007 16:34:01 +0100, Gerry_uk
wrote:

Hi Paul,

The reason there's no URL is because my Dell site is a secure site for
ordering, but I can explain how to get to a similar page with the same
choices:

Go to the main Dell website, choose the type of "business" you want to
be, choose products, and then servers, then choose something like Dell
PE2950. Go to "Configure and buy" and note all the options you can
choose. The first choices are the type of processors you would like.

You could have at least linked right up until the point
where it became an order if you couldn't get any further
link to work.


http://www.dell.com/content/products...spx/pedge_2950

For the benefit of others, a link to what was suggested
above is here,

http://configure.us.dell.com/dellsto...300&oc=becwfk2


Do you have a URL for that ? I'd at least like to see the
context of the statement.


It looks like it was just a misunderstanding of what
"recommended" means, since Dell has no idea of the use and
it was just a generic default choice on an add-on menu, most
likely they had it recommended prior to offering quad core
and merely forgot to change that "recommended" field to be
updated to dual vs quad.

In summary, remember that you need to know what you want to
buy or it is likely someone else should be placing the
order. A web page is designed and updated by humans, is
subject to errors at any moment. I would expect that even
if it had allowed buying one quad and one dual core, someone
would have caught the mistake before it shipped and would
have contacted the OP to determine if it should have 2 x
dual or 2 x quad CPUs.


--
Gerry_uk