Hi,
I've been doing some benchmarks with this board, it is terribly disppointing.
Has anyone had similar experiences?
The hardware spec is:
Dual 2.8GHz Xeon, 3ware Escalade 7850 (7500-8) 12 port IDE RAID controller,
RAID 10, 4x 1GB DDR SDRAM Registered ECC, 2x 80GB WD HDD, 10x 120GB WD HDD,
ServerWorks Grand Champion LE.
I am running RH7.3 with 2.4.20 kernel. The performance of this box is about
half of an almost identical box (Supermicro X5DP8-G2 mobo, E7501 chipset)
Also, this board can't even boot with 8x 1GB memory modules plugged in (8 DIMM
slots in total). This is a relative new board and I can't find anything
relevant on the net.
cheers,
Song Zhao
From: Song Zhao <[email protected]>
Date: Thu, Feb 20, 2003 at 08:34:28PM -0500
> Hi,
>
> I've been doing some benchmarks with this board, it is terribly disppointing.
> Has anyone had similar experiences?
How many people do you guess own such hardware? Not me :-(
>
> The hardware spec is:
> Dual 2.8GHz Xeon, 3ware Escalade 7850 (7500-8) 12 port IDE RAID controller,
> RAID 10, 4x 1GB DDR SDRAM Registered ECC, 2x 80GB WD HDD, 10x 120GB WD HDD,
> ServerWorks Grand Champion LE.
>
> I am running RH7.3 with 2.4.20 kernel. The performance of this box is about
> half of an almost identical box (Supermicro X5DP8-G2 mobo, E7501 chipset)
what does
cat /proc/mtrr
say?
>
> Also, this board can't even boot with 8x 1GB memory modules plugged in (8 DIMM
> slots in total). This is a relative new board and I can't find anything
> relevant on the net.
>
"can't boot" as in crashes halfway during linux or doesn't even start
lilo?
HTH,
Jurriaan
--
We are lost, we are freaks
We are crippled, we are weak
We are the heirs, we are the true heirs to all the world.
New Model Army - Ballad of Bodmin Pill
GNU/Linux 2.5.61 SMP/ReiserFS 2x2105 bogomips load av: 0.93 1.05 0.60
On Thu, 20 Feb 2003 05:21 am, Jurriaan wrote:
> From: Song Zhao <[email protected]>
> Date: Thu, Feb 20, 2003 at 08:34:28PM -0500
>
> > Hi,
> >
> > I've been doing some benchmarks with this board, it is terribly
> > disppointing. Has anyone had similar experiences?
>
> How many people do you guess own such hardware? Not me :-(
>
> > The hardware spec is:
> > Dual 2.8GHz Xeon, 3ware Escalade 7850 (7500-8) 12 port IDE RAID
> > controller, RAID 10, 4x 1GB DDR SDRAM Registered ECC, 2x 80GB WD HDD, 10x
> > 120GB WD HDD, ServerWorks Grand Champion LE.
> >
> > I am running RH7.3 with 2.4.20 kernel. The performance of this box is
> > about half of an almost identical box (Supermicro X5DP8-G2 mobo, E7501
> > chipset)
>
> what does
>
> cat /proc/mtrr
>
> say?
sorry I can't tell you right now, as I have just replaced the motherboard with
another Supermicro mobo, this time a E7500 chipset. As soon as I get it back
online, I'll let you know.
>
> > Also, this board can't even boot with 8x 1GB memory modules plugged in (8
> > DIMM slots in total). This is a relative new board and I can't find
> > anything relevant on the net.
>
> "can't boot" as in crashes halfway during linux or doesn't even start
> lilo?
It doesn't even start Lilo, it hangs after it checks memory, 3ware card and
network card.
>
> HTH,
> Jurriaan
On Thu, 20 Feb 2003 22:01:15 -0500
Song Zhao <[email protected]> wrote:
> > > Also, this board can't even boot with 8x 1GB memory modules plugged in
> > > (8 DIMM slots in total). This is a relative new board and I can't find
> > > anything relevant on the net.
> >
> > "can't boot" as in crashes halfway during linux or doesn't even start
> > lilo?
>
> It doesn't even start Lilo, it hangs after it checks memory, 3ware card and
> network card.
In that case, it has nothing to do with Linux... Have you checked to see if
there's any BIOS updates?
On Thu, Feb 20, 2003 at 08:34:28PM -0500, Song Zhao wrote:
> Dual 2.8GHz Xeon, 3ware Escalade 7850 (7500-8) 12 port IDE RAID controller,
> RAID 10, 4x 1GB DDR SDRAM Registered ECC, 2x 80GB WD HDD, 10x 120GB WD HDD,
> ServerWorks Grand Champion LE.
> I am running RH7.3 with 2.4.20 kernel. The performance of this box is about
> half of an almost identical box (Supermicro X5DP8-G2 mobo, E7501 chipset)
You mentioned nothing about what sort of performance you were measuring.
Disk, network, memory bandwidth etc.., however at a complete guess you
are hitting this..
mtrr: Serverworks LE detected. Write-combining disabled.
This workaround was for older sewerworks chipsets which were
buggy. Rumour has it that revisions 6 and above are ok.
I have a patch pending for 2.5, if it turns out to be stable,
it should also get merged back to 2.4
Dave
--
| Dave Jones. http://www.codemonkey.org.uk
| SuSE Labs
To: Manish Lachwani <[email protected]>
On Thu, 20 Feb 2003 12:54 pm, you wrote:
> WHat kind of benchmarks are you running? I had evaluated a Supermicro board
> with e7500 chipset and it showed good performance. Are you benchmarking
> network, memory, disk? Note that 3ware controllers operate at 33 MHZ PCI
> and if the nics share the same PCI bus with 3ware, they too will operate at
> 33 MHZ PCI and not 133 MHZ. Have you disabled hyperthreading in the BIOS?
I did some disk I/O and CPU benchmarks, including bonnie++, hdparm, nbench,
unixbench, dbench, tiotest. I haven't done any network/memory testing yet,
the onboard Broadcom and Intel gigabit controllers both seem to work quite
well. I have taken care to make sure that the 3ware card has its own PCI bus,
in this case slot 5. I have not disabled hyperthreading but I am not sure why
I would.
On that note, I have also done benchmarking with a Supermicro E7500 board
(P4DPR, Intel Gigabit 82544GC onboard controller), the tests I ran included
Netperf, Netperf3, NetPIPE (TCP), Tbench, nttcp, Aim9 and the ones I
mentioned above. It seemed that if I had two identical machines hooked up
directly (back to back with CAT5E crossover cable), the performance would be
a lot better and is very consistent. I tried different combinations
HT=on/off, CPU affinity, IRQ affinity, SMP/UP. Some results were:
Supermicro
=========
Netperf Result (MB/s) - 112.21
Netperf3 Result (MB/s) - 112.22
Tbench Result (MB/s) - 114.48
Nttcp Result (Mb/s) - 946.55
However, if I hook it up to a different machine, problems started to occur.
For example, with the Tyan S2720 Thunder i7500 board (E7500 chipset, Intel
82544EI onboard gigabit controller), I see good performance on the Tyan but
not Supermicro.
Supermicro
=========
Netperf Result (MB/s) - 29.23
Netperf3 Result (MB/s) - 78.19
Tbench Result (MB/s) - 117.32
Nttcp Result (Mb/s) - 646.77
Tyan
====
Netperf Result (MB/s) - 112.22
Netperf3 Result (MB/s) - 112.02
Tbench Result (MB/s) - can't find it
Nttcp Result (Mb/s) - 945.9
-------------------------------------------------------
On Thu, 20 Feb 2003 07:51 am, Bruce Harada wrote:
> On Thu, 20 Feb 2003 22:01:15 -0500
>
> Song Zhao <[email protected]> wrote:
> > > > Also, this board can't even boot with 8x 1GB memory modules plugged
> > > > in (8 DIMM slots in total). This is a relative new board and I can't
> > > > find anything relevant on the net.
> > >
> > > "can't boot" as in crashes halfway during linux or doesn't even start
> > > lilo?
> >
> > It doesn't even start Lilo, it hangs after it checks memory, 3ware card
> > and network card.
>
> In that case, it has nothing to do with Linux... Have you checked to see if
> there's any BIOS updates?
I haven't checked for BIOS updates yet, we were planning to try a different
brand of memory modules. The chipset is supposed to be able to support up to
16GB. 8GB should definitely be supported by the default BIOS revision. I put
4GB in it, and it boots up fine.
Also, this has nothing to do with the fact that it runs slow when its up and
running with 4GB.
On Thu, 20 Feb 2003 06:06 am, Jurriaan wrote:
> From: Song Zhao <[email protected]>
> Date: Thu, Feb 20, 2003 at 10:01:15PM -0500
>
> > > > Also, this board can't even boot with 8x 1GB memory modules plugged
> > > > in (8 DIMM slots in total). This is a relative new board and I can't
> > > > find anything relevant on the net.
> > >
> > > "can't boot" as in crashes halfway during linux or doesn't even start
> > > lilo?
> >
> > It doesn't even start Lilo, it hangs after it checks memory, 3ware card
> > and network card.
>
> A bios issue? That would be something for the people you bought it from,
> then.
Our supplier is in the process of contacting Supermicro about it. My other
Supermicro X5DP8-G2 (E7501 chipset) is running beautifully.
Date: Fri, 21 Feb 2003 12:24:10 -0500
From: Song Zhao <[email protected]>
To: Dave Jones <[email protected]>
On Thu, 20 Feb 2003 09:57 am, you wrote:
> On Thu, Feb 20, 2003 at 08:34:28PM -0500, Song Zhao wrote:
> > Dual 2.8GHz Xeon, 3ware Escalade 7850 (7500-8) 12 port IDE RAID
> > controller, RAID 10, 4x 1GB DDR SDRAM Registered ECC, 2x 80GB WD HDD,
> > 10x 120GB WD HDD, ServerWorks Grand Champion LE.
> > I am running RH7.3 with 2.4.20 kernel. The performance of this box is
> > about half of an almost identical box (Supermicro X5DP8-G2 mobo, E7501
> > chipset)
>
> You mentioned nothing about what sort of performance you were measuring.
> Disk, network, memory bandwidth etc.., however at a complete guess you
> are hitting this..
I did some disk I/O and CPU benchmarks, including bonnie++, hdparm, nbench,
unixbench, dbench, tiotest. I haven't done any network/memory testing yet.
Here is a rough comparison of E7500, E7501 and the ServerWorks Chipset:
==========================================================================
| Benchmark | E7500E7501 | ServerWorks | GrandChampion LE |
==========================================================================
| Nbench (integer index) | 33.47 | 38.78 | 10.61 |
==========================================================================
| Nbench (floating-point index) | 27.03 | 32.05 | 20.87 |
==========================================================================
| Unixbench index | 329 | 349.5 | 141.6 |
==========================================================================
| Hdparm -t | 70.33MB/s | 73.73MB/s | 46.04MB/s |
==========================================================================
| Hdparm -T | 512MB/s | 673.68MB/s | 673.68MB/s |
==========================================================================
| Tiobench (write) | 41.2MB/s | 42.09MB/s | 44.37MB/s |
==========================================================================
| Tiobench (random write) | 7.03MB/s | 9.73MB/s | 10.87MB/s |
==========================================================================
| Tiobench (read) | 1520.05MB/s | 1528.2MB/s | 1267.15MB/s |
==========================================================================
| Tiobench (random read) | 1391.36MB/s | 1471.28MB/s | 1041.67MB/s |
==========================================================================
> mtrr: Serverworks LE detected. Write-combining disabled.
from dmesg:
mtrr: v1.40 (20010327) Richard Gooch ([email protected])
mtrr: detected mtrr type: Intel
ServerWorks CSB5: IDE controller on PCI bus 00 dev 79
ServerWorks CSB5: chipset revision 147
ServerWorks CSB5: not 100% native mode: will probe irqs later
from lspci (please note that I took out 3ware card which I mentioned in my
previous mail):
00:00.0 Host bridge: ServerWorks: Unknown device 0014 (rev 31)
00:00.1 Host bridge: ServerWorks: Unknown device 0014
00:00.2 Host bridge: ServerWorks: Unknown device 0014
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc Rage XL (rev 27)
00:04.0 Ethernet controller: Intel Corp.: Unknown device 100e (rev 02)
00:0f.0 ISA bridge: ServerWorks CSB5 South Bridge (rev 93)
00:0f.1 IDE interface: ServerWorks CSB5 IDE Controller (rev 93)
00:0f.3 Host bridge: ServerWorks: Unknown device 0225
00:10.0 Host bridge: ServerWorks: Unknown device 0101 (rev 03)
00:10.2 Host bridge: ServerWorks: Unknown device 0101 (rev 03)
00:11.0 Host bridge: ServerWorks: Unknown device 0101 (rev 03)
00:11.2 Host bridge: ServerWorks: Unknown device 0101 (rev 03)
01:03.0 Ethernet controller: BROADCOM Corporation NetXtreme BCM5703X Gigabit
Ethernet (rev 02)
> This workaround was for older sewerworks chipsets which were
> buggy. Rumour has it that revisions 6 and above are ok.
> I have a patch pending for 2.5, if it turns out to be stable,
> it should also get merged back to 2.4
>
> Dave
-------------------------------------------------------
On Sat, 22 Feb 2003 02:43 pm, you wrote:
> > > > 10x 120GB WD HDD, ServerWorks Grand Champion LE.
> > > > I am running RH7.3 with 2.4.20 kernel. The performance of this box
> > > > is about half of an almost identical box (Supermicro X5DP8-G2 mobo,
> > > > E7501
>
> well, I've rarely seen anyone claiming good performance for any SW chipset,
> especially compared to i75xx's.
I wonder where the problem lies? Is it hardware/software?
>
> > Here is a rough comparison of E7500, E7501 and the ServerWorks Chipset:
>
> I don't really understand the column headed "E7500E7501". which is it?
> 7500 (dual PC1600) or 7501 (dual pc2100)?
>
> > | Benchmark | E7500E7501 | ServerWorks | GrandChampion LE |
> >
> > =========================================================================
> >=
> >
> > | Nbench (integer index) | 33.47 | 38.78 | 10.61 |
>
> oh, maybe the headers are just broken? I can readily believe that
You are right, the header is broken.
> 7500 is 33, 7501 is a little higher, and GCLE is a lot lower.
> remember that this benchmark spends most of its time in strcpy/strcmp...
>
> hmm, I'd be curious to see whether lmbench indicates the GCLE's memory
> latency is much higher than Intel's. your hdparm -t score indicates that
> the GCLE doesn't have a memory *bandwidth* problem.
Yeah, I noticed that too, buffer cache read is pretty impressive actually.
I haven't had a chance to run lmbench as it takes about 5 hours to complete.
Will probably do it within these couple of days.