Desktop Vs Server Motherboards

[eggpro]

What is the reason no one uses server motherboards? Is it just because of lack of ports, or is there another reason?

Looking to build a new machine for rendering animations and the thought of having 2 CPUs like a mac is something I have dreamed of.
thanks
Josh

[ArmpitOfDeath]

Most people who build PC's do so due to gaming - which has it's own set of needs disparate from most workstation / server boards - or are on a budget.

Only people like us - engineering types, etc who may at times have certain needs which the major Intel workstation makers are unable to satisfy - really need to build server/workstation-intended boards into complete PC's, and for most other times ready-built workstations / servers do the job better for people who're looking to buy that sort of thing, mainly due to support.

There's no particular deficiency as such for the needs you mentioned, it's just that most people don't build PC's to do that - or more precisely, people who might be considering DIYing that sort of thing would usually cobble together existing machines into a cluster and not purpose-build, because if they weren't strapped for cash and needed to do that, they'd be buying ready-built. Except, as I said, unless they have very specific needs.

I think it's very interesting, and a testament to the power of Apple's mastery of bullshit (one might say - a BS in BS, haha) in marketing, that Macs are the only ones mentioned by many consumers when discussing dual-processor workstations - it's like the HP xw's, Dell Precisions and suchlike - more reliable, more practically expandable, better supported and better engineered machines than the Crap Pro - don't exist.

Apple these days gets preferential treatment from Intel - and why not, since they get more marketing coverage this way - in rolling out new chipsets/CPUs, but there are a number of 'Tier 1' major and 'bespoke' niche makers who will sell you server/workstation-boarded machines.

[zrotech]

If you want to do animation rendering, isn't it better to focus on the graphics card? Hence look for MB with SLI or Crossfire, and with enough slots for enough RAM.
Vector calculation are done very efficiently in video cards.

[ArmpitOfDeath]

Well -you really need a lot of both.

[computoman]

With dual cpu boxes you usually get locked into that configuration and is hard to update and or upgrade. commodity boxes are easier to support and upgrade. I have two dual cpu boxes. One I pulled out of its rack mount case and put it in a regular case. it is much quieter now. I also have a dell dual cpu that I am locked into and I wish I had never bought it. I had to get a special scsi drive for it. At least I got it cheap at the time I bought it. Now it would be overpriced. If it goes down I might as well just throw it away. There are no redeemable parts including the case for other systems.

[tokenuser]

With dual cpu boxes you usually get locked into that configuration and is hard to update and or upgrade. commodity boxes are easier to support and upgrade. I have two dual cpu boxes. One I pulled out of its rack mount case and put it in a regular case. it is much quieter now. I also have a dell dual cpu that I am locked into and I wish I had never bought it. I had to get a special scsi drive for it. At least I got it cheap at the time I bought it. Now it would be overpriced. If it goes down I might as well just throw it away. There are no redeemable parts including the case for other systems.Way back when, I used to build systems based on Tyan motherboards. Ostensibly, they were server motherboards, but they were great in desktop systems as well - rock solid performance, and a tweekable BIOS.

The last Intel based machine I built was based on a dual Pentium II config, had onboard SCSI in that could be setup in numerous RAID configs.

All the ports were standard. The drivers were standard. It ran beautifully with NT4 then W2K. It was painful under XP :)

Point is, server motherboard or desktop motherboard ... not a great deal of difference. Just find a mobo that fits your needs. If you feel that a Dual Xeon system is what you need - go for it. If a Dual Centrino Duo is better for you, it will cost you less. If you can get a rendering acceplerator that uses the GPU, then that might be a better bet again.

You could go for a clustered environment, but a Dual Processor Dual Core already has 4 CPUs running. It is in effect a "local" cluster, with minimal interconnect latency that a clustered environment needs to deal with.

[computoman]

Yes, the one I have that is not a dell is a tyan. I really like it. the nics are fast as sin.

[tokenuser]

Yes, the one I have that is not a dell is a tyan. I really like it. the nics are fast as sin.You would think that an onboard nic would be a standard speed, but everything about the Tyan Mobo I had (Thunder??) seemed to benchtest faster.

Yep ... old Tyan Thunder (http://www.anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.aspx?i=215), circa 1998. I swear I had mine when I lived back in Australia, which would have made it 1996/97. So this might be the update to the one I had.

[eggpro]

Thanks for the info.

When rendering computer animations the graphics card is not used. The CPU and RAM are the workhorses with rendering. The graphics card is only used when setting up the animation and modeling. But it is still important.

Just dreaming of a new machine and trying to come up with a budget.
thanks

[xcorvis]

Way back when, I used to build systems based on Tyan motherboards. Ostensibly, they were server motherboards, but they were great in desktop systems as well - rock solid performance, and a tweekable BIOS.
...
Point is, server motherboard or desktop motherboard ... not a great deal of difference...

It used to be that when you bought a motherboard, you picked two things of these three: speed, stability or low price. Server motherboards were fast and stable, but not cheap. Desktop motherboards were cheap.

These days, the engineering is better all around and there is very little difference. I wouldn't worry about the distinction for your usage.

When rendering computer animations the graphics card is not used. The CPU and RAM are the workhorses with rendering. The graphics card is only used when setting up the animation and modeling. But it is still important.

There are applications that can render on the GPU, but it depends on the program. It's still pretty new as a field.

[tokenuser]

There are applications that can render on the GPU, but it depends on the program. It's still pretty new as a field.3D Studio Max is one of the apps that will make use of an NVidia graphics card to do the rendering.

As you said its a new field, but anything that needs fast floating point calculations (and lets face it, thats all a graphics card really does) can benefit from using the GPU and a defacto floating point processor. If you have a dual card SLI setup, you can make use of both GPUs.

Exciting times :)

(OK, not really)