"Conroe shows dodgy RAID performance anomalies"

[MinorTthreat]

A couple of article released yesterday and today at INQ:

PRELIMINARY CONROE results have been really impressive, but as time goes by and the platform gets tested in more and more environments, interesting things are popping up.

Right now, it seems that Intel has some serious problems when using RAID5 configuration. If you are using an Intel's own baby, D975XBX motherboard and put four drives in RAID5 array, an interesting overhead and a slowdown will occur on all upcoming Conroes......


LINK HERE (http://theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=32818)




and this one today about the same Intel Raid problem:

US government unit throws Intel out over RAID problems
IBM ServeRAID problem

By Theo Valich: Thursday 06 July 2006, 09:15

WHEN WE BROKE the story about Core 2 marchitecture problems with RAID configurations here, one of the things that interested us the most is the open question: RAID for Conroe isn't much of a deal, but is it a problem with the aarchitecture and could Woodcrest suffer from the same problems?

The answer was surprising and came far sooner than we'd expect....
LINK HERE (http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=32842)

[Superfly]

im sure thats just a bug but TBH us gamers dont use RAID5 or plan too so from a gaming point of view this really does'nt matter.

[Lou Ceifer]

im sure thats just a bug but TBH us gamers dont use RAID5 or plan too so from a gaming point of view this really does'nt matter.

While this does ring true, however this is a huge blow to Intel in the server side of things with Woodcrest, and possibly the company as a whole in the most valuable and profit rich market. The server market is by far their worst performing area for Intel right now due to profit erosion to Opterons as they are still superior at 4P and above over Woodcrest.

If they cannot recoup losses to Opteron sales with Woodcrest even at 2P because of this bug and/or suffer loss of confidence of thier customers,(like huge contracts with the US Government for example) this will spell trouble on down the road for Intel quick. With thier income in server sales already slipping, it will cause more market loss for Intel and definately hurt thier most viable source of income.

[zer0]

are there other news sources about this or just inquirer?

[slaWter]

There are other chipsets for Woodcrest than the 975X...

[Banko]

What does this have to do with the cpu? Seems like a chipset problem...

[stncttr908]

There are other chipsets for Woodcrest than the 975X...
Like the nForce 590 SLI. (nana2)

[nemecb]

Conspiracy theory on...

Dell knew about this and that's why they started offering AMD procs in their servers.

...Conspiracy theory off.:D

[Zelda_fan]

What does this have to do with the cpu? Seems like a chipset problem...

Yeah I agree. And I'd be willing to bet that if you bought a top quality PCI raid controller (which any decent server would have anyways), these problems go away.

I don't use RAID, so this dosen't effect me at all.

[AngelGraves13]

My dad is looking into woodcrest and he's a digital photographer. He needs as many drives as possible in RAID, but for that he uses HighPoint, so I don't think it'll bother him.

[pkirby11]

Yeah I agree. And I'd be willing to bet that if you bought a top quality PCI raid controller (which any decent server would have anyways), these problems go away.

I don't use RAID, so this dosen't effect me at all.

While the source is of course questionable, it did state in the Woodcrest test that they were use IBM Raid Controllers and still suffering poor performance. If this is true, it's just a though of mine buy maybe there overely saturated bus can't handle it? Who knows if it's even true, how ever if it is, it certainly makes me wonder what other little bugs are there.

[MinorTthreat]

It seems that it is a problem with the CPU and not the chipset. Intel is rumored to be releasing a second stepping already: from HKEPC
Intel hints that Conroe is going to release at B-2 Stepping as Intel Core 2 Duo processor. As for the previous version, a problem was found to make the system full loaded. It’s only solved in the new stepping. We don’t encourage anyone to buy the engineering sample from the web. The retail version is going to release in the end of this month, and it’s much stable.

Further, some of the manufacturers noticed that the released Intel P965 chipset has got the expected performance from Fast Memory Access technology, performing the same as i975X with DDR2 800. Intel has promised to fix the problem in the next P965 C-2 Stepping, and is expected to release in late July...


LINK HERE (http://www.hkepc.com/bbs/itnews.php?tid=627088)

[bkswaney]

It seems that it is a problem with the CPU and not the chipset. Intel is rumored to be releasing a second stepping already: from HKEPC



LINK HERE (http://www.hkepc.com/bbs/itnews.php?tid=627088)


Glad I do not use raid. :)
But due to the lack of sli support on the intel chipset I'll be using nvidia anyway.