* CharlesBlackstone:

No-one can say if HP will support Barcelona in the current xw9400 or in
a new machine because no-one really knows if Barcelona will work with
SocketF or require SocketF+ or another Socket. If Barcelona is SocketF
HP will support it in the xw9400, if it's for another socket then not.
But at the moment everything about Barcelona is pure speculation, and
no-one really can say when (and if) this thing will be available.

Good decision, provides you with much more performance anyways ;-)

Benjamin, very happy with his HP xw8400 with 2xXEON 5160

On May 7, 3:43 pm, Benjamin Gawert <bgaw... (AT) gmx (DOT) de> wrote:


Thanks Benjamini. Do you know if the machine would perform similarly
with the 5355 quad-core intel chip, compared to two 5150s?

Thanks.

* CharlesBlackstone:

A single XEON 5355 is slower than two XEON 5150. By how much and if it's
noticeable depends on your applications...

The problem with intels quad cores is the FSB. On their current quadcore
CPU which are basically two dual core dice put on a common carrier the
communication between these two dual core dice has to go over the FSB.
That means while with two 5160 XEONs every dual core processor has it's
own independent FSB the single 5355 only has one. In applications that
do lots of I/O the single FSB might get saturated and become a
bottleneck. If that's valid for you depends on what you want to do with
it. Note that this is a problem for bigger machines with 4 and more CPUs
(where every FSB has to deal with two quad core processors) and less a
problem on dual processor workstations (that's why AMD still has a lead
when it comes to systems with 4+ CPUs).

Besides that, the performance of the current XEONs is just great.

BTW: it's not clear if AMDs upcoming quads are really better. At least
if they are compatible with currents sockets (SocketF/AM2) they will
only have one memory controller that's used by all four cores which is
very likely to suffer from a similar limitation. A quad core with two
memory controllers would require a new Socket, and I doubt AMD will go
that way with their first quad cores...

Benjamin

* CharlesBlackstone:

A single XEON 5355 is slower than two XEON 5150. By how much and if it's
noticeable depends on your applications...

The problem with intels quad cores is the FSB. On their current quadcore
CPU which are basically two dual core dice put on a common carrier the
communication between these two dual core dice has to go over the FSB.
That means while with two 5160 XEONs every dual core processor has it's
own independent FSB the single 5355 only has one. In applications that
do lots of I/O the single FSB might get saturated and become a
bottleneck. If that's valid for you depends on what you want to do with
it. Note that this is more a problem for bigger machines with 4 and more
CPUs (where every FSB has to deal with two quad core processors) and
less a problem on dual processor workstations (that's why AMD still has
a lead when it comes to systems with 4+ CPUs).

Besides that, the performance of the current XEONs is just great, and
quad channel memory is, too.

BTW: it's not clear if AMDs upcoming quads are really better. At least
if they are compatible with currents sockets (SocketF/AM2) they will
only have one memory controller that's used by all four cores which is
very likely to suffer from a similar limitation (and it's still dual
channel only). A quad core with two memory controllers would require a
new Socket, and I doubt AMD will go that way with their first quad cores...

Benjamin

Benjamin Gawert <bgawert (AT) gmx (DOT) de> writes:
Local whitebox vendor just built me a dual 1207 workstation system using the
Tyan S2927 board. It's dead quiet. I've got a single Opteron 2210
in it at the moment.

Antec NSK6500 case.

scott

* Scott Lurndal:

That's fine but the problem with such systems from assemblers is that
they just lack the service and also the certification that is available
from brand name manufacturers. And it's not necessarily cheaper, too.

Benjamin

Benjamin Gawert <bgawert (AT) gmx (DOT) de> writes:
I'm sorry, but I'll have to disagree. What certification? Microsoft?
Not an issue, don't use their products.

Support? This whitebox vendor will come on-site to fix anything in the first
year, no charge. They've been quite good about supporting systems after
the first year, too, in the very few cases where we've had trouble (mostly
it's been with viewsonic LCD monitors).

Price? Beats hands down anything we can get directly from the majors or channel.
Plus, this vendor can get us Sun 2200's cheaper than buying from
Sun directly.

Far better service than even Dell's 4-hour business service. They'll turn
down clients outside of a certain radius because they can't provide that
level of service for them.

Unlimited system selection; pick the mainboard, pick the processor,
size the memory, choose graphics, select mass storage; no locked in
vendors. Tyan, supermicro, msi, gigabyte, they've built them all
for us. They'll build it, stage it and burn it in with our preferred
OS.

YMMV with other white box vendors, but don't tar all of them with the
same brush.

scott

* Scott Lurndal:

Well, there is more in the world than Microsoft. What's important in the
business market is application certification. Your white box is
certified for just nothing. This might not be an issue for you but for
most professional users it is because your ISV usually shows you the
middle finger if you want software support while you run this software
on a box that isn't certified.

Might be but then this thread was not about what you need, right?

Whitebox assemblers will come on your site but that's it. If you're
lucky they bring a spare part along, if not you can wait several weeks
for your part to return. Even worse, if your system goes bang several
month after purchase your whitebox assembler is probably unable to
provide you with the exact same part that went out as spare, leaving you
with an alternate part that might require different drivers or shows
other oddities.

BTW: 3 years onsite is almost standard with brand names in this class,
as is the fact that they can provide you with the exact same spare part
for 4-5 years without problem.

Everywhere it's cheaper than buying from Sun directly. In fact, usually
it's always cheaper *not* to buy from a manufacturer directly but from
some reseller...

I don't know where you live but here in Europe Dell service is very good
and they don't turn clients down unless you live in a 3rd world country.

And yet have to see a whitebox vendor who is able to provide
guranteed(!) reaction times and competent service personnel and also
stocks replacement parts for all type of machines they sold in the last
5 years. It's not a good idea to show up at the customers site with a
different mobo or a different gfx card because the one that the customer
bought three month ago is not sold any more.

Sure, with no EMC testing, with no certification, and the strong believe
that running "cpu burn" for 24hrs is all testing that's necessary.

I know lots of whitebox vendors, not only locally but several that sell
their boxes nationwide or even EU-wide. All of them use generic parts to
build their system, none of them does EMC tests or does it's own
development. The result is that all of them sell basically the same
aftermarket parts that share the same problems like mobos that have nice
overclocking features but still suffer from incorrect ACPI 2.0 tables.
All the parts the whitebox vendors sell usually have a very short
product life so that you're lost if you need the exact same mobo after a
year, or you get the mobo but the manufacturer silently made a new
revision and replaced components with others which can cause headaches.
And even the whitebox assembler has no influence on that because he has
to buy the stuff his distributor offers to him.

And don't even dream about features like remote system management,
unified system image or stable platforms where you can get the exact
same system for a longer period. Yes, you can choose freely what the
assembler shall throw in your box but every system differs from the
other. This is great for home users and gamers that want the latest
overclocker gfx card and such but the business IT usually works totally
different. The few bucks you can save with a whitebox over a brand name
system can cost you much more in lost renevue than it saved you.

As I said it's fine that you are satisfied with it but for business use
where you have to rely on support (you remember? That's what the OP was
asking for!) not only from the system maker but also from your ISVs
whiteboxes usually are just a nogo.

Benjamin

Benjamin Gawert <bgawert (AT) gmx (DOT) de> writes:
We've customers in the fortune 50 that use whitebox systems. I don't
particularly think you know whereof you speak.

My company builds and sells systems into the "business market". We
target enterprise datacenters. Many of our customers regularly
utilize whitebox systems. My company itself uses whitebox systems.


You're pretty far disconnected from the reality of the situation. Consider
that an enterprise is buying systems year-in and year-out. They'll never
be able to have an identical configuration across all their systems, so
the 'alternate part' problem is not limited to whitebox manufacturers.

One of my customers spends over USD 2,000,000,000 each year for enterprise
data services, and while they have IBM bladecenters, they also use whiteboxes.
It depends on the application needs and the datacenter power and cooling capabilities.

Other customers are HP or Sun clients, but they also use white-boxes for some portion
of their infrastructure.

One of the customers is a large hosting provider. Much of their infrastructure
is whitebox systems.

You pay Dell/HP/IBM extra for that 3-year warranty. The white-box vendor will
be happy to provide the same warranty, for a smaller upcharge.

It's been my experience that the enterprise data center will typically
discard a system after three years (more power-efficient, faster and
more capable systems replace them). Face it, when a system costs $1000 is
is cheaper to replace it than fix it after a year or two.


You misunderstood. The White Box Vendor won't take clients outside of
the radius they feel comfortable providing their quite high level of
service to.

Ah, proof by anecdote. Does my anecdote trump yours?

While my WB vendor doesn't do any EMI testing or certification, it is
expected that the component manufacturer has.

Who overclocks in an enterprise environment. That would be pretty stupid.

They use the same exact products as the large guys. Motherboards
may be custom, but the processors and memory depend on the supplier
chain, and even IBM doesn't stockpile spares to that extent.


Funny, my whitebox vendor integrates IPMI into all the systems
they deliver. They work directly with the vendors (e.g. Tyan,
supermicro) to ensure that they deliver a working solution.

Unified system image is hardly the responsiblity of the vendor.

Actually at these prices, they are commodities and are treated as such
by all big shops.

scott

* Scott Lurndal:

You think wrong. I'm working for a multinational enterprise with several
dependancies and subsidiaries around the globe for way over a decade
now. The IT is part of my job. And I know what most of our partner
corporates and contractors use. The only ones using whitebox systems are
some small contractor companies with a handful of employees. The others
are getting their IT from HP, Dell, IBM, Sun, FSC and the like.

The only whitebox machines we have can be found in a few of our engineer
labs. They are there for research reasons (the fact that you can swap
out parts and find lots of alternatives is postitive for what they are
used), if they are broken it doesn't really hurt. But neither my
employee nor any of of our bigger partners do (even most of the smaller
companies use brand name stuff).

For most HP systems for example I easily can get the *exact* same
configuration today that was sold 2004 from HP without problem. Try that
with whiteboxes...

Sure. If you don't need service or if it's no problem that the quality
level is varying then whiteboxes are probably ok. But it didn't look to
me that for the OP the lack of real service or often questionable
quality is acceptable, though.

If it's for nothing business-critical or important, why not.

ISPs and site hosters are indeed a different story, they often use
whitebox systems to be able to compete with the already low prices and
the high competition. But still the number of hosters who offer hosting
on brand name servers (usually Dell) is increasing.

But hosting provider has not much to do with someone looking for a AMD
system with Dell-like professional support.

Nonsense. All of our HP workstations come with 3 year onsite warranty
NBD as standard.

Yeah, for a little upcharge, and still not able to provide you with the
exact same spare part for at least the three years he warrants the
whitebox. Everytime something breaks you don't know what gets in the box.

Besides that, there is a certain risk when buying whiteboxes that the
vendor itself goes down the drain. If your assembler closes down you can
stick the warranty you paid that little upcharge where the sun doesn't
shine because no-one is going to honor it. Even worse, lots of
manufacturers of generic components don't provide real customer support.
Either you won't get an answer, or replacing a broken part means sending
it in and waiting for weeks to return (and probably being replaced by a
different model), or they just tell you that warranty things have to be
done over the shop you bought it from or over the distributor which can
lead to even more waiting time (I had cases where replacing a component
took two month).

Maybe, but you are ignoring several facts:

First, you seem to think that whitebox is always cheaper (means: lower
initial costs) than brand name which simply is wrong.

Second, for datacenter usage (and also for most highend desktop
applications) the hardware costs are simply (almost) irrelevant to the
overall costs. A hardware support contract alone can cost the same you
paid for the machine (or even more), the software usually costs a
magnitude more than the hardware, also the software support (which is
often completely unavailable for you with whitebox systems), your IT
staff and other little things. Most corporates don't give a shit if the
Dell machine costs 500$ more than the whitebox because if the whitebox
fails it can cause much more loss than that (imagine the mobo breaks,
the whitebox vendor comes with a different type of mobo which requires
the installation of different drivers; a spare part that is different
from the original part easily leads to additional work, and having only
one person from your IT staff to do that additional work because the
part is different can easily cost you more than you saved by buying
whitebox initially).

Third, the OP was not looking for a server for his datacenter. He was
looking for a AMD computer with Dell-like support. And no, whitebox is
definitely something with Dell-like support.

As I said Dell doesn't do that over here, too. And HP (which is what my
employee primarily buys) has contractors for service almost everywhere.
So what?

So short said that means you can't name a whitebox vendor that offers
guranteed reaction times and also stocks parts so that he can provide
customers with the exact same spare part during the whole warranty period.

But maybe I can help you out: there are assemblers like Maxdata (one of
the biggest assembler in Europe) which come quite close. They do stock
certain parts (not everything, though), and they do offer service almost
comparable to brand name standard services. But still after a certain
period the replacement mobo for your PC with 3yrs warranty is likely to
be different from the original, and these whitebox computers cost the
same like comparable computers from HP or Dell.

What a nonsense, you obviously know nothing about EMC. FYI: putting
together a computer from components that are EMI tested doesn't make
your resulting computer EMC compliant. In fact, EMC requires that the
complete system has been tested, and not only in one configuration (i.e.
only with the Geforce 8800GTS from MSI) but with *every* combination
of components. Yes, Dell does that, HP does that, too (at least with the
business models, the outsourced Pavilion and Presario SoHo models are a
different story, though).

And even if the whitebox assembler has done EMC tests with the exact
configuration you bought (which is very unlikely as EMC tests cost a lot
of money), as soon as the great service replaces a defective part with a
different part EMC has changed.

Exactly.

They do, as does every brand name manufacturer. in fact, a few days ago
one of our Compaq ProLiant ML370 G2 servers died because a broken VRM
killed the CPU. Of course HP still has the parts on stock. The ProLiant
ML370 G2 uses Pentium3 processors btw.

The IPMI capabilities of most standard mainboards are extremely limited.
TYAN and Supermicro (and intel) are probably the only three exceptions,
and even there this is usually only valid for their expensive
multiprocessor server/workstation mainboards and not for their standard
boards.

And still it lacks integrated management solutions like HP Insight...

Assembling the image is your problem of course but the vendor is the one
that enables you to prepare one system image and deploy this single
image on all desktop computers you bought during the last 3 years. Try
that with whiteboxes.

Honestly I doubt you really know much about corporate IT. You don't know
anything about EMC, you don't know about software certification (most
people that don't know what software certification is think about
Microsoft which is probably one of the few big ISVs that doesn't require
certification), you don't know system management, and you obviously
don't know a lot of other facts that are important in corporate IT.
No offense here, but it's just obvious. I don't want to start a "I know
more than you" flamewar (what I do, what I know and what not can be
found with google). You are just missing out too much important factors,
factors most outsiders just can't know.

To make it clear: I never said whiteboxes are bad. They are great for
home users who want to fiddle around on their own systems and where the
time you put into the computer is basically free. They can also be a
good choice for freelancers or small companies if they don't require
business-critical reliability. And they are great as a platform you
continually upgrade instead of to replace the whole system after some
time. But they are usually not a good choice if the computer is just a
tool for you that you make money with, if you have to run expensive
software that you need to have support for, and if you rely on
first-class service that you want to be sure to continue to exist over
the whole warranty period. Especially since whiteboxes from assemblers
that offer comparable service are not cheaper than a comparable system
from the big brand name vendors.

BTW: that's the reason why companies like Dell and HP still sell their
business computers to corporate users successfully and also invest in
business-oriented solutions, something which just wouldn't be the case
if whiteboxes were the best thing since sliced bread for corporate IT.
Go figure.

Benjamin