AMD Opteron 8347

As you read in part 1, we are building an AMD 16 core workstation, so we need to find four Opteron quad core processors.

Our Tyan S4980 motherboard only supports AMD “Barcelona” Opterons.  Barcelona’s have two main product lines: the 23XX and 83XX. We want to avoid the 23XX for this build, because those quad core CPUs only support two in a single motherboard. Nice little hitch to avoid.

Note: AMD is now shipping “Shanghai” Opterons. These processors are faster, better  (more expensive)  and they don’t work in the Tyan S4980 motherboard we are using. Unfortunately, the Shanghai Opterons have the same 23XX and 83XX numbering scheme, so one more little caveat to be aware of.

8347 (1.9Ghz),  8350 (2 Ghz), 8354 (2.2 Ghz) , 8356 (2.4 Ghz) , 8358 (2.5 Ghz) , 8360 (2.6 Ghz).

There are also two high efficiency versions (these use 55W instead of 75W) of these chips which work just fine: 8346 HE (1.8 Ghz) and the 8347 HE (1.9 Ghz) . I used four 8347 HE in my build.

The least expensive Quad core opteron on New Egg is the 8346 HE. it runs $549 for the OEM packaging, which does NOT include any cooling.

Another option is to shop eBay for these cpu’s, you can find them for much less, but make sure to buy the right part numbers.

Oh before I forget..One last detail, make sure to use four identical CPUs. I don’t know if you can mix 8347 and 8347HE on the same motherboard. Good Luck!

TYAN S4980G2NR

I love virtual machines. Unfortunately running lots of them on one server can get very expensive. A 16-core Dell PowerEdge R905 for example, will set you back about 12 grand (without OS).  So I set out to try and build my own system for less – and I’ve succeeded!

About a month ago I was doing random motherboard searches on NewEgg and I found exactly ONE quad socket motherboard for sale:  the TYAN S4980G2NR Quad 1207(F) NVIDIA nForce Professional 3600 Extended ATX Server Motherboard.

The only catch (for me) was that this motherboard used AMD Opteron cpus,  and I knew nothing about them.  But there are no Xeon quad socket motherboards readily available, so AMD it is.  Theres alot of backstory on the Opteron / Xeon battle for market domination, but really it doesn’t matter if you can’t find quad socket Intel Xeon motherboards.  So AMD wins the 16 core workstation battle for now.

Anyways… The Tyan S4980 sells for around $400. Tyan has a good reputation, and they have all of the manuals online. Also I can vouch for this motherboard, since I’ve built my 16 core workstation with it.

16 CPUs in Task Manager