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The Supermicro H11DSi Motherboard Mini-Review: The Sole Dual EPYC Solution

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Re: The Supermicro H11DSi Motherboard Mini-Review: The Sole Dual EPYC Solution

#41

Post by nullc »

arminiusreturns wrote: post #37
nullc wrote: post #17

I have this board with 7742s. I like it generally, though most of my affection is due to the CPUs. I wish it had PCI-E 4. I've found it to be unreliable with memory running faster than 2933MHz but that might be the memory I was using. When I did have memory corruption problems running at higher memory speeds I didn't get a single ECC error, which I found surprising and concerning. I also had issues with Kernel 5.4 no…

Having built a few quad/dual cpu AMD Opteron systems since ~2013 with supermicro boards, I can tell you they are extremely sensitive to RAM brands/models and variations. Sometimes even RAM in the verified supermicro list would have issues. On a side note, it was about then that I foresaw AMD's move towards high core counts and I love what they have been doing both on desktop and in the server space. Honestly though,…

The single socket epyc boards expose a lot more PCIe than threadripper boards, from what I can tell.

$/core-ghz is much better on the TR parts though, if you're paying retail. Epyc chips sometimes show up on secondary markets at much better prices than retail. (e.g. my 7742's I basically paid the same $/core-ghz as the current top end threadripper parts).

Re: The Supermicro H11DSi Motherboard Mini-Review: The Sole Dual EPYC Solution

#42

Post by wtallis »

kentonv wrote: post #39
tw04 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup. AMD has an on-die 10gbe controller that would show up as AMD. Anything that says Intel/Broadcom/realtek/etc are off chip and something the MFG put on the motherboard which adds cost.

Hmm. I'm speculating, but I'd guess that tossing on the same external controller that they've put on a million other motherboards in the past probably actually saves cost, vs. designing something unique to expose the on-die controller. I wonder what the performance impact is, though. I'd guess (very naively) that an on-die controller would perform better.

My guess is that the Intel Ethernet drivers are seen by the customers as very tried-and-true, and how to tune them is well-documented. AMD's Ethernet drivers are relatively unknown and unproven, and it's easy to imagine that they could perform worse. That could easily make up the difference in cost between an external PHY vs an external MAC+PHY.

Re: The Supermicro H11DSi Motherboard Mini-Review: The Sole Dual EPYC Solution

#43

Post by p_l »

rbanffy wrote: post #21
LIV2 wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The VGA output would be part of the IPMI solution for remote management, serial would be for out of band management too. Both are useful if you don't want to drive to the datacenter

For a very long time I joked that no self-respecting server had a VGA, keyboard or mouse ports. Serious metal should have serial ports for the operator console. That didn't age too well...

It gets better thanks to UEFI, since it provides serial-safe approach for system management.

IBM PC compatible systems had no serial console and it shows in abominations like some Intel RAID controllers that required mouse to get through their graphical UIs. Even if you used one of the special "UI-over-serial" cards that were used on some PC servers, lack of support meant that it was perfectly normal for some option from to expect bitmapped graphics and want to use it :(

With UEFI providing a basic UI framework that covers all that firmware needs (and which still allows for fancy looking UI if you connect to framebuffer) serial console is back in use :)

Re: The Supermicro H11DSi Motherboard Mini-Review: The Sole Dual EPYC Solution

#44

Post by fomine3 »

tw04 wrote: post #32

It's extremely frustrating that none of the vendors are taking advantage of the built-in 10Gbe functionality of the new AMD chips. I've seen the same with the embedded options that compete with the Xeon-D. If anyone happens to work in that specific portion of the industry and can comment - I'd be curious if there's a reason other than motherboard mfgs just don't want to invest the time and effort so they slap a 1Gbe…

I suspect that AMD disabled the 10GbE for EPYC, only enabled for EPYC Embedded. I heard somewhere that AMD want to avoid IP fee for mostly unused feature.

https://www.amd.com/ja/products/cpu/amd-epyc-7302p https://www.amd.com/en/products/embedded-epyc-3000-series

Re: The Supermicro H11DSi Motherboard Mini-Review: The Sole Dual EPYC Solution

#45

Post by arminiusreturns »

nullc wrote: post #41
arminiusreturns wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having built a few quad/dual cpu AMD Opteron systems since ~2013 with supermicro boards, I can tell you they are extremely sensitive to RAM brands/models and variations. Sometimes even RAM in the verified supermicro list would have issues. On a side note, it was about then that I foresaw AMD's move towards high core counts and I love what they have been doing both on desktop and in the server space. Honestly though,…

The single socket epyc boards expose a lot more PCIe than threadripper boards, from what I can tell. $/core-ghz is much better on the TR parts though, if you're paying retail. Epyc chips sometimes show up on secondary markets at much better prices than retail. (e.g. my 7742's I basically paid the same $/core-ghz as the current top end threadripper parts).

Yeah it's generally a tradeoff of pci lanes to clock speed between the two. I would go for the clock speeds.
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