CPU bottlenecks removed by using a server motherboard?

[Traak]

What if you really wanted to eliminate CPU bottlenecks, so you employed a dual-socket motherboard?

If you slung a couple of Xeons in there, with lots and lots of ECC RAM, plus a good video card, could you eliminate CPU bottlenecks as a big player in gaming lag?

All the Windows versions I know of are good for two sockets, not just two virtual CPU's on the same die.

I further wonder if employing a RAID card with built-in memory and a small processor for allocating information would help, plus running some SSD's in RAID 0 on that card.

Also, using some of the RAM for a RAMdisk? You could program your machine to copy C:\Sony\ to Z:\Sony and launch PS from there upon startup.

[CapitanCrab]

Hmm. Very interesting. How much RAM do i need to run a PS2 from it?

[Rbstr]

Will dual Xeons help? Maybe. Probably not much, as we know that adding more cores doesn't really help much and the Xeons aren't clocked any faster than an i5.
And I think the prevailing opinion is that memory bandwidth is the biggest bottleneck (and that memory bandwidth also trips the [cpu] marker).
Does ECC memory help that? Nope.

Hard drives don't do a thing for frame rates. Do you even use a regular SSD? Loading screens are nearly instant already.
If you only have a regular drive a RAMdisk will speed your loading times significantly. Otherwise there's no good reason.

[Traak]

So, more cores doesn't help, you say?

The PS software is limited to how many cores it will utilize? This would mean that your per-core speed would be the critical thing more than number of cores.

Xeons should excel at that for one reason: on-die cache. Xeons have more on-die cache than other Intel chips.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CPU_cache

I think this is one reason Xeons cost more than other Intel CPU's. The more on-die cache you can have, the faster your chip will be. But since it takes up more wafer space, it costs more.

[Rbstr]

"software limited" yeah. But not necessarily just because they didn't program it to use more cores. You can't just make everything nice and parallel.

I know what cache is dude.
Look at the specs of the Sandy Bridge Xeons http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Intel_Xeon_microprocessors#Sandy_Bridge-based_Xeons
1155 Xeons have 8mb of it, only 2 more than the i5/7 in that socket
2011 6-core Xeons have 15mb. 2011 i7s have 10-15mb (They're the same chips! Just with some different fuzes blown for ECC and stuff)

Xeons features are not going to help in gaming workloads compared to the 2011 i7s. We already know that the 2011 Socket i7s really aren't that much better for gaming, in general, than the cheaper 1155 i5/i7s.
Plus Sandy-EN (dual-cpu) Xeons don't clock over like 2.4ghz! (at a cost of >$800)
So I dono. Go spend like 4-5x as much on a Sandy Bridge-EN cpus/mobo/ECCram and tell us how much better it is.
That's the real thing here. Sure, there are reasons it might be better...but nobody sane is goign to build a dual-xeon box to run the game at 60fps instead of the 50fps an ivy bridge i5 and higher end GPU can do.

[Traak]

I'm theorizing. Not spending. By finding the best solution with cost as no object, one can get closer to what is possible when cost is an object.

I am not always talking to just one person in these threads, so the cache thing was for everybody, including me.

http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/processors/xeon/xeon-e5-workstation-comparison-tool.html

Looks like it's the ultra-high-zoot Xeons that are multi-die capable, and they are the ones that offer up to 8 channels of memory. I don't know if that is 8 channels per die, or 8 channels because two four-channel Xeons use their interconnect to share channels between dies. Either way, it's a boon for memory bandwidth.

[Traak]

Hmm. Very interesting. How much RAM do i need to run a PS2 from it?

I think if you select your game folder than right-click and hit properties, it will inform you how many GB of space it is taking up on your HDD. That should be close to the amount of space you would need for a RAM disk.

[Ailos]

Memory bandwidth is indeed the biggest contributor to alleviating CPU bottlenecks. However, beyond dual-channel DDR3-2133, PS starts running into network lag. And that you simply cannot address unless you have a direct fiberoptic connection to SOE's servers. And even then, it may not gain you that much unless every other player has the same type of connection.

PS2 is an MMO, and that means your experience in the game depends just as much on what all the other players have as it depends on what you have. You can have a top-of-the-line server running the game, and will still only get 5 FPS more than the guy who shot you down.

It comes down to the fact that a socket 1155/1150 core i5/i7 will run this game equally well if not better than a server-class component, for a quarter of the price or less. Proposing thought experiments beyond that is the same as thinking about how would it be to play this game if you lived on the moon. It's fun, but completely pointless, and tells us absolutely nothing until someone actually does it.

[Traak]

Now, you said it's a FACT that a socket whatever.... equally well... server... quarter of the price.

Have you put both together and tested them?

So you actually do not know. In fact, you don't, by your admission, have anywhere near the budget and/or inclination to put together a system to eliminate all possible bottlenecks.

So you are theorizing also. And today's theories lead to tomorrows realities.

And as for something being fun? It being fun makes it so it isn't pointless. Planetside, for instance.