Intel C202, C204, C206 Xeon E3 Bromolow Motherboards Thread

[sotech]

Cool, thanks for the info! What kind of devices are you using with VT-d, if you don't mind my asking?

I'm torn between the P8B WS and the Tyan SS5512 with onboard LSI2008. I'm leaning toward the Tyan, but willing to give the Asus a shot since I already have an IBM M1015 card lying around. In either case, I want solid VT-d support so I can pass a NIC and an LSI2008 directly to a VM running my filer.

At various points in our setup we have had it passing through two Intel NICs (quad port and a dual-port), the CPU graphics, the onboard SATA ports and both onboard ethernet ports. All worked hunky-dory.

Haven't tried passing through an SAS card yet; still waiting on a cheap M1015 to turn up on Ebay that we can snag and the Adaptec controller is the VM datastore

 

[sotech]

Also, has anyone managed to get remote management (Intel AMT?) working on the P8B WS? I'm not clear on whether or not it's included/functional based on specs and user discussion.

Newegg just made the decision much tougher by sending me a 20% off code for Supermicro or ASUS server motherboards... and here I am leaning toward the Tyan.

I haven't seen any mention of it in the documentation or BIOS... if you do find that there's some way of activating it please post back here as that would just make this board perfect for us - it's not really something we hugely miss at the moment with the way we have it set up but it would be handy from time to time

 

[Mr. F]

Wow, that's great. I'm glad to hear someone having a good time with this board. Any more info you can share with a potential buyer of this board would be greatly appreciated... I'm looking to pair it with a Xeon E3-1245.

I'm still on the fence about what to buy, but your sharing about your experiences with the P8B WS has helped, thanks! I'm just hopeful that it will pass through my M1015 correctly. When this board is essentially half the cost of the Tyan S5512WMG2NR it's hard to justify the Tyan - especially since I already have a LSI2008 controller sitting around.

 

[sotech]

Wow, that's great. I'm glad to hear someone having a good time with this board. Any more info you can share with a potential buyer of this board would be greatly appreciated... I'm looking to pair it with a Xeon E3-1245.

I'm still on the fence about what to buy, but your sharing about your experiences with the P8B WS has helped, thanks! I'm just hopeful that it will pass through my M1015 correctly. When this board is essentially half the cost of the Tyan S5512WMG2NR it's hard to justify the Tyan - especially since I already have a LSI2008 controller sitting around.

This is the first ASUS workstation/server board we've bought; previously we've only bought Intel boards and while we were always happy with them I wanted the C206 chipset to see if I can virtualize our HTPC and save on the (admittedly small) power costs for having a separate box for that. Given that we have our office as an extension of our home I was pretty keen to roll all of our separate little boxes into one as much as possible and so far it seems to be just about perfect for that role. I haven't had time to do anything re: HTPC stuff thanks to work being busy but I look forward to seeing if I can get that to work properly when I have time.

As far as this board vs. the Intel boards we previously bought goes - more than happy with the ASUS. BIOS updates are quick and painless, it's been running stable since we plugged it in and turned it on and we haven't had to do anything unusual to get components working together properly.

I've been quite pleased with the performance of the E3-1245 and this board; the CPU knocks the socks off mostly anything else we've built for our servers before and is more than enough for the current VM load that we've got (8-10 VMs).

One thing I have been curious about is the power consumption of the ASUS C206 board vs. a C204 board from Intel/Tyan/etc. - I attempted to get some power consumption figures out of ASUS for the motherboard as a separate component and they wouldn't tell me even a ballpark figure. I don't have access to an accurate power meter or another server board to swap the same components into to test but it is something I would have liked to have known prior to purchasing. I can't imagine it would be a significant amount more but I was (and still am) curious.

 

[Mr. F]

I haven't seen any mention of it in the documentation or BIOS... if you do find that there's some way of activating it please post back here as that would just make this board perfect for us - it's not really something we hugely miss at the moment with the way we have it set up but it would be handy from time to time

The documentation is sparse, but ASUS offers the "Intel Management Engine Interface" as a download in the support section for the P8B WS. Have you had a chance to download and run this tool to see if it lets you configure the remote management features that the C206 chipset has? http://www.asus.com/Motherboards/Intel_Socket_1155/P8B_WS/#download

Intel also has some tools, the Intel AMT Configuration Utility seems promising. http://software.intel.com/en-us/art...ntel-amt-setup-and-configuration-service-scs/

It's very possible that ASUS has disabled these features. If their track record of releasing BIOS updates to rectify missing features continues, it's possible that they might address this (if the AMT and/or vPro are in fact disabled).

Let me know your results if you have a chance/desire to run the Intel utility.

 

[sotech]

The documentation is sparse, but ASUS offers the "Intel Management Engine Interface" as a download in the support section for the P8B WS. Have you had a chance to download and run this tool to see if it lets you configure the remote management features that the C206 chipset has? http://www.asus.com/Motherboards/Intel_Socket_1155/P8B_WS/#download

Intel also has some tools, the Intel AMT Configuration Utility seems promising. http://software.intel.com/en-us/art...ntel-amt-setup-and-configuration-service-scs/

It's very possible that ASUS has disabled these features. If their track record of releasing BIOS updates to rectify missing features continues, it's possible that they might address this (if the AMT and/or vPro are in fact disabled).

Let me know your results if you have a chance/desire to run the Intel utility.

I had a look at those yesterday - they'll only install on Windows as far as I can tell and we don't run any Windows boxes here :/ I tried installing it on a couple of Windows VMs in case it didn't need to be installed on the system which has the appropriate motherboard but that failed.

 

[Mr. F]

I had a look at those yesterday - they'll only install on Windows as far as I can tell and we don't run any Windows boxes here :/ I tried installing it on a couple of Windows VMs in case it didn't need to be installed on the system which has the appropriate motherboard but that failed.

Well thanks for checking. Even if the tools had worked, I wouldn't have a Windows OS to use them with anyway.

Thanks again for all of the valuable info about this board. I ended up deciding against getting this board for my build as I found out that some of the PCIe ports are behind a NF200 PCIe switch, which would cause me problems as I will eventually be using almost every port with passthrough.

The switch would explain why some are still having VT-d issues, even after the ASUS 0605 update. I suspect that since you have been passing through mostly onboard devices you haven't run into issues with the switch.

 

[meatincereal]

Thanks again for all of the valuable info about this board. I ended up deciding against getting this board for my build as I found out that some of the PCIe ports are behind a NF200 PCIe switch, which would cause me problems as I will eventually be using almost every port with passthrough.

Hey, do you have a source on this? You may have just saved me alot of trouble

(I had ordered this board, but luckily weekend means no shipping )

 

[sotech]

Hey, do you have a source on this? You may have just saved me alot of trouble

(I had ordered this board, but luckily weekend means no shipping )

There are sources which say the opposite; referring to the review on this site:

http://www.servethehome.com/asus-p8b-ws-sandy-bridge-xeon-lga1155-c206-motherboard-review/

The P8B WS has four PCIe X16 physical slots one PCIe x1 and one legacy PCI slot. In contrast the P8P67 WS Revolution has the same four PCIe x16 physical slots with three PCIe x1 slots. One of the biggest differences between the two boards is how the slots are wired. The P8P67 WS Revolution uses the NVIDIA NF200 as a PCIe switch while the P8B WS has two x16 physical slots running in x4 electrical mode and two slots that either run in x16 and not populated or x8 and x8 electrical configurations. There are certainly use cases for both, but as we all know, the NF200 chip found on the P8P67 WS Revolution does not allow for ESXi pass-through so for some users, the P8B WS is going to be significantly more attractive.

This is one of the reasons I bought the board - I found several sources saying that it didn't use the NF200... now I have to go double check!

 

[Mr. F]

Sorry if I stirred any confusion for you! I should have read the STH article about this board.

I actually found the information about the NF200 chip being on this board in the specification listing for it at a few of the shops I was going to buy it from; perhaps it was a misprint? Maybe someone botched a copy/paste job with the product text for the P8P67? Looking more closely, we'd probably see another (or one larger) heatsink if the board actually had an NF200, which doesn't seem to be the case.

Either way, if Passthrough is working that's great! I ultimately made my decision simply because couldn't get a straight answer from Asus about anything related to this board, so on top of the NF200 switch issue (which I seem to have been wrong about) and Asus' failure to enable the AMT features, I just wasn't comfortable putting it into production as my SAN if I couldn't get any support from them.

This isn't to say it isn't a great board; sotech has had great experiences with it. It just wasn't for me.

 

[meatincereal]

This is one of the reasons I bought the board - I found several sources saying that it didn't use the NF200... now I have to go double check!

You have the board? Could you check if passthrough works on all four(/five) slots?

 

[cercle]

Asus - P8b ws

I am willing to buy a Xeon E12x0 for a workstation , plus motherboard and 16Go of ECC plus replacements parts( more memory , perhaps another motherboard... ) .
I allready have 6 Asus motherboards ( Socket 775 or T ) and I can't say Asus is helpfull , especially with ECC ...

So , my questions : -Is P8B WS is functionnal with no quirk ?
(ECC correcting active + raid daughter board card idem).
-As, some users on Asus Forum still wonder wether ECC is
active or ignored by the Bios , is there a test for that to check ?

Here are some links to Asus Forum : vip.asus.com/forum/view.aspx?SLanguage=en-us&id=20110615074025320&board_id=1&model=P8B%20WS&page=2&count=15

and : vip.asus.com/forum/view.aspx?id=20110905135723039&board_id=1&model=P8B+WS&page=1&SLanguage=en-us

and an issue about " Turbo " : vip.asus.com/forum/view.aspx?id=20110825181305383&board_id=1&model=P8B+WS&page=1&SLanguage=en-us

and an issue with a P8B-C/4L ( C204 server/workstation by Asus ) vip.asus.com/forum/view.aspx?id=20110721215731789&board_id=1&model=P8B+WS&page=1&SLanguage=en-us


- I may spend some 1500+ $ and/or € , so I am looking for safety and Supermicro could be a serious option as they send a " Compatible Gpu List " according to their tests for Supermicro X9SCA-F and X9SCI-LN4F , at my request .( a shame they don't display it for everybody on their website )
Too bad , I can' t display it here so I will sum up :
-AMD Firestream9270 Pass with 8.821.0.0 driver idem AMD HD5870 and HD4870 . -NVIDIA ( much more tested ) FX470 Pass with 8.17.12.6658 driver idem PNY (Nvidia ) 9800GX2 and AMD FirePro V7800 .
-NVIDIA Quadro FX5800 Pass with 8.17.12.6705 driver idem NVIDIA Quadro 6000 and 5000 , 4000 ,2000 and 600 .

Hope this will help someone looking for a dicrete Gpu on C20x .

 

[sotech]

You have the board? Could you check if passthrough works on all four(/five) slots?

Next time we put in a new card I'll check; it's back in use at the moment so I'll have to wait until the next break. It definitely works on the bottom PCI-E x4 and the PCI slot - those are the only two we've passed through on so far.

 

[sotech]

Asus - P8b ws

I am willing to buy a Xeon E12x0 for a workstation , plus motherboard and 16Go of ECC plus replacements parts( more memory , perhaps another motherboard... ) .
I allready have 6 Asus motherboards ( Socket 775 or T ) and I can't say Asus is helpfull , especially with ECC ...

So , my questions : -Is P8B WS is functionnal with no quirk ?
(ECC correcting active + raid daughter board card idem).
-As, some users on Asus Forum still wonder wether ECC is
active or ignored by the Bios , is there a test for that to check ?

Here are some links to Asus Forum : vip.asus.com/forum/view.aspx?SLanguage=en-us&id=20110615074025320&board_id=1&model=P8B%20WS&page=2&count=15

and : vip.asus.com/forum/view.aspx?id=20110905135723039&board_id=1&model=P8B+WS&page=1&SLanguage=en-us

and an issue about " Turbo " : vip.asus.com/forum/view.aspx?id=20110825181305383&board_id=1&model=P8B+WS&page=1&SLanguage=en-us

and an issue with a P8B-C/4L ( C204 server/workstation by Asus ) vip.asus.com/forum/view.aspx?id=20110721215731789&board_id=1&model=P8B+WS&page=1&SLanguage=en-us


- I may spend some 1500+ $ and/or € , so I am looking for safety and Supermicro could be a serious option as they send a " Compatible Gpu List " according to their tests for Supermicro X9SCA-F and X9SCI-LN4F , at my request .( a shame they don't display it for everybody on their website )
Too bad , I can' t display it here so I will sum up :
-AMD Firestream9270 Pass with 8.821.0.0 driver idem AMD HD5870 and HD4870 . -NVIDIA ( much more tested ) FX470 Pass with 8.17.12.6658 driver idem PNY (Nvidia ) 9800GX2 and AMD FirePro V7800 .
-NVIDIA Quadro FX5800 Pass with 8.17.12.6705 driver idem NVIDIA Quadro 6000 and 5000 , 4000 ,2000 and 600 .

Hope this will help someone looking for a dicrete Gpu on C20x .

I'm not sure what "idem" is - but we have a discrete RAID card on the board and it works just fine.

I'm sure someone more knowledgeable will be able to chime in re: finding out how functional ECC is; perhaps Memtest? The latest BIOS revision has added an ECC active/disabled option.

The issue on the forums you linked to re: the Corsair RAM seems to be someone trying to run registered RAM in this board, which it doesn't take, and the Crucial RAM they tried was non-ECC.

I have noticed no issues with Turbo on our P8B WS.

 

[cercle]

@sotech Thanks .

? "idem" ? Latin words , 2000 years old ,that is why , nowadays not much people use them , ; - ) , it means "the same".

-According to this thread and some other, the raid cards work on P8B ws ,
but sometime , Asus sells some stranges motherboards...
There is no NForce 200 on P8B WS and most C20x so it may be ok, but one must test first.
-I have seen that NF200, it is an old chip ,It was at first a Northbridge, NV580 , I believe
( an old Nvidia socket 775 motherboard from 2005 ) , Nvidia resell it now , as a bridge for PCI-Express Lanes.
It is warmer than a CPU (over 90C°) ,because it is overclocked by Nvidia
(hence the heat ) otherwise it would be too slow for PCI-Express 2.0 ,and in fact , it barely reach the PCI-Express 2.0 standard.

See the "Supercomputer" with NF200:http://www.asus.com/Motherboards/Intel_Socket_1366/P6T7_WS_SuperComputer/
.
As for the ECC ,a guy from that Asus Website (Jamon , USA )asked for and did flash his P8B WS to the "704" Bios ,
Asus added his Kingston unbuffered ECC to the QVL list (memory tested and supported), but Memtest86+ does not read his memory as ECC , before and after : http://vip.asus.com/forum/view.aspx?id=20110905135723039&board_id=1&model=P8B+WS&page=1&SLanguage=en-us
I am not a pro , I don't know all the softwares involved in the ECC memory testing , but i am willing to test and learn .
I will probably buy a P8B WS plus two C204 Server motherboards : a Supemicro and a Tyan .I will learn a lot , but i need
some software for testing things...and ECC first , for sure !

 

[sotech]

@sotech Thanks .

? "idem" ? Latin words , 2000 years old ,that is why , nowadays not much people use them , ; - ) , it means "the same".

-According to this thread and some other, the raid cards work on P8B ws ,
but sometime , Asus sells some stranges motherboards...
There is no NForce 200 on P8B WS and most C20x so it may be ok, but one must test first.
-I have seen that NF200, it is an old chip ,It was at first a Northbridge, NV580 , I believe
( an old Nvidia socket 775 motherboard from 2005 ) , Nvidia resell it now , as a bridge for PCI-Express Lanes.
It is warmer than a CPU (over 90C°) ,because it is overclocked by Nvidia
(hence the heat ) otherwise it would be too slow for PCI-Express 2.0 ,and in fact , it barely reach the PCI-Express 2.0 standard.

See the "Supercomputer" with NF200:http://www.asus.com/Motherboards/Intel_Socket_1366/P6T7_WS_SuperComputer/
.
As for the ECC ,a guy from that Asus Website (Jamon , USA )asked for and did flash his P8B WS to the "704" Bios ,
Asus added his Kingston unbuffered ECC to the QVL list (memory tested and supported), but Memtest86+ does not read his memory as ECC , before and after : http://vip.asus.com/forum/view.aspx?id=20110905135723039&board_id=1&model=P8B+WS&page=1&SLanguage=en-us
I am not a pro , I don't know all the softwares involved in the ECC memory testing , but i am willing to test and learn .
I will probably buy a P8B WS plus two C204 Server motherboards : a Supemicro and a Tyan .I will learn a lot , but i need
some software for testing things...and ECC first , for sure !

We should have some M1015s arriving within a fortnight and they'll be used via passthrough - I'll report back with how that went once it's done I'll be interested to see what the results of the ECC testing is - I assumed that it would be working and didn't do any testing. May have to rectify that.

I'm generally not bad with Latin but that is one I haven't come across before... nice

 

[meatincereal]

We should have some M1015s arriving within a fortnight and they'll be used via passthrough - I'll report back with how that went once it's done I'll be interested to see what the results of the ECC testing is - I assumed that it would be working and didn't do any testing. May have to rectify that.

I'll be waiting anxiously for your results. Been considering a similar ESXi build with 4x LSI SAS 2008 cards passed through myself. I'm either going for the X9SCM-F or the Asus P8B WS, so your test results will be very helpful!

 

[emc]

I can confirm that the P8B WS supports vmDirectPath on all 4 of the x16 (x8,x8,x4,x4) pci-e slots. I currently have 2 IBM BR-10i (flashed to LSI 1068e IT firmware), 1 Supermicro 2 port Intel Gig LAN card & 1 ATI 5670 video card (passes through but doesn't actually work in a guest)). No problems in ESXi 4.1 or 5.0 so far.

Good luck on your build!

 

[emc]

Also can confirm TYAN S5510 (S5510GM3NR) supports VMDirectPath on all 4 of its x8 (x8,x8,x4,x4) pci-e slots as well. Same cards as on P8B WS

 

[Mr. F]

I can confirm that the P8B WS supports vmDirectPath on all 4 of the x16 (x8,x8,x4,x4) pci-e slots. I currently have 2 IBM BR-10i (flashed to LSI 1068e IT firmware), 1 Supermicro 2 port Intel Gig LAN card & 1 ATI 5670 video card (passes through but doesn't actually work in a guest)). No problems in ESXi 4.1 or 5.0 so far.

Good luck on your build!

Thanks for the detailed report!

I may have to give this board a try in the future; I had to make my decision last Thursday as Newegg was 'so kind' as to send me a coupon for Asus or Supermicro server boards (after monitoring my shopping sessions, no doubt), and I didn't have my facts straight at that time. I went with the Supermicro X9SCM-F for now.