Network Computingwww.networkcomputing.com

	Issue TOC Print full article Print this page Download as PDF E-Mail this URL Flame the author     In this article Introduction Dell Computer Corp. PowerEdge 6650 Other Products Reviewed How We Tested Meet the Xeon MP Online Only: Server Chips Ahoy! Report Card

All three servers we tested feature Server Works' Grand Champion HE chipset. This solid foundation provides many of the servers' base features.

The GC-HE chipset supports up to 64 GB of main memory using the DDR 200 standard, which includes a 400-MHz front-side bus. It also supports four-way multiprocessing with 6.4-Gbps bandwidth on the memory bus. The chipset also offers some interesting main memory protection features, such as Chipkill (an advanced error-checking and -correcting technology), mirroring, spare memory and hot-plug memory board support. GC-HE supports up to six independent, hot-swappable PCI-X buses. PCI-X is the latest generation of PCI, operating at 64-bit data width and 133 MHz, compared with PCI 2.2's 32 bits and 33-MHz bus speed.

The bigger, better bus has enough capacity for bandwidth-hungry cards -- such as Gigabit Ethernet, 2-Gbps Fibre Channel and 10-Gbps Ethernet. Right now, the GC-HE chipset provides only 100-MHz support for the PCI-X bus. This is unfortunate for the servers we tested, but not unexpected, considering the youth of the technologies involved. The GC-HE chipset also provides many utilitarian and legacy features, such as PCI 2.2 support, a four-port USB 1.0 interface, dual ATA-100 support and support for ACPI power and event management.