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DK8N BIOS & boot devices

We recommend minimum fiddling with the DK8N BIOS - for three reasons; one positive, one neutral, and . . . 

First, the 'optimised defaults' are for once quite optimal; second, the BIOS offers few go-faster things to tweak . . .

 . . . and the BIOS reacts sulkily to any setting it doesn't like. 

Minor setup errors or conflicts - in our case setting the CPU<>chipset HT link to 1000, or attachment of misconfigured PATA devices - will result in failure to reboot. A cold boot will usually allow the user to reset things. A serious setup error such as manually setting memory timings too aggressively will require switching the thing off at the mains & clearing the CMOS.

At first glance, we were most impressed by the way this BIOS handles boot-devices & boot-order - we list the order option ROMs are loaded on page 1 of this review: in principle, you can boot in any order off any bootable device attached to any PATA, SATA, or USB port, or to any bootable PCI card. 

USB mice & keyboards are supported by default, & we were equally impressed at first glance by the way attached USB devices are swiftly polled at POST & identified by type: mouse, keyboard, hub, storage-device, & etc.  

There are detailed settings for USB storage devices: emulation can be set to floppy, hard disk, or CDROM, with quite sophisticated nuances of emulation for high-density removable devices like Zip or (we assume, not having one to hand to test) pen-drives. Our first impression was that USB is handled the way things should have been lo these many years ago.

Sadly, in practice we couldn't boot off any USB attached optical device or hard drive (we tried three makes of hard drive), despite trying all emulation alternatives: properly formatted hard drives with an active primary partition would be correctly recognised by name string & as a bootable device, & could be set to #1 in boot-order; but could not be read from. 

USB attached optical devices containing bootable media are not even listed among bootable devices - in contrast to the way any of our four SCSI optical devices were recognised & could be configured. This is a BIOS emulation issue - all USB attached devices we tried worked fine in Windows. 

We also had issues with the NFORCE3 PATA implementation: we attached our only two IDE hard drives to one channel, properly jumpered as master/slave, to find only one recognised.

We swapped channels, tried jumpering either as master/slave or as cable select; but still had hassles: some of these caused the DK8N to refuse to boot.

A common factor in all this was of course that one of the hard drives was made by Western Digital - notoriously iffy in jumpered master/slave configurations. Finally we managed to get the WD drive recognised; but only if attached as the sole device & jumpered cable select.

Installing Windows 32-bit, NUMA, & SATA 'RAID'

We installed several builds of Windows XP Pro 32-bit, plus 32-bit Server 2003, Enterprise. We also installed several builds of 64-bit operating systems - detailed in a future part of this review.

Since the NFORCE3 integrates USB2, we would not recommend trying to install any XP Pro 32-bit version prior to SP1: if your install CD is pre-SP1 we would recommend you slipstreamed this or a later service pack into the installation files, then burned yourself a bootable slipstreamed SP1 or SP2 XP Pro CD. 

To get to the fun 'n games right now . . . .  yes, you can enable NUMA operation in the DK8N using 32-bit Windows & therefore be able to measure & use any real world performance advantage in your usual applications.

You used to need an evaluation copy or be rich enough to own a license for the Enterprise or Data Centre Editions of Server 2003; but now anyone with a DK8N & Windows XP Pro SP2 can have a look into this interesting technology: please note that the 32-bit versions of XP Pro SP2 & Server 2003 Enterprise or Data Centre editions still have profoundly different kernels - as our later benchmarks show.

NUMA: what? why? how?
NUMA (non uniform memory access) is where memory is logically arranged in nodes; a rough 'n ready description of a node is a region of memory in which every byte has the same distance from each CPU.
The DK8N's BIOS, with the extensions in ACPI version 2.x enabled & node interleaving disabled, constructs a SRAT (Static Resource Affinity Table) describing the NUMA topology of the system, & communicates this to a NUMA-aware operating system. This in turn: " . . . uses this table to apply NUMA awareness to application processes, thread default affinity settings, thread scheduling, and memory management features. Additionally, the topology information is made available to applications using a set of NUMA application programming interfaces." - quote from a Microsoft blurb for Server 2003 Enterprise In practical terms, when we use a NUMA-aware version of Windows on the DK8N,  memory is arranged into two nodes. Each in theory is equally fast of access to both CPUs. A multithreaded application properly made to exploit NUMA topology would keep two copies of its data - one to each node; that data will then be accessed as required by the CPU which can get at it fastest: a really NUMA-optimised application would have different areas of memory accessed simultaneously. All this is obviously extravagant in memory-use; but; then, what are all those eight memory-slots on the DK8N for? It also begs the point as to which, if any, 32-bit Windows applications we commonly use might take advantage of this . . . .  The real world speed advantage NUMA is likely to give a SMP system is simply when running two or more single-threaded processes at the same time under a multitasking operating system.

Enabling NUMA displays at least one difference: XP Pro SP1 32-bit

                                                . . . . and Server 2003, Enterprise 32-bit

 . . .  both these 'scores' are from SiSoftSandra Pro SP2 2004.8.9.131; memory timings are at default; XP Pro has Node & Bank Interleaving set to 'Auto' - Server 2003 has Node Interleaving disabled. All other settings, all hardware, & all third-party drivers are identical. 

It is perfectly possible to tweak memory settings to improve these 'scores' in XP 32-bit; but deeper examination show these to lessen the Opteron platform's best feature - its remarkably low latency. In any event, a quick glance round other reviews on the web shows an untweaked DK8N using low-latency DDR with its NFORCE3 Pro/250 to have a decent memory-bandwidth advantage in non-NUMA Win32 mode over motherboards using AMD's reference chipset - an estimate might be somewhere around 10~15%.

Windows 32-bit installation practicalities 

Thanks to NVIDIA & Iwill, Windows XP Pro SP1/SP2 & Server 2003 install without hassle - probing for hardware takes a fair while longer than on simpler motherboards; but Windows untangles the buses & bridges & their attached widgets happily enough.

We didn't need to hit F5 [select kernel] at the beginning of an install; & an ACPI multiprocessor kernel was installed whether ACPI v 1.x or 2.x was enabled in the DK8N's BIOS . . . but please note you need to enable ACPI v 2.x in the DK8N BIOS for XP Pro SP2 & Server 2003 Enterprise or Data Centre Editions to correctly install as NUMA aware.

If you install XP SP1, then wish to run the SP2 patch & have a crack at enabling NUMA, all you need to do after patching is to edit in Notepad the file 'boot.ini' you will find in the root of your boot-drive. This will probably read (something like - ignore the stuff in brackets):

multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(5)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows Professional" /noexecute /fastdetect

 - add the 'pae' switch, so it reads:

multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(5)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows Professional" /noexecute /fastdetect /pae

Now for an apology: 

This reviewer doesn't use firmware ATA 'RAID' - & certainly not in a motherboard with all those 64-bit PCI slots waiting to be filled as the Demon Silicon intends: with multi-channel SCSI hardware RAID-hosts. 

The DK8N's SATA 'RAID'

If you intend to use either firmware 'RAID' option - NVRAID or Sil3114 - you will need to first enable the RAID option for that controller in the BIOS: by default Sil3114 'RAID' is BIOS-enabled, NVRAID disabled. A point we feel we should make about the onboard Silicon Graphics Sil3114 SATA controller is that the user should decide early whether it is to be used as a 'RAID' controller or a 4-channel SATA controller - this choice is set in the DK8N BIOS. 

To enable NVRAID, enter the BIOS, go to: Chipset/Southbridge/Configuration NVRAID ROM - then choose 'enable. Important: by default 'Third Master' & 'Fourth Master' are enabled - these are the PATA channels & if you want to use ordinary IDE/ATAPI devices on these channels you must select 'disabled' to both.

Obviously, those using the onboard NFORCE &/or Sil3114 'RAID' controllers, & wishing to install to drives attached to them, then configured in the desired arrays, will need to have prepared the appropriate driver-floppy or floppies & hit F6 at the beginning of an OS install - just the same as those who use any other SCSI & RAID hosts unsupported by Windows default installation drivers. To make up a NVRAID floppy, simply copy over the contents of the 'IDE' folder from your NFORCE XP drivers. On installation, you will get a message that 'nvraid.cat' is missing - you can ignore this. A feature of NVRAID is you can configure devices attached to NFORCE PATA, SATA, or both to arrays; but see the warning above should you wish to keep PATA for (say) optical devices.

When in a new install of Windows, if the Sil3114 was enabled as a 'RAID' controller in the DK8N BIOS, Device Manager will show something like this: