Monday 14 March 2011

Dell R610 - Tylersburg chipset stepping for Westmere processors

Tylersburg chipset stepping for Westmere processors
Introduction of the new Intel Xeon 5600 series (Westmere-EP) processors includes a stepping revision of the Intel 5520 and 5500 chipset from ‘B3’ to ‘C2’. This stepping revision is required to enable the full Xeon 5600 processor feature set. Dell servers shipped with the new chipset revision will have the symbol II in the BIOS System Revision Field, which is visible through Open Manage Server Administrator (OMSA) and the iDRAC GUI. In addition, these servers will be physically marked with a 12mm wide by 6mm tall rectangular label containing the symbol “II” will be. They will be white characters on a black background.
The II symbol also identifies R610 servers with system boards that support 130W processors. 130W processors on R610 require a unique heatsink.PowerEdge R610 (Thidwick) Sourcebook Dell Confidential – For Internal Use Only 35
Intel Xeon 5600 series processors will work in existing systems built for Intel Xeon 5500 series (Nehalem-EP), however the full feature set including AES-NI encryption and Intel TXT will only be available in newly manufactured systems which include the new Westmere-EP (C2) stepping of the system chipset. In addition, existing systems will not support the top bin 130W Xeon 5600 processors.
A BIOS and iDRAC update to current versions are required before installing 5600 series processors in systems originally shipped with Nehalem EP 5500 series processors.

3 comments:

  1. Can you clarify why B3 revision didn't support 130W CPUs?

    On Dell Precision T7500 mobo part number remained the same from 2009 (when C2 didn't exist) through 2012 when it was discontinued and revision on later boards is C2.

    So if electrically it is the same number of socket pins supplying power, is the difference maybe only in heatsink design so it can dissipate more heat and motherboards revision B3,do support 130w processors or it had something really to do with the chipset?

    I just wonder if this blog entry may be is a case of misinformation. In Intel latest errata on the chipset I don't see any mention of 56 series line of CPUs.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hi, Sorry for the delay in replying, Google doesn't notify me!

      I would ask Dell and Intel via twitter as I'm not sure.

      Delete
  2. http://en.community.dell.com/techcenter/extras/chats/w/wiki/1627

    ReplyDelete