why not using the athlon x2 on am2 socket?  they work also with the non registered memory (which is needed for opterons and is not an optional as it is for athlons), which has a higher cost when compared to the non registered one. the athlons have a smaller l2 cache, but the newer models (the be ones) seem to have a better power consumption than opterons and old generation athlons. in my vision, if you want to buy an opteron you might want to get instead an athlon with increased speed and with more ram than in the opteron case.
and i personally don't really like tyan. i prefer gigabyte. i hadn't used a gigabyte product (video boards, mobos, wireless boards) that didn't worked wery well with linux. and the new gigabyte hw is based on the coolpipe2 system which is very-very good and very silent. for what i've seen around a good middle ranged gigabyte mobo supports dual channel ddr3 (1333) and ddr2, am2 sockets till athlons quad and opterons dual, has 6 sata-II of 350mb/s, and is around 70€. this will be my next board. i would also check later some higher level mobos if i should have a greater dispo of money.
for video boards i'd suggest a gigabyte radeon hd2600pro 512 ddr2 or gigabyte radeon hd2600xt 256 ddr3 for a middle ranged system or the gigabyte radeon hd2900 xt 512 ddr3 for a high level system. the new fglrx works well with these boards and there'll be an opensource driver soon (they're working on the documentation that amd released recently).
for the system ram i'd choose ocz's 2gb - 2x1gb kit, for middle ranged system or an 8gb ocz kit for high range desktop.
as for the disk i'd choose 2x400gb sata-II 8mb buffer with software raid and lvm2 for middle range sytem or 2x360gb sata-II 16mb buffer in software raid and lvm2 for higher level one.
at last i'd install a dual fan thermaltake cpu cooler instead a normal one to keep the cpu temp lower than a normal fan would do. also the coolermaster fans and dissipators work welly well.
the other components could be of any brand since they're not so important and depend on what their cost is. a middle ranged desktop would so be around 500-600 € (no os installed) and a higher level one could reach also 1200-1300€ depending on how much stuff you put inside.

2007/11/10, Conway S. Smith <beolach@comcast.net>:
On Sat, 10 Nov 2007 16:28:01 +0000 (UTC)
"Kris Kersey (Augustus)" <augustus@linuxhardware.org> wrote:
> Conway,
>
> While it doesn't include Barcelona, you probably would find my review
> on LinuxHardware.org very useful in your decision making process.  It
> included the latest Xeon and Opteron processors using Tyan boards.
> Here's the link:
> http://www.linuxhardware.org/article.pl?sid=07/04/05/1414204&mode=thread
>
> If you have any other questions, I'll be happy to help.
>
> Thanks,
> Kris Kersey (Augustus)
> LinuxHardware.org Site Manager
> augustus@linuxhardware.org
> Gentoo Linux AMD64 Developer
> augustus@gentoo.org
> AIM: Augustus22
>

Nice article, thanks Kris!  I'm about to hit the sack (I work nights),
so I've mostly just skimmed the performance section, and I'm rather
pleasantly surprised.

The Opterons are looking a lot better there than some of the other
reviews I've been reading.  The impression I've had was that in terms
of performance, Intel's had a significant lead since the Conroe came
out; although AMD's Barcelona is starting to close the gap (although I
had the impression Intel's Clovertown still leads).


Thanks,
Conway S. Smith




--
dott. ing. beso