> > Well, I've been looking at the new Barcelona Opteron 2300 series, > which have 4 cores each & can be used in dual socket motherboards, for > a total of 8 cores in the system. The 2 or 4 cores in an Athlon X2 > system really would be sufficient for my needs, but then my current box > is still pretty much sufficient for my needs. This new box I'm > planning is more about my wants, and I look at 8 cores & think "I want!" > > About registered vs. unbuffered memory, my understanding is that for > systems w/ lots of memory (more than 4 GiB), the registers are a Good > Thing(tm). I don't really understand the electrical engineering behind > how memory & memory controllers work, so I don't claim to really grok > why registered memory is so important in systems w/ lots of RAM, but > since I'm planning on loading it with 8 or 16 GiB, I was planning on > going with registered anyway. in this case opterons are better... > > Interesting, most of what I've heard about Tyan has been really good. > Is there something specific about Tyan that's been a problem for you? > I've also heard good things about Gigabyte, but Tyan really seemed to > stand out as excellent. The two dual-socket F Gigabyte boards on > NewEgg are cheaper than the Tyans I've been considering, but > unfortunately they don't support the new Barcelona Opterons, and I'd > have to wait for new versions to be released. But then the Tyan > motherboard I liked best is in the same situation, w/ a new > Barcelona-compatible version expected later this month. I'll keep the > Gigabytes in mind. i've had some problems with a tyan mobo which has died in less than 1 week. i've changed it and the second died in 3 days and after the second has died i had returned the mobo and requested the money back and then went with a gigabyte. thus, this wasn't in a high-level system, but on a middle one. so i don't have any experience with high level systems. > I am thinking I'll probably go w/ an ATI video card, since I'm fairly > excited about the driver talk that's been going around. Although one > thing I happened to find during my research for this box, nVidia is > significantly more energy efficient. > not true, for what i know. the new nvidias consume more power than radeons. also, if you buy a gigabyte one which is totally passive its energy consumption is very low. then ati has the powerplay wihch also works with the fglrx, for what i know. if you need more info on the powerplay see how it works on the amd's site. RAM I mentioned above. Hard disk space was actually the main thing > that's prompting this new box, as I'm filling up all my current disks. > I eventually plan on filling the case w/ as many hard disks as it can > fit, probably at least 10+. This box is going to be my home fileserver > for a long time to come. But for starters I'm thinking I'll get 3x > 1TiB in RAID5, and then grow the RAID as it fills up & drive prices > drop. This will be my first time setting up RAID, I'm planning on > following the HOWTO_Setup_fully_crypted_Gentoo_on_EVMS in the > gentoo-wiki. > > It is going to be quite expensive, but I'm sure my family & friends > won't mind me getting myself a Christmas present instead of them (j/k - > I've been saving for a while, and I can afford it along w/ holiday > gifts). lucky you.... a similar system should go on around 4000-5000€.... ps. what would be its use?!?! -- dott. ing. beso