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.
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http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000662.html>
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?!?!