[gentoo-user] hardware advice for dual-processor set-up on gentoo

[Denis <denis.che@gmail.com>]

Folks,

I am currently running Gentoo on a dual-processor machine that has 2
Intel Xeons with hyperthreading on a Tyan board, with 2GB of RDRAM. 
Some 3 years ago when I bought this machine, it was a marvel, and it
still is a solid computational workhorse for me, doing things like
Monte Carlo and Finite Element calculations.  Because of
hyperthreading, there are 4 logical processors, which gives me a good
multi-tasking ability.  I can run 3 or 4 Monte Carlo tasks at the same
time and not get any noticeable slow-down compared to running only one
Monte Carlo task.  That has been indispensable in my productivity.

Now, I am about to purchase a new machine, but I'd like to solicit
some advice first, so I can get the most bang for the buck.  The main
thing is, I still need to have those 4 logical processors to maintain
my productivity.  So that gives me two choices:

- 2 64-bit Irwindale Xeons (EM64T) with Hyperthreading, 2MB L2 Cache,
800 MHZ FSB, somewhere in 3.4-3.8 GHz range

- 2 64-bit AMD Dual-Core Opterons somewhere in the 265-275 range

With my need for parallel execution of several single-thread Monte
Carlo and Finite Element tasks, what would be the pros and cons in
considering the Xeons and Opterons?

I looked at several benchmarks, and the Opterons seem to be leading
the way significantly in pretty much every category except things like
Matrix multiplications (because of vectoring?)...  Is that the general
impression of folks with experience on these systems running Linux?

What would be some issues and software limitations for me in trying to
get the AMD Opterons running on Gentoo?  And would I use an x86
platform or an AMD64 platform?

Thanks!
Denis

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