Thinking Dual-AMD for next slack box...

I've been running slackware for a few years now on a dual PIII 600.
It was a screamer when I bought it, but it's getting kinda slow on
builds.

Built firefox last night--started the build watched "Forbidden Planet"
with my wife, and the damned thing was still building when we went to
bed!

Sometime in the next year, we're looking at dropping some bucks on a
mobo, processors, ram, and power supply. The rest, we'll keep. Intel
dual P4 (those $900.00 processors!) on a Tyan motherboard and 2G of
ECC RAM suggests a total budget of about $5,000. Some other stuff,
contributes to that number also, but that's the gist of the plan.

I suspect I can do better on price if I go with AMD. But I know
nothing of AMD.

Does anybody have any experience they'd like to share re:
Compatability--linux drivers or hw that work well / don't seem to work
w/ AMD?
(This is the one I'm really nervous about)
Speed--Which AMD processors for builds / video / photo editing?
Motherboards--Which (dual cpu) AMD motherboard for stability,
expandability, speed?
Any gotchas or bonuses to be aware of re: dual AMD system vs dual P4
system?


Thanks for your kind assistance!

 

the 64 bit AMD CPU's are way cheaper then the current Intel ones, and they
are backwards compatible with 32bit programs. Obviously thats the way to
go, as even intel is now working on a "clone AMD x86-64" CPU

 

There is a Dual Opteron Mobo by Microstar International (MSI) the K8T
MASTER2-FAR, that plus 2 opterons should go some, and if AMD bring out the 2
opterons on 1 chip with the same pinouts then you could have 4 opterons per
mobo, but you better check that out on the AMD site.

the_gnome

 

The MSI board is a lousy choice, only one of the two processor's has DIMMs
attached the other has to access the RAM through the Hypertransport.

A much better choice would be a Tyan K8W (S2885). It has 8 DIMM sockets, 4
per processor.

 

General> The MSI board is a lousy choice, only one of the two
General> processor's has DIMMs attached the other has to access the
General> RAM through the Hypertransport.

Actually this design still performs very well with most applications,
and probably won't have a major impact unless this is a dedicated
server that is really stressed.

General> A much better choice would be a Tyan K8W (S2885). It has 8
General> DIMM sockets, 4 per processor.

A more expensive choice, but the optimal choice. Anyway depending on
the actual application most folks really don't get much benefit with
SMP unless your application is tuned for SMP usage. Of course your
mileage will vary a lot. I know that hp allows users to log on to a
variety of their servers to do some testing with your applications.

Good luck.

 

There are a number of good single Opteron boards available. The Opteron
1xx processors are cheaper than the 2xx processors so if you are looking
for a cheaper solution then choose a board like the ASUS SK8V with a one
faster 1xx vs the MSI board with two slower 2xx processors where one
processor is crippled. If you are going to pay for the 2xx processors then
spend the extra couple of hundred dollars on a board that can fully
utilize them.

 

"It has 8 DIMM sockets, 4 per processor."????

SMP architecture requires that all processors can
access all memory.

How does each processor access the "other" 4 DIMMs?

 

Through the Hypertransport. Access to the other processor's memory is a
little slower than access to it's own memory but there is lot of
bandwidth available (3.2 GBytes/second in each direction) for the
processors to access the other processors memory.