Fedora SMP dual core, dual AMD 64 processor system

[Bryan J. Smith]

On Tue, 2005-08-16 at 20:19 -0600, Maurice Hilarius wrote:
> Actually AMD is quite fair with all of their "rollout partners" and
> provide very good support on products and availability.

Yes, I know.  AMD is actually meeting demand, hence their lawsuit
against Intel when they are artificially reducing shipments at HP, IBM,
etc...  Simply put, HP has a backlog that is _not_ due to
availability.  ;->

> I disagree.
> For some examples:  ... cut ...

I said the nVidia nForce chipsets themselves _lack_ PCI-X.
Yes, some vendors are tunneling in the AMD8131 (or AMD8132).
But my point was that _increases_cost_.

I wasn't saying vendors who add the AMD8131 are bad.
I was just saying the design _increases_cost_.

> While this is the case for some types of cards, PCI Express will
> easily beat it, given availability of boards.
> That is why the newest Myrinet, and Infiniband cards are all PCI-
> Express.

Yes, but the PCIe storage cards are _no_where_.  That's the problem.

I like the HT-1000 because it's a single chip, probably low cost, and it
gives you _both_ a PCI-X channel _and_ a PCIe x8 in a single chip.  That
would make for a powerful, but inexpensive, "entry-level" server.

Now only if the products were available.  ;->

> You work for Monarch or something?

No.  They are the only ones I have dealt with though.

> Lots of vendors have p[roper soilutions.

I would never suggest otherwise, but there are also a lot of system
assemblers and, even more so, consultants who don't.  They are selling
non-PCI-X systems, and putting in storage controllers on the legacy PCI
bus (yikes!).

> However, as was earlier mentioned, if you want more than 4GB RAM, one
> should consider Socket 940 boards.
> As for PCI-X, yes, that is useful, and so is PCI-Express, so buy a
> Tyan or SuperMicro or ASUS, or Arima board, and get both!

As someone who has rolled out S2885 and, more recently, S2895 systems to
clients, I agree.


-- 
Bryan J. Smith     b.j.smith at ieee.org     http://thebs413.blogspot.com
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The best things in life are NOT free - which is why life is easiest if
you save all the bills until you can share them with the perfect woman