AM2, X2, Opteron, or Opteron Socket F?

[Arjan van de Ven]

On Sun, 2006-08-20 at 14:53 -0400, Bryan J. Smith wrote:
> On Sat, 2006-08-19 at 21:52 -0400, Robert L. Cochran wrote:
> > At first, I liked Intel Core 2 Duo, but the motherboard selection doesn't 
> > seem great and it is very pricy.

it's changing rapidly this week ;)

> 
> The price is worth it in computing power.  Core is the first, _full_
> Intel x86 redesign since the Pentium Pro.  The NetBurst (P4) was a quick
> refit of extending the pipes and doing virtually _no_ refactoring in the
> ALU/FPU design (long story).

eh that's so not the case ;)

> 
> I still don't recommend Core 2 Duo or even Intel's forthcoming dual-FSB
> processor for more than 2GiB on a server.  Some may differ with me, but
> offsetting the limitations with lots of L2/L3 cache doesn't go far
> enough.  They need a true interconnect and I/O MMU's on-processor.

what does a "true interconnect" buy you in the <= 4 CPU case?
Or an IOMMU if all your moderate and high bandwidth IO is 64 bit
capable?