[K12OSN] Just about ready to make a purchase

[Robert Arkiletian]

On 5/9/07, Jim Kronebusch <jim at winonacotter.org> wrote:
>
> According to a comparison chart I found from Dell, it says the following about the 6800.
> "Intel Xeon 7100: Dual Independant 800 Mhz Front side bus".  Now that only mentions the
> 7100 processor, but I wouldn't think the motherboard architecture would change with
> different processors.  Now if I went with Dual Quad-Core Intel Xeon 5300's in a
> Poweredge 2900 system, it states that there is a Dual Independant 1066mhz or 1333Mhz
> front side bus.
>
> Would this be an indication that this system is not as affected by the memory access
> problem?  Does it indicate that I would be better off with a Dual Quad core machine then
> with a Quad Dual core machine?

It's not really a "memory access problem". Just a speed issue.

However, I just looked up on the web that the Xeon 7100 is the old
Netburst architecture.  I would vote against the 6800 as it's using
old technology. The Xeon 7100 is not using the new Core 2 Duo cores.
It's using the old P4 netburst core. That's why the FSB is limited to
800Mhz.  Another thing I noticed is that the 6800 is using Ultra 320
scsi whereas the 2900 is using newer Serial Attached SCSI (SAS). The
2900 is using the 5100 cpu's which ARE the newer arch based on the
core 2 duo. The 2900 also comes with the option of  667Mhz RAM and
1333Mhz FSB. Faster and more power efficient.

Please take my advice with caution Jim as I have no personal
experience with any of this Dell hardware. I am just sharing my
opinion. If you decide on the 2900 please make sure it will work with
Linux. Check the MB chipset, NICs, HD controllers etc. Also I'm not
even sure if Linux kernel will work with quad core cpu's yet.
Please do your homework. Don't rely on my word.

Aha found something about the Intel 5300 Clovertown cpu,
>From http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=585&num=2

"These processors were tested with Fedora Core 6 using the Linux
2.6.18 kernel. At this time there are clocking problems with Enhanced
Intel SpeedStep Technology and cpufreq, but the Xeon 5300 series can
be ran at full speed by disabling cpufreq from the kernel or manually
selecting the higher state."

I wonder if the CentOS/RHEL kernel 2.618 has full support for it? This
is really new hardware. Buyer beware.

-- 
Robert Arkiletian
Eric Hamber Secondary, Vancouver, Canada
Fl_TeacherTool http://www3.telus.net/public/robark/Fl_TeacherTool/
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