Hardware recommendations

Nuke Cadet Joined: Sep 15, 2003 Posts: 2

Hey Zhen-Xjell,

I see you've looked into a new hardware configuration and I'm happy you're doing research Mr. Green

.

What you have right now is pretty much fine for the given traffic. Dual Opterons will be faster but there are other considerations.

Ok.... I usually don't have time in work to say all to you but here goes:

After analyzing your activities and needs I say keep the dual Athlons for now. No question Opterons will help but they will also cause some harm.

Opterons are gigantic monsters in size compared to Athlons. The initial Opterons are hot, huge and expensive. Great performers, but a Quad configuration of Opterons will cost well over $1,000 a pop.

The next (and one of the most important steps) is a GOOD motherboard. Opterons are designed to take control their own memory rather then using the motherboard do it. Each processor needs its own memory bank in order to take full advantage of the Opteron design. There are many Opteron boards that will merely use 1 main bank that the processors will share. This is ineffecient Opteron mobo engineering.

Your OS has to be NUMA based to take advantage of Opteron's technology (thank the Great Lord for Linux). NUMA will better localize data for each processor so it will effeciently take advantage of the Opteron's memory design. This will help with bandwidth by making sure the Opterons don't try and read data from each others' memory, but it will cost you latency.

The first and foremost upgrade I would do is get a SCSI disk system. Disk drives have been the bottleneck of PCs for a long time. They your bottleneck even more.
SCSI drives are the only ones designed to handle this kind of I/O. Your IDE drives are choking like a dying man on tobacco. Given IDE drives have acceptable STR and ok seeks, they don't address your needs. You need sheer low seeks, higher rotational disks, and in turn more random disk I/O. Trust me when I say SCSI disks might be more expensive but you can sleep at night knowing your data will survive.

If needed you can use external SCSI. That way you can alleviate heating problems in the chassis of computer.

Ok... lots of tying and I hope I didn't make a mistake. If you have any questions, comments, or death threats please e-mail, post, or talk to me at work.

Regards,

Some short guy who has trouble seeing over his co-workers. Wink

Posted: Mon Sep 15, 2003 7:15 pm

I would have said anything by Alienware. Laughing

-sting

Nuke Cadet Joined: Sep 15, 2003 Posts: 2

Quote:

I would have said anything by Alienware Laughing

lol

Unless alienware gives him a dirt cheap deal for a cluster it won't help.

Alienware is designed for multimedia and bleedging edge performance.

Zhen-Xjell needs stability more than performance.

Posted: Fri Sep 19, 2003 9:35 am

My laptop is due today.

Droool. Drooool. Come Mr. Fed Ex guy. Hurry up already.

Area 51m Extreme. I need it for the 'bleeding edge performance'. My database queries just aren't fast enough. Not to mention I am sure Jedi Academy will run a bit smoother and of course Half Life 2 in November...

Mmmmmmmmmmmm. Half life.

-sting