[ale] new linux box

[jeff hubbs]

 >

> Even still, I would recommend that you purchase a
> dual-CPU board with a single CPU and wait out the CPU prices until you
> purchase the second CPU. The trick here is being patient and buying a
> second (now considered slow) CPU when everyone else is buying a new,
> faster computer.


This is one thing in Michael's response that I disagree with.  From the 
first time that I built, bought, inherited, or lucked upon dual-CPU 
Intel boxes, I have always come to regret not populating that second 
socket or slot.

For one thing, the passage of time makes it progressively less easy to 
locate, obtain, and install a second CPU that matches the first exactly. 
  They not only need to have the same clock speed, but they need to have 
the same bugs (the OS has to incorporate the same workaround for both or 
not at all), and any other differences that the time difference may 
incur...well, you're going out on a limb, risking getting problems that 
no one else will likely be able to reproduce, much less diagnose, much 
less correct.  Meanwhile, while you're sitting there with one CPU in 
your two-CPU box, you're not getting any returned value for the extra 
money you spent on the dual motherboard, and, because of the problem I 
mentioned above, you're risking not being able to get any returned value 
for the extra money at all.

I recall reading that the dual AMD boards are set up such that one of 
the buses the CPUs share don't connect together directly but go through 
a kind of hub that lets both buses run at full speed without any 
interleaving.  See what Anandtech and Tom's Hardware have to say.

- Jeff




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