[ale] Dual Opteron Motherboard Recommendations

[Brian W. Neu]

Greg,

    I've put both dual Tyan and Supermicro into production several years 
ago.  Not a peep out of either board.  They've both been rock solid on 
Fedora installs.  Newegg reviews will usually steer you in the right 
direction.  There are plenty of Linux users that post about the 
compatibility of the motherboard with their distro.
    I'd reconsider your stance on buying a new processor.  I just bought 
a dual core Athlon 64 5400+ (2.8 Ghz) for $87 . . . and it absolutely 
screams(though I did overclock it just a tad).  If you go AM2 & DDR2 
800, make sure to buy a processor with speed rating evenly divisible by 
400Mhz, so your RAM runs at full speed. 
    If you must have with a server designed processor though, consider 
crossing over to Intel.  Unless you're building some kind of massive 
cluster, I'd go with the Xeons and get one with 45nm manufacturing 
tech.  It looks like you can get a Xeon E3110 3Gz (65w) with a 1333Mhz 
FSB for $205. AMD has sorta fallen behind for the moment in the server 
processor market, as sad as that is for me to say.  I just don't think 
they are competitive enough for the moment.

my $0.02

-B


Greg Canter wrote:
> I have an old Arima HDAMC motherboard that runs 2 Opteron 246's (Socket 940)
> that is starting to show it's age (I got it from Monarch in their heyday)
> and I am looking for a replacement.  The only things I see on the market are
> SuperMicro and Tyan boards.  I have had problems with one Tyan that I had
> (server motherboard) and have not heard great things about SuperMicro.
>
> Does anyone have any experience/recommendations for a dual Opteron
> motherboard ??  I understand they are dying breed due to multi-cores (mine
> has AGP even) but I am not really wanting to buy a new processor if I can
> help it.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Greg
>
>
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