This is valuable information. There goes the trust I had in the shop as well :-( I read some articles also in this list about Core 2 duo, so I want to go for that. I don't care that much about having the cheapest machine available. I just want a machine capable of addressing 8GB of memory.
I notice that server boards seem to have multiple sockets and use quad core processors. They are capable of handling 16GB easily. I don't need so many horsepower in parallel. Nice for a mail or web server running hundreds of threads. I plan to run 1 or 2 heavy jobs in parallel. And I want the job to be able to acquire >4GB memory if needed. So speed is important, but it's number two on the list. First the memory size needs to be OK.
Anyone has a good advice?
AMD X2 processors? Proven solid and has no problems addressing 8GB RAM with Tyan boards.
Has anyone actually stress tested a Core 2 Duo box and seen how it handles it? I know of one instance where a large Korean portal had no problems in trials with the Xeon version of the core 2 Duo but hit major stability issues when they went live.