From: Chris Mauritz <chrism at imntv.com> > If you have a task that's I/O bound, then perhaps Bryan's concerns will > impact your decision on a motherboard. For my purposes, I'm mostly cpu > bound, Then it doesn't apply. > it really doesn't mean a hell of a lot to me that one cpu is > "stuck" with mundane I/O tasks. And as cpus get faster and faster, > this becomes less of an issue (if it's really an issue at all for most > tasks). That's not it at all. It has nothing to do with CPU performance. It has everything to do with interconnect and the processor affinity with regards to I/O and memory mapped transfers. > Also, as Bryan mentions, the S2895 splits the I/O up a bit > better and the newer revs of that board support dual core Opterons > too. Technically, all mainboards should support dual-core Opterons. But the market reality is why give consumers a BIOS update when you can charge for a new mainboard? ;-> Dual-core A64/Opterons don't change the interconnect one bit. Dual-core Xeons/P4s are a whole different story. > So if you're in an I/O heavy environment you could choose that > board rather than the S2882. Assume you could make use of one of the PCIe x16 slots for a storage or other communications device, as well as the 2nd NIC. -- Bryan J. Smith mailto:b.j.smith at ieee.org