Brandon wrote: > Hello you brilliant minds, > I am in need of some (probably basic) information concerning > CentOS and the new dual core 64 bit systems. I realize that > Linux was inherently built for multiple processor systems, as > well as 64 bit systems. My first question is AMD doing > anything special with doing all of the above on one chip > that I need to know about before installing CentOS on my > newest system? Both AMD and Intel do their best to "hide" any hardware changes that are not compatible with legacy GTL+ through various support chips, and those interface appear "standard" in the APIC registers. In the case of AMD, they virtualized the GTL+ "bus" back with the adoption of the Alpha EV6 architecture/interconnect "switch" with the original Athlon. They have gone to a true, "partial mesh" in the Athlon64/Opteron, but it all still appears as a GTL+ "bus" from the standpoint of Linux (although the Linux kernel does have some modifications for better efficiency of the architecture). The AMD dual-cores are actually interconnect almost the _exact_same_ as if they were two seprate sockets, from an electrical/logic standpoint. There are only a few performance considerations (both pro and con) of the dual-core v. two sockets. In the case of Intel, still using the GTL+ "bus," so they have had to add a _lot_ of bridging in the new dual-cores. There's a lot of commentary on this, because Intel is releasing a better dual-core this year (mid-2006). But the underlying architecture is radically different for Intel separate cores v. dual or multicore. Intel is close to introducing multiple front-side busses for its server chips with a switching interconnect -- much like old Alpha EV6 (which 32-bit Athlon used). > Also, my motherboard being a a8n32-sli has SATA II Which is largely a marketing term: http://thebs413.blogspot.com/serial_storage_is_future.html SATA-IO is what you want, otherwise, SATA-II without SATA-IO is kinda like USB 2.0 without EHCI. Most of the benchmarks have no clue, because the drives can't break 150MBps yet -- so they can only give artificial numbers of what the chip is actually capable of when the signal has to traverse cabling only designed for 1.5GHz. ;-> > and RAID FRAID (Fake RAID). Disable it. > capabilities. Is there anything special about the SATA II > that I need to set up to use the full capabilities of this > hardware and CentOS. Any information would be better than > what I have at the moment. I haven't seen anything on SATA-IO developments so, again, SATA-II is rather a lot of marketing baloney at this point. The SATA-II chip is allegedly capable of 3GHz. The SATA-II drive is allegedly capable of 3GHz. But I've seen nothing to the 3GHz SATA-IO standard as specified by the ATA committees. -- Bryan J. Smith Professional, Technical Annoyance b.j.smith at ieee.org http://thebs413.blogspot.com ---------------------------------------------------- *** Speed doesn't kill, difference in speed does ***