Bowie Bailey spake the following on 6/21/2006 9:46 AM: > Joshua Baker-LePain wrote: >> On Tue, 20 Jun 2006 at 5:53pm, Bowie Bailey wrote >> >>> Joshua Baker-LePain wrote: >>>> Is there any reason you're locked into Xeon/FB-DIMM? SuperMicro >>>> makes many rather nice Opteron boards, with good ol' DDR SDRAM. >>>> And there aren't many areas where Xeon outperforms Opteron these >>>> days, if any. >>> Not really, can you recommend a comparable Opteron MB? I need PCI-X >>> 133 for the raid card, capability of at least 32MB RAM, and >>> preferably onboard video and LAN. >> I'll assume you meant 32GB RAM. ;) In that case, your options >> become a bit more limited. SM doesn't have any 2 socket Opteron >> boards with 16 DIMM slots -- they have at most 4 slots/socket. So, >> to stick with SM, you'd have to either go with 4GB sticks (which, I'm >> guessing, may well be as pricy as FB-DIMM per GB) or go to a 4 socket >> board. Either way, you may not get much cost savings, but you'll >> still likely get a performance boost. > > Yea, 32GB... :) I can't actually find any 4GB modules at the moment, > but I'm sure you're right. The 2GB PC2700 ECC-Reg modules are cheaper > than the DDR2 ECC-FB modules, but 16GB memory still accounts for > almost half of the total cost of the server. > > I'm only populating it with 16GB to start with, but I want to leave > myself some headroom to increase it if needed. > >> The other option is to go with Tyan. They have the S3892, a dual >> socket board with 16 DIMM slots. > > That looks like a good board. It seems to have everything I need. > > The only source I could find for it is memorylabs.com. Anyone know > anything about them? > > Going with the dual Opteron 270 (2.0GHz) rather than the dual Xeon > 5060 (3.2GHz) and the slightly cheaper RAM saves me about $320. > >> As an aside, 3ware now has a PCIe version (the 9590SE) in addition to >> the PCI-X 9550. > > Any advantage to PCIe over PCI-X? I don't really know much about > either other than that they are both faster than standard PCI. > PCI-X is an "upgrade" to PCI, so it carries some compatibility baggage. PCI-E is designed from the ground up and, being new, doesn't have to keep any old compatibility. But there are more devices available right now for PCI-X. That is changing rapidly. As for performance, I haven't seen the numbers, but PCI-E has nowhere to go but up. -- MailScanner is like deodorant... You hope everybody uses it, and you notice quickly if they don't!!!!