Theo Band wrote: > javajunkie wrote: >> Hi, >> >>> Funny, I was advised to buy a ASUS P5B-VM since I need 8MB memory. >>> >> >> I have that board. Do NOT get it for >3gb of memory. >> >> To get >3gb of mem you need to enable "extended memory remapping" in the >> bios >> >> When you do that, the system will be very very unusably slow. >> > 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 You should be able get a lower-end one with two sockets, and you don't have to populate it fully. Nor would I decline a quad-core "because it's overkill." Your needs will increase to exceed what's available;-) > 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. > > My next stop will be Dell. > Anyone has a good advice? Umm. Ask for a money-back guarantee that it will work. I have a Dell Optiplex GX270 with Intel graphics - not at all what you'd be using, I know. I did have RHEL5 beta1 running on it, and SUSE & SLES. but the difficulty of getting graphics to work at all put me off a little, and Fedora Core 6 works only if I don't switch between X and virtual consoles, and I generally do that dozens of times a day. It's put me off Dell a bit. -- Cheers John -- spambait 1aaaaaaa at coco.merseine.nu Z1aaaaaaa at coco.merseine.nu Please do not reply off-list