Re: Kernel Question.

[David Palmer <davidpalmer@westnet.com.au>]

        Ok, I don't know if this is the most appropriate question for
        this list, 
        but I was just wondering if you [Scott, or anybody else who
        wishes] 
        could give me a general description of your experience running a
        Dual 
        Opteron system. I'm seriously looking into purchasing that sort
        of 
        system and I'm trying to answer the general question, "Is it
        worth it?" 
        (they're sort of pricey, as you know!) Anyway, what kind of
        performance 
        gains are you seeing, especially with the 64-bit kernel and
        64-bit apps? 
        The main thing I'm interested in doing is 3d modeling/rendering 
        (blender), and film editing and compositing (cinepaint,
        cinarella, 
        jahshaka, gimp). So, large memory size ("large" as in at least a
        gig of 
        physical RAM and at least that large of swapfile) and large file
        sizes, 
        with rendering and batch processing and so on. Do you think
        64-bit will 
        be a big advantage when all these apps are optimized for it (if
        they 
        aren't already)?

        Oh, and I am especially interested in how your RAID situation
        works out, 
        as I would be interested in some sort of RAID setup myself.
        
        

Hello Josh,

Most dual motherboards these days are set up for a minimum of 3Gigs of
DDR. Swap file size is set in your partitioning. Software raid is
available with any Linux distribution, along with scsi emulation.
Dual processor boards are at their best when used in a server situation,
although there is no harm in employing them as a standalone box, but if
you are seriously into your graphics, it may pay you to have a small
server situation with a couple of units working off it.
Although graphics are not my game, 64Bit tech. will be a huge asset in
that field.
Regards, 

David.