On Tue, 2005-08-23 at 15:09 -0400, Lennart Sorensen wrote:
On Tue, Aug 23, 2005 at 12:08:54PM -0700, Elaine Tsiang YueLien wrote:
There seem to be two product lines available for quad dual core opterons
at this point, one based on the Iwill H4203 (MB+Chasis), and the other
on the Tyan S4882. Both are based on the AMD chipset. The Iwill MB has
only IDE controller on board, the Tyan has SATA or SCSI. The machine
will be used for compute-intensive tasks, server functions being not as
important. I would appreciate any comments on either, or comparisons.
Are there new MBs/systems in the works to be introduced in the near
future, before 2006?
When is AMD supposed to switch to the new socket? I am wondering if it
makes sense to buy a new system before or after that switch. I like
buying things when I know the socket will be around for a while (I have
an Asus A7V which was one of the first socket A boards out, and it is
early enough revision to have some stupidities, like the IDE activity
light only working for one of the ide controllers. :)
I have heard socket F is not till late 2006. There is an nvidia 8-way MB
+daughter. The MB may be used for quad dual (not sure), the DB could be
great for expansion. But apparently there is no kernel support for the
nvidia chipset, and indeed I have found no vendor selling it with Linux.
As for chipsets for quad systems, I don't know if there are any new ones
coming any time soon. I have seen dual systems with nvidia, and I have
seen systems with AMD. I think I read that serverworks might be making
an opteron chipset, but I don't know if that is true.
Len Sorensen
Elaine