View Single Post
Old 15th September 2008
DrJ DrJ is offline
ISO Quartermaster
 
Join Date: Apr 2008
Location: Gold Country, CA
Posts: 507
Default

I agree with Vermaden, you have an odd list, TerryP. Eight cores is worthwhile only if you are doing tasks that can easily be parallelized, like rendering, numerical simulations, CAD/CAM in general, and a few other specialized areas. It really is way overkill for most things.

I've built a couple of Q6600 systems, and they overclock to 3GHz very easily. With attention to cooling, they can be nearly silent. They work very well, and really are more than most people need.

The only thing they should have, which is now starting to move more into the market, is ECC memory and greater memory capacity. The new boards can take 16GB memory, though you need 4GB modules. More would take Xeons, so that you can use registered memory, usually as FB-DIMMs.

Or you could use something like the Supermicro X7DCA-L, which uses regular ECC/Reg memory, and can take 24GB memory. No quad pumped memory, though.

I'm fine with 32 bit systems for now. There are just too many holes in 64-bit FreeBSD at the moment, including video drivers and the things that vermaden mentioned. My computers all have about 3GB memory, and so far that has been plenty.

I am getting into some heavy-duty numerical calculations, though, so I probably will put an 8 or more core system together, with about 64GB memory. Owing to the software bundle I need for that work, that would probably run Vista or its server version if there are more than 2 physical CPUs. That box will run about $6-8K, but the software will cost about $20K. So the hardware is not really the issue. It is cheap in comparison.
Reply With Quote