Daniel Quinlan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > > Syrus Nemat-Nasser <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > > With 256M of RAM, more of your cost is probably going towards RAM than > CPU. I'd consider going with a Pentium Pro.
Definitely. You can get PPro 150 chips for about $175 right now - you're not going to get better cost/performance. > Make sure you get 256K or 512K of pipeline-burst cache. The cache is in the PPro chip. The 512K 200MHz parts are about $1000 apiece, so unless you have NO budget, most people aren't going to buy these. I have heard there are 200MHz 1M cache chips available somewhere - I've never seen them on the market though. > I am currently evaluating two dual Pentium Pro motherboards. The Tyan > S1668 Titan-Pro ATX and the Intel Providence 440FX. I'm leaning towards > the Tyan, but there isn't much difference. I'm writing this on a Tyan S1668 machine. It's VERY nice. Lots of memory and PCI slots made it the choice for us. I've also heard a lot of good stuff about the SuperMicro PPro motherboards. I was really happy with their Pentium motherbaords, but when I was buying these PPros, SuperMicro didn't have an ATX product yet... (Don't know if that's still true.) > SMP Linux can sometimes lock-up when running very intensive > programs. I/O intense. Not CPU intense (in my experience). > The only kernel version which I believe to run pretty stable is > 2.1.29. I've had very few problems with 2.0.14 - that's what I found being recommend at the Linux SMP web site. (Don't run setserial, though!) I've had my machine up for >25 days, running a DES cracker on both CPUs in all idle cycles, doing make -j4 compiles, and generally abusing the machine. It's been quite stable - occasionally the keyboard has locked up on me, and that has been it. > SCSI: get the Buslogic 958. Definititely. (I'm using a 948, and a 958, and kernel based striping. The IO on this machine is KILLER.) I'm starting to become very biased towards Seagate SCSI disks - it seems like there are a lot of junky Quantum Tempest disks that have been relabeled as "Fireball TM"s and thrown on the market. The one narrow disk I have on this machine is a 4 gig barracuda - it's REALLY fast. > 100 Mbps ethernet: some 100BaseTX ethernet cards can spam the network > under intensive load. I suggest staying away from the DEC tulip-based > cards. We have good luck with the Intel eepro, but the current driver > takes a long time (5 to 10 minutes) to initialize. I'm using a 3com 595 at 100mbs, which works nicely, but I hear the 3c905 (the new version of this card) is really crappy. The old Intel etherexpress (non-pro) cards were supposed to have some horrible programmed I/O intereface, and poor performance as a result. With everything I have read recently, I would say get a tulip-based ethernet card, as I have never heard ANYONE say they've had problems with them. > I'd also recommend getting an ATX motherboard. Definitely agree on this one too. The cards acutally line up correctly! > Check out <URL:http://www.tdl.com/~netex/>. It has some good advice on > RAM, motherboards, and CPU. > > Dan As far as other pieces, I have yet to find a sound card I truly like. The Matrox Millenium seems to be the best deal in video right now. And I'm have become very biased towards Sony Monitors recently - the 200sx is a DEAL if you don't mind 60Hz vertical refresh. (At 1280x1024, that is.) I was living with 50Hz (at 1152x864) for a long time - apparently I'm very tolerant, compared to many people :-) Good luck! -- +-------------------- finger for pgp public key ---------------------+ | Dale E. Martin | University of Cincinnati Savant Research Laboratory | | [EMAIL PROTECTED] | http://www.ececs.uc.edu/~dmartin | +----------------------------------------------------------------------+ -- TO UNSUBSCRIBE FROM THIS MAILING LIST: e-mail the word "unsubscribe" to [EMAIL PROTECTED] . Trouble? e-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] .
