Re: [gentoo-amd64] Re: Planning a new box - AMD Opteron or Intel Xeon?

[Conway S. Smith]

On Mon, 12 Nov 2007 01:43:48 +0000 (UTC)
Duncan <1i5t5.duncan@×××.net> wrote:
> "Conway S. Smith" <beolach@×××××××.net> posted
> 20071111053814.06ce20f3@××××××××××××××××××.net, excerpted below, on
> Sun, 11 Nov 2007 05:38:14 -0700:
>
> > Well, I've been looking at the new Barcelona Opteron 2300 series,
> > which have 4 cores each & can be used in dual socket motherboards,
> > for a total of 8 cores in the system.  The 2 or 4 cores in an
> > Athlon X2 system really would be sufficient for my needs, but then
> > my current box is still pretty much sufficient for my needs.  This
> > new box I'm planning is more about my wants, and I look at 8 cores
> > & think "I want!"
>
> For general workstation use, including Gentoo, 4 cores should be
> about enough for now.  Same with 4 gig of memory.  I went with 8 gig
> memory, but if I had it to do over I'd stick with 4 gig and get the
> dual-cores sooner.
>

The thing is, I'm really not much of an upgrader - at least, not
replacement-type upgrades, like CPUs.  I'd rather get 4 cores now,
instead of getting 2 cores & later upgrading to 4, because then I'd
have the 2 core CPUs lying around, and much as I might think that I'd
find some use for them, my experience has been that they'd just end up
in a box (cardboard, not computer) gathering dust.  And as I've been
pricing things, I've been rather impressed w/ how the 4 core Barcelonas
are priced compared w/ similarly clocked 2 core Santa Rosas.

Memory, on the other hand, is easier to upgrade just by adding
additional sticks, so I might just start w/ 4 GiB & plan on adding more
later.

> The more cores you get, the more things have to parallelize in
> ordered to use them.  It's coming, but really isn't there yet.  There
> are too many makefiles that haven't been designed with massive
> parallelization in mind.
>
> Of course, there are applications where 8-core is useful.  Just not
> for general Gentoo desktop/workstation use, IMO.  A pair of 30" Apple
> Cinema (like 2900x1600 or some such, resolution) or comparable LCDs
> and a decent GPU (or set of GPUs) to run them seems better use of
> that sort of money, to me, and what I'm looking at for next upgrade
> after my eyes (lasik).
>

I actually already have a Samsung 305T 30" monitor, that's very similar
to the Apple Cinema, but slightly cheaper & better response time.  And
it (just the one) was more expensive than I expect I'll be shelling out
for the 2x4 core CPUs + motherboard.


Thanks,
Conway S. Smith