Building a workstation

[Rubycon]

Here's the rundown:

Xeon System

Motherboard:

Gigabyte GA-9ITDW Dual Socket 603/604 Intel E7525 Extended ATX Server Motherboard - Retail $419.00

http://www.newegg.com/product/product.asp?item=N82E16813128277

Processors:

Intel Xeon EM64T 3.4 Irwindale 800MHz FSB 2MB L2 Cache Socket 604 Processor - Retail $468.00 EA

http://www.newegg.com/product/product.asp?item=N82E16819117032


RAM

gigaram 2GB 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM ECC Registered DDR2 400 (PC2 3200) System Memory - Retail $265.00 EA (2)

http://www.newegg.com/product/product.asp?item=N82E16820221118


Opteron System

Motherboard

Gigabyte GA-2CEWH Dual Socket 940 NVIDIA® nForce? Professional 2200 Extended ATX Server Motherboard - Retail $412.00

http://www.newegg.com/product/product.asp?item=N82E16813128309

Prcessors:

AMD Opteron 250 Troy 1GHz FSB 1MB L2 Cache Socket 940 Processor - Retail $461.00 EA

RAM

CORSAIR XMS 1GB 184-Pin DDR SDRAM ECC Registered DDR 400 (PC 3200) System Memory - Retail $165.00 EA (4)

http://www.newegg.com/product/product.asp?item=N82E16820145513

Some thoughts about this:

No decisions have been made on anything at this point. Both systems should provide similar performance across the board? The Intel system is more expensive because of the DDR2 memory which is outrageous.

What do ya think?

 

[Vegito]

Opteron... I would probably never touch a xeon again.. till they make it faster

 

[Fullmetal Chocobo]

I love my dual Xeon 2.66s, but I'd have to say that I would recommend an AMD system at this point. I've always based my desicion on motherboards and their chipsets myself.

 

[ribbon13]

Opteron.

And do your best to get the best platform from the get go: Tyan K8WE

This is the RAM I use in my workstation, and has faster default SPD

 

[Rubycon]

Originally posted by: ribbon13
Opteron.

And do your best to get the best platform from the get go: Tyan K8WE

This is the RAM I use in my workstation, and has faster default SPD

What about this board?

The Tyan looks good. They get mixed reports over at 2CPU.

 

[foodfightr]

Opteron!

 

[ribbon13]

That Iwill is weak sauce, more expensive than the Tyan, and it doesn't even have two true x16 slots.

 

[biostud]

Have you considered dualcore?

 

[Rubycon]

Originally posted by: ribbon13
That Iwill is weak sauce, more expensive than the Tyan, and it doesn't even have two true x16 slots.

Any more info regarding weak sauce comments? Power delivery to the CPU's on the Iwill is the best on the market. SLI is definitely not needed, one PCI-E slot will be used for graphics, the other an 8L scsi controller.

With two peripherals that have HUGE BIOS rom address requirements, the fear of not seeing the SCSI BOOT rom on the Tyan is a concern.

Originally posted by: biostud
Have you considered dualcore?

A pair of 280's would be nice. I may look at that too.

 

[ribbon13]

That's been fixed for several months now

 

[Rubycon]

Originally posted by: ribbon13
That's been fixed for several months now

You're using this board now?

I cannot believe the email that someone sent me about this. It's plain :laugh:.

I don't know much about anything, but I can tell you this: they guy that sent me that "information" is on some serious happy pills.

 

[ribbon13]

I've been using that board for ages. Never looked at my system?