# buying hardware  need advice

## dherron

im going to start building a new machine soon and im going to order a mobo and proc/s  but i cant decide on either an athlon xp or mps

if i go dual it will be on a MST k7d master-L with either the mp 1200 or 1600   and if i choose a single proc   well i have no idea on what board  just as its socket A.   its going to replace my main box which is a 700mhz duron  so anything will be an improvement.  so it breaks down like this:

smp vs up

ide raid vs scsi

mouse vs trackball

what about video cards?  which is best on linux?  should i just take my rage 128 over?  

any help is appreciated

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## mrchuckles

All of this depends on what you want to do with the machine, and what apps you plan to run.  A few points...

A dual proc machine will do you little good if the apps you're running aren't designed with SMP in mind.  

For motherboard choice, check out the review sites and pick one you like in your price range.  Just make sure the chipset is well supported under Linux (particularly the IDE bits).  I always try to balance stability with price, depending on the situation.  I never consider a board because of its "overclocking" features.

IDE RAID, as is available with most motherboards, is a joke.  It's not real hardware RAID, and it's not easily supported under Linux.  Either buy a real RAID controller that is supported (like the 3Ware stuff), or just use Linux's built in software RAID.

Forget SCSI.  You'll never realize a speed vs. cost benefit, and you don't need the reliability and hotplug features of SCSI (unless this is a server, which I doubt).

Again, a need for video cards depends on what you're going to do.  If you're playing games, you'll find the NVidia cards offer the best performance and drivers available.  There are ATI Radeon drivers, but they're not as stable as the NVidia ones.  Unless you're a hardcore, 24x7 UT2003 type gamer, get a 128MB NVidia Geforce4 ti4200.

Mouse vs trackball: Only you can decide.  My mom loves trackballs, I love the 4 button MS optical mouse.

HTH

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## dherron

with prices on everything but ram cheap, cost really isnt important.

id just like a faster box. it doesnt have to be something high on clock speed.  i want to squeeze every drop of performance out of it thats why ive been looking at scsi.  ill probably forget about that and go with raid. i like smp for speeding up build times, and it would be nice to spread the load over 2 procs. i heard even if the apps arent multi-threaded the load would be split.  and the coolness factor comes into play.  but im not set on it.

know of any good XP boards?  i was looking at the soyo ultra dragon platinum but dont want the on board crap.  i have a few items that i think im sure are going to be put in there: tb santa cruz,  linksys nics, and what ever raid controller i can find.

im too indecisive. 

what about the promise tx2000?

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## rommel

i just installed a athlon xp2800+ on an epox nforce2 board....not the best support for the ethernet and sound but i got it to work and the board is fast....i have a giga-byte GA-7VAXPULTRA coming i think tomorrow or wednesday....so it will be interesting to see the differance between the two platforms....in windows the nforce2 board is just flat ass easy with unified driver package.

i also run scsi cheetahs ...the older 160u x15's (320u's are out now) and i would say if money isnt an issue go for scsi , BUT since thats probably not true why not run ide raid using Linux Software Raid (LSR) in a raid 0 config...this will give you better performance then either scsi or ide drives on their own...get either western digital wd200jb or the new ibm 180gxp series...these are the top preformers for ide drives right now.

as for smp verses up ...well smp is nice but as fast as hardware and cpu's change i just havent pulled myself to go for it...maybe with hammer...well anyway thats my input...have fun

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## dherron

actually it IS true. i have some money and and the only thing i really want is a killer box. besides scsi isnt that expensive. i dont care for the disk prices though but id get them if they are fast. i think i saw a tekram controller for 150 and im sure i saw a good adaptec u160 for about the same. but if the performance of raid comes close enough theres no since in wasting money.  so thats why im here  trying to get info from people who have used similar hardware

ps  what part of SD are you in.

i spent 4 months in Brookings freezing my ass off 2 years back.  nice part of the country.

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## choward

 *dherron wrote:*   

> i heard even if the apps arent multi-threaded the load would be split.  and the coolness factor comes into play.  but im not set on it.

 

Each processor runs one thread of one process.  Threads are often thought of as light-weight processes, so you could consider processes to be heavy-weight threads.  If the application you are running is not multi-threaded, then it cannot take advantage of the second CPU.  However, another process could be running concurrently on the second processor.  That is where you get your advantage with single-threaded applications on an SMP machine.  

 *dherron wrote:*   

> besides scsi isnt that expensive. i dont care for the disk prices though but id get them if they are fast.

 

The usual advantage that is given for SCSI nowadays is the increased reliablity.  IDE drives are, for all intents and purposes, as fast as SCSI devices and have the same (if not better) CPU utilization.  However, since SCSI retains the server identity, the SCSI disks are often made with greater reliability.  I would consider IDE/SCSI with reliability in mind, not performance.  Unless, of course, your plan is for hardware RAID, in which case SCSI is the way to go.

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## krt

After running with an ASUS A7MD-266 for SMP, with dual Athlon MP 2000's, I can say this:

You can save money by -not- getting ECC DDR dimms.  You don't really need the ECC portion, and using ECC dimms insures that you wont be able to use them in almost any other Athlon board (believe me, i've tried.. and had to settle on an older Abit KG7 board for a single Athlon box that I built using the same type of DIMM's.. )

You can save some money by getting Athlon XP's for a dual proc box.  They work fine, and have the same specifications as the MP's.  I can't figure out the difference between the two chips... 

thats the nice thing about SMP Athlons.  You -can- mix and match both speeds and chip type (though I'm not so sure about the durons... you can put an XP 1600+ and an MP 2100+ in the same mobo, for example).

As for usage, my Dual Athlon box is by far my fastest for -anything- I do - including single threaded applications.

The major killer for a dual board is that their northbridge/southbridges arent as "fast" as the new chipsets coming out with extremely speedy busses between the CPU and RAM.  This may factor in more to your decision (I.e. a Single Proc Athlon 2800+ is probably good enough, and probably cheaper than going for a dual proc system)

As for drives, its hard to beat the capacity and speed of the new ATA133 8M Cache drives, such as the Western Digital Caviar Special Editions and others... 

One things for certain - on any of the higher speed Athlon based systems, SMP or not, count on requiring a beefier power supply (300 Watts just doesn't cut it anymore), a lot of cooling (Cases fans, power supplies with two fans, and a motherboard with a fan and heatsink on its Northbridge if you're going for the new higher speed single proc setups).

I highly recommend -NOT- using the "Retail AMD Boxed" version of the chip, as the stock AMD Heatsink/FAN isn't a good purchase.  The fans are terrible (after four months, all three of mine have either gone bad or are quickly getting there) and the cooling isnt as good as what you can find in an aftermarket heatsink/fan combo for the same price!

Have fun shopping.... and if you're not in a hurry, wait until 2003... there are some rumoured (and likely) price cuts across the board on Athlons (and P4's) on their way.

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## dherron

thanks for the good info guys.

so i guess ill shitcan scsi. ive seen those western digital SE's. they were one of the things making that decision kind of hard.  so thats one down.

i will be waiting before buying any procs.  but ill probably get the board sometime this week.  the dual i was looking at with shipping is only 209 (the msi k7d master L). but again i might go uniproc.   but with the mpx boards it says up to 1 GB of ram can be unbuffered. i dont thing i need more than that  but would that be stable?

and i agree with not buying boxed chips.  i always try to get oem on everything but drives.  ive heard waranty concerns but hell i think by just me buying it i void the waranty   :Very Happy:    whats a good ps for dual? 400 450?

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## nalin

If you are looking to save a couple bucks on the motherboard go with ebay...after quite a bit of researching over the past few weeks, I bought the a7m266-d on ebay for ~160 yesterday (brand new, boxed and factory sealed, with usb2.0 and 3com ethernet pci cards.  Out of curiousity, is there kernel support for usb2.0?)...theres quite a few on there and i watched a few "barer" version of the board go for under 150. 

Incedently I was looking at the tyan boards for awhile, both tiger and thunder (S2460 and S2468 if memeory serves), but were a little more costly for the featureset (ie cheaper tiger boards didnt have high speed pci and thunder was twice what I wanted to spend)

If your looking on pricewatch, I found generally the motherboard + processor kits saved you a few bucks

AFAIK the only difference between xp's and mp's is that the latter run cooler, did you have to solder the xp's at all krt? (Read somewhere that was necessary)

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## rommel

newegg...newegg .....oh and buy it all from newegg...lol....i have been dealing with them for a couple of years...they are very competitive and are good about RMA'ing....plus fedex shipping usually means like three days.

anyway...i would go uniprocessor as fast as this crap changes i would just save your money and upgrade when hammer comes out ... i am really liking this epox 8rda+ nforce2 board....the usb 1 is dead though so i am sending it back and going to setup a kt400 i got yesterday in its place , but UT and Q3 run really fast on this system...hell eveything runs really fast on this system.

and i live like 20 miles north of mitchell , thats the closest town to me

if your not in a hurry i'll post tomorrow or the next about the results with this giga-byte ga-7vaxp ultra

edit: well the kt400 doesnt run nearly as fast of smooth as the nforce2 board...neither hav 'supported agps' according to agpgart but the nforce2 runs great....UT2k3 on the kt400 is ok but can get a little choppy...that and the sound is acl650 and would need alsa which i just dont like that much.

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## darktux

 *nalin wrote:*   

> If you are looking to save a couple bucks on the motherboard go with ebay...after quite a bit of researching over the past few weeks, I bought the a7m266-d on ebay for ~160 yesterday (brand new, boxed and factory sealed, with usb2.0 and 3com ethernet pci cards.  Out of curiousity, is there kernel support for usb2.0?)...theres quite a few on there and i watched a few "barer" version of the board go for under 150. 
> 
> 

 

Yes, the Linux Kernel already supports usb2.0, hit the HELP button on the USB Menu and you'll find what module you'll need to build. I'd tell you the name, but I'm not at home right now, and ssh isn't turned on on my desktop computer (forgot   :Confused:  ).

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## rommel

ehci gives support for usb 2.0 , and it passes the usb 1.1 devices through to which ever your system uses for that either ohci or uhci

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## dherron

crap. im really leaning towards mp's but i dont think i need that much power. after looking at the 2cpu.com forums it looks like people mainly use them for video encoding and seti/folding.  i dont do either.  just code, browse and watch movies on here.  not much of a gamer outside of snes emu. so i think what i do would benefit a little more ram than a second cpu. common sense says get an xp.  but all the rest of me is screaming "go smp" and trying to kill that little guy saying you dont need it.  sometimes being a guy is a real problem.

god help me when i go buy a car

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## dherron

im just going to get one of those nforce2 based boards  ive been looking at reviews and looks interesting.  i have some questions  how well is the chip supported in linux  especially the integrated stuff.

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## rommel

i wouldnt sell the nforce2 as a board that was easy if you are installing gentoo from scratch...the nvnet driver has to be built from their unified driver package....but i just built a kernel using the 2.4.20 kernel that has teh i810 support for sound and then make make install from the nvnet directory ot the driver package....then shutdown sitched hardware and booted up.

the only issue with the epox is a bios one but i am sure that will be worked out , as epoxis always relaesing and tweaking their bios files.

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## xming

I am also going to buy a new one and here is the list:

- epox 8rda+ (nforce2)

- 2x ocz 3500 low latency 256MB

- GF4 4200 or ATI 9500 PRO

- XP 1800+ (tbred)

with a bit of luck I can get 2+Gz running @ 8x250 (yes the ocz can reach very high FSB with low latency)

BTW: by any change, does anyone knows where I can find xp 1800+ in Benelux? Or one would ship to Belgium? Newegg does not  :Sad: 

xming

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## rommel

just watch out for ocz ram...i have had good and bad luck with their stuff....seems kinda hit and miss.....again if you go with  a good vendor rma shouldnt be any trouble.

the corsair xms pc3500 i am using on this board is doing good...i have some geil pc3500 comming today that has the same timings as the xms 2-6-3-3. 

and if your going tro run linux like me....90% of the time do yourself a favor and stay with nvidia for graphics.

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## dherron

hows the ide performance on nforce2.  and i heard something about you can only run nvidia graphics on nforce because of nvagp or something along those lines

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## rommel

well there isnt any specific support (driver) for ide...i use scsi 160u cheetahs for hard drives....xine was kinda choppy but i added hdparm -d -c /dev/hda to local start and that tuns dma on for my dvdplayer and all is well......if i get a chance i will boot from the install cd and run hdparm with a ide drive attached to one of the onboard channels and tell you whatsup.

as for running other graphics cards i think that would be a rumor but then i would run anything else other then nvidia , the only real 3d alternative is ATi and there is no real driver support

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