[PLUG] 64-bit & Multi-Core Desktop Experiences?

[John Jason Jordan]

On Mon, 6 Aug 2007 10:07:38 -0700
Paul Mullen <pm at nellump.net> dijo:

> On Mon, Aug 06, 2007 at 07:18:23AM -0700, M. Edward (Ed) Borasky wrote:
> > I ended up with a Gigabyte S3 motherboard and an Athlon64 X2 4200+
> > processor (and 4 GB of RAM). You can probably get something for
> > less, but I'm not sure you could get it for $200.
> 
> Actually, a Gigabyte S3 motherboard (there seem to be more than one)
> and an Athlon 64 X2 4200+ from Newegg totals ~$160 currently, so
> that's right on the mark. I'll add it to my list of known-good
> motherboard/CPU combinations.

I recently built myself a new desktop using an Abit motherboard and an
AMD Athlon 64 X2 4600 CPU with fan, and an Abit motherboard. The Abit
motherboard was (to use Drew's term) "evil." There was a long thread on
it here where everyone was trying to help me get the SATA controller to
work with mdadm (trying to create a RAID-1 array). The whole thread was
futile because it turns out it was a buggy BIOS/SATA-controller
combination that no amount of tweaking Linux could ever fix. At the end
of Fry's 90-day return policy time period I returned it and replaced it
with an Asus M2NPV-VM that has been beautiful. The M2NPV-VM has four
slots for RAM (up to 8 GB), four SATA II connectors, nVidia GeForce
6150, nVidia gigabit ethernet, firewire, and e-SATA connector. I tried
Fedora 7 and Ubuntu Feisty (both 64-bit) and everything just worked.

I think I paid $126 for the CPU, but that was several months ago. Today
frys.com lists the 4800 for $119 and the 4400 for $99. The motherboard
was $84.99, and worth every penny. Of course, you might be able to beat
those prices online. If I wanted to save money I'd cut back on the CPU
because I don't think the difference between 4400 - 4600 - 4800 is
noticeable. My system screams, but I think it's mostly due to the SATA
II drives, more than the CPU.