[mythtv-users] Help me size next cpu, Athlon 2800+ MP enough for high quality/filters?

[Jarod C. Wilson]

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On Monday 09 February 2004 14:59, Torsten Schenkel wrote:
> Am Mo, den 09.02.2004 schrieb Jarod C. Wilson um 01:14:
> > On Feb 8, 2004, at 08:02, papenfuss at juneau.me.vt.edu wrote:
> > > Funny you should mention the dual athlon, though.  I *just* put
> > > together my new system yesterday... Tyan2466-4M 760MPX dual athlon XP
> > > 2400+.
> > > I did the L5 bridge hack and it came up as an MP.  If this board is the
> > > "stable" one though, I don't think I'd like to see the "unstable" one.
> > > Although once running it's fine, it's get a really twitchy BIOS
> > > (stupid Phoenix
> > > POS), mysterious bootup delays with ECC memory, and I'm unable to use
> > > the last
> > > PCI slot with any of my cards, as it apparently interferes with the
> > > onboard
> > > NIC.  Still resolving issues (obviously), but I guess once the bugs
> > > are worked
> > > it it should be OK.
>
> Hmm, maybe your issues are more related to the jacked XP not being
> SMPable?

Any XP that works with the L5 bridge hack shouldn't have a problem running in 
SMP mode. There is no other difference in the chips, so far as I know (I 
think the MP-labeled ones are "certified"). That said, I use outright MPs in 
both my dual Athlon systems...

> I can recommend the ASUS Dual Athlon board, don't know the name at the
> moment, it's the one with the AMD chipset. That's the machine that's
> heating my office, being used as a 24/7 number cruncher and workstation.
> No problems since it was installed.
>
> Necessaties for a dual athlon:
>
> -ECC RAM, especially when filled to the brim

Definitely. And good stuff preferred. I believe all mine is Mushkin.

> -Really good ventilation, especially when combined with a high end
> graphics card

Heh, my workstation is a ThermalTake Xaser II A6000A (honkin' big aluminum 
tower) with 6 case fans and monster cpu coolers, to go with a GF4 Ti video 
card and four U160 10,000 rpm SCSI drives hooked to an Adaptec hardware RAID 
controller. A wee bit on the noisy side, but boy does it fly. ;-)

> -A really good PSU, especially when combined with lot's of RAM, disks
> and gpu
>
> OK the 550W Enermax might be a bit overkill

I'm using a 460W Enermax in mine. I need one of those 550W ones for my server 
tower though. Its current 400W PSU doesn't have any spare connectors for the 
additional two hard drives I want to put in, and while I could use splitters, 
I think that's asking for trouble with seven hard drives...

> but I have had to many
> failures due to bad psus, last one was the failure of two disks in a
> half terabyte raid5 file server that was reproduceably related to a bad
> psu (600W redundant, after we traced the problem down to the two psus,
> the system ran off a 300W Enermax for one week with no problem)

Yeah, I definitely try to stay away from the "budget" PSUs for just about any 
system, not just dual Athlons. You're only asking for trouble, and you'll 
likely have to replace it a whole lot sooner, probably spending more money in 
the long run than if you'd simply purchased a quality PSU to begin with. Of 
late, I don't buy anything but Enermax (and the occasional Antec that comes 
w/a case, like the Sonata I just got).

(Note: I'm not saying Cory has a bad PSU, just trying to contribute to 
Torsten's "Necessities for a dual athlon" ;-).

- -- 
Jarod C. Wilson, RHCE

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