From owner-freebsd-current@FreeBSD.ORG Mon Nov 28 15:35:34 2005 Return-Path: X-Original-To: freebsd-current@freebsd.org Delivered-To: freebsd-current@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 6415C16A41F for ; Mon, 28 Nov 2005 15:35:34 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from cracauer@schlepper.zs64.net) Received: from schlepper.zs64.net (schlepper.zs64.net [212.12.50.230]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id A3B8443D4C for ; Mon, 28 Nov 2005 15:35:33 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from cracauer@schlepper.zs64.net) Received: from schlepper.zs64.net (schlepper [212.12.50.230]) by schlepper.zs64.net (8.13.3/8.12.9) with ESMTP id jASFZLhQ031954; Mon, 28 Nov 2005 16:35:21 +0100 (CET) (envelope-from cracauer@schlepper.zs64.net) Received: (from cracauer@localhost) by schlepper.zs64.net (8.13.3/8.12.9/Submit) id jASFZK0R031952; Mon, 28 Nov 2005 10:35:20 -0500 (EST) (envelope-from cracauer) Date: Mon, 28 Nov 2005 10:35:20 -0500 From: Martin Cracauer To: Nate Eldredge Message-ID: <20051128103520.A31684@cons.org> References: <61FBEC57-424E-450F-A775-10E1F5E8DF92@cian.ws> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline User-Agent: Mutt/1.2.5i In-Reply-To: ; from nge@cs.hmc.edu on Sun, Nov 27, 2005 at 10:01:13PM -0800 Cc: Cian Hughes , freebsd-current@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Building new Athlon AMD64 Socket 939 or 940 machine X-BeenThere: freebsd-current@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: Discussions about the use of FreeBSD-current List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Mon, 28 Nov 2005 15:35:34 -0000 > I put together a machine a couple months ago. I used a Tyan S2875ANRF > ("Tiger K8W") dual-Opteron motherboard and a single Opteron 244 (1.8 GHz) > cpu (second one may come in the future). I am running 5.4 and have been > very happy with it. Note that the Tiger K8W (PCI) does not support dual-core CPUs, where the newest revisions(!) of the Thunder K8W (PCI-X) do. The Thunder is an oversize ATX board, though, and expensive. > I decided it was worth going for Opteron over Athlon 64. They seem to > have better performance (wider memory bus, etc), obviously SMP ability, Sorry, the memory bus is not wider than on socket 939. You do have additional Hyperlinks in the socket 940 CPUs (real-life performance effect unknown to me) and the better boards have seperate memory banks for the CPUs. > and as I understand it the regular Athlon 64s don't support ECC memory > which I insist upon. All AMD64 CPUs support ECC. But only socket 940 requires registered memory. ECC support in socket 754 and 939 is a function of board, but all or almost all Asus boards support it (unregistered ECC of course). > The Athlon 64FX appear to be similar to the fastest > Opterons and differ mainly for price marketing purposes (sold to gamers). The one feature of the FX CPUs is that the LDT->CPU frequency multiplier is unlocked, which allows for freer combining of frequency settings when overclocking. Plus they have high base clocks and many seem to be binned to overclock well. Martin -- %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% Martin Cracauer http://www.cons.org/cracauer/ FreeBSD - where you want to go, today. http://www.freebsd.org/