Quad Boards

Do any of you guys know much about dual boards, and if so what would be the best to invest in for a server, I have read that xeon chips are good for server but also have seen people use AMD xp's in dual boards and their servers are fast as hell. Any input would be great.

Athlon MP's are the official AMD processor for SMP - but of course people try it with XPs.

I've have several various dual processors servers at work - three dual 1 GHz PIII Asus CUVXD-? (can't remember the exact model) with Via chipsets - two of them have been extremely stable and reliable (bugs at first before flashing the BIOS and updating Chipset/Video drivers) - the third has a tendency to lock up when you actually log on and sit in front of it, no problems accessing thru the network, and I suspect a video card issue.

I also tried two dual Athlon boards from Asus and MSI - each the the same second MP chipset from AMD, but I haven't put them through much use yet. We built them ourselves, as I could build both of them for what Dell wanted for a similarly configured dual P3 server and have money leftover.

SMP = Symetric Multi-Processing.
PAE = Physical Address Extentions.

Just in case you didn't know. AMD MP's support both of the above.

I would highly recommend the GA-7DPXDWP server board from Gigabyte. It supports all the latest AMD chip's, and really is a crackin' dual board. They are around £140 Inc VAT.

It has an AMD 760 MPX chipset and 2 x PCI 64/66MHz & 3 x PCI 32/33MHz. Take a look.

http://networking.gigabyte.com.tw/Pr...p?ProductID=83

If you can wait a few weeks, the new AMD Opteron's are coming out (see my "Bye Bye AMD XP, Hello Athlon 64" post).

The GA-7DPXDW-P board won't support the new chips, but i'll let you know as soon as Gigabyte release details on the new 64bit CPU architecture.

Hope this helps you. Feel free to give me a call for further details.

Regards,

Paul.

Alright, that sounds good, I have a dual 1ghz (celeron though) running a game server and for 12 people it works fine, however, I use linux. Anyway, I think I might wait a while to see what happens with the athlon 64 stuff. Might push down prices on stuff I want to buy here soon :D

Although, I have no idea why I named this thread quad boards.

ah that reminds me...is AMD planning on supporting 4 and 8 way (or more) servers with their new processors?