[CLUE-Tech] AMD64 MB recommendations?

[Ed Hill]

On Fri, 2004-08-13 at 16:17, Joe 'Zonker' Brockmeier wrote:
> Hello all,
> 
> Thinking seriously about getting an AMD64 and wanted to get some
> recommendations about AMD64-compatible motherboards? I usually go with
> ASUS or MSI, but I thought I'd ping the list so see if anyone is
> currently using an AMD64 setup (with Linux) and what kind of experiences
> they've had -- any problems, etc.


Hi Zonker,

I have a dual Opteron-240 w/ K8D_Master-F (MS-9131) motherboard and 12GB
RAM next to my desk at work.  It has, over the past year, run SuSE 9.x
Pro and RHEL v3 and is now running Fedora Core 2 with a custom kernel
for the large memory support.

The good:
  Its a fine box for both software builds and numerical simulations
since the memory bandwidth is excellent and nicely balanced between the
two CPUs.  We see an almost linear scale-up when running two of our GFD
models simultaneously (versus the little-or-no improvement that we see
with, for example, these memory-bandwidth-limited apps on dual-Xeons).

The bad:
  We've had trouble getting things to work (even boot!) with the 12GB of
RAM.  Driver support was bad initially but is getting much better (eg.
the dual on-board Broadcom GigE NICs used to flake out but are now just
fine).  We still need to do custom kernel builds to get things working.

Overall, I'm very fond of the Opterons and am looking forward to having
more of them at work.

Ed

-- 
Edward H. Hill III, PhD
office:  MIT Dept. of EAPS;  Rm 54-1424;  77 Massachusetts Ave.
             Cambridge, MA 02139-4307
emails:  eh3 at mit.edu                ed at eh3.com
URLs:    http://web.mit.edu/eh3/    http://eh3.com/
phone:   617-253-0098
fax:     617-253-4464