Hello,
I am looking for a good and not too pricey motherboard to run 2 or 4
AMD 64 X2 (or dual-core Opterons, if AMD 64 is not an option). The goal
is to have 4 or 8 actual processors in a desktop system. Any
suggestions?
Thanks,
Arno
The A64 X2 is for single chip use only. It gives you two cores so you'll
have a dual processor system. If you want to run 4 way then you'll need an
Opteron system. The dual core 2 way Opteron's (which will allow you to
build a four way system) are about twice as expensive as an equivalent A64
X2. If you want the eight way dual core Opterons the price per chip goes
through the roof, the 875 is $2604 vs $615 for an A64 4400+ which is
essentially identical to the 875 with the exception that the A64 has the
coherency logic on the hypertransport buses disabled.
Unless you really need four or more cores in a single box, or you need
more than 4G of memory, you are better off with one or more Athlon 64 X2
boxes (get th 4400+, it has 1M caches which make a big difference, skip
the 4600+ because the caches are only 1/2M and the 4800+ because it's
overpriced).
I'm using MSI K8N motherboards, but any Nforce4 motherboard will do. The
Nforce4 Ultra is for A64s, the Nforce4 Pro is the best choice for Opteron
systems.
