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I'm a little confused about the server hardware issues. I see a mobo supporting amd opteron, which only runs at 400 fsb for 500 bucks, when an abit one runs at 800 fbs for only 90 dollars. Does an opteron processor running on 400 fsb supposedly faster than a p4 800 fsb?

I'm also a little dazed about the cache thing, "6MB L3 Cache" That's a iltanium intell processor, which only goes to 1.8 ghz I believe, but has 6mb cache whereas p4 caches at 1mb and 2mb running at 3.4 ghz. Does cache play a more crucial role than the processor speed of ghz itself?

:)

Thank you

There is no such thing as FSB in AMD Athlon 64 or AMD Opterons. The Hypertransport is used to connect from the Northbridge chip and to the CPU which you can see it can go as fast as 2 GHz (2000 MHz) with only VIA K8T800 PRO chipset for now. The memory bus is 400 MHz but the bandwidth is 128-bits wide. In reality Pentium 4 are 200 MHz but it is quad pumped to 800 MHz and the bandwidth is 64-bits. The Itanium processor does not work very well in server environments and it costs a lot. The Itanium processor should be used if you are doing engineering work. The real question how efficient each processor is when it is executing instructions. The Opteron or AMD Athlon 64 is a lot more efficient executing instructions than Pentium 4 or Xeon from the benchmarks. All the benchmarks are still executed using only 32-bit code. If you use 64-bit instructins in AMD Athlon 64 or AMD Opteron they will be much faster than Pentium 4 or Xeon. INTEL is has added 64-bit support but it seems they are fumbling the ball on this one with their latest Xeon processors that has some 64-bit instructions.

For price per performance ratio, AMD Athlon 64 and Opteron processors beats INTEL latest processors for now.

The VIA K8T800 Pro chipset has potential with data throughput but the PCI bus is slowing it down. When motherboard manufactures start introducing PCIe (PCI Express), the Hypertransport connection will really be helpful for AMD systems.

ABIT AV8 is workstation/desktop motherboard. I would not use that motherboard for server environments. I would go for dual or quad processor motherboards for servers.

The cache sometimes helps in programs but it really helps when the processor is doing a lot of math equations. Other times having a very large cache like 6 MB can ruin the proecssor's performance because it has a very high latency. The more cache there is, the more you have to pay for that cache.

perfect, however, could you clarify the cache a little more and what are the bits. So more cache is better, but it's bad because of the latency?
I would also want a 10/100/1000 mbps for servers right?

What does he mean?
The locks will be fully functional in the next BIOS release
Thanks

If you have a gigabit switch and another computer with a gigabit card then yes look for a 10/100/1000 NIC interface. . . however, if the "server" has no one to talk to with a gigabit interface then it is not needed. (well. . . unless your internet connection can push more then ~80 megabits per second uploading. . . hehe)

BTW. . . good post Electro, I'm impressed.

You would not only need gigabit NICs in the client machines, but you would also need to have Cat6 wiring connecting all the machines, and a few gigabit switches in there.

It is unlikely that you have any of that (since it is all very expensive at the moment) so a gigabit card might be nice to future-proof your network, but it may be years before you ever put it to any good use.

This is not true, CAT-5e can easily handle 1000 megabits. CAT-6 still needs some improving.

More cache is not always better. Some programs benefit with more cache and other programs do not benefit with more cache. Processor manufactures have to balance out cache and processor performance for different environments.

The bits is bandwidth or how many individual wires goes to and from the chips. The more bits the more bandwidth it can handle.

400 MHz and 128-bits = 800 MHz and 64-bits

Each additional bits creates more problems because each bit of data have to arrive at the same time or else it have to resend the data again. Soon chipsets, processors, and memory are going towards serial, so this problem is minimized.

Bits can also represented memory allocation and instruction set of the processor. A 32-bit processor like Pentium 4 can handle 32-bit code, 16-bit code, and 8-bit code. Pentium 4 can only allocate up to 4 gigabytes of memory. The AMD Athlon 64 and AMD Opteron can handle 64-bit code, 32-bit code, 16-bit code, and 8-bit code. AMD Athlon 64 and AMD Opteron can allocate up to several hundred terabytes of memory. Lets just say AMD's 64-bit processor can store vast amount of data that we can not comprehend yet.

Thank you.