What's the cheapest architecture to build computer for Linux?

Originally Posted by cascade9 FM2/FM2+, maybe, but I dont think its really an option for the OP (limted to 4 module versions, no 6/8 module versions like the FX 6XXX and FX 8XXX chips)

You have to remember that we don't have any idea of the performance target. You might have thought that the OP would say that the ARM stuff, while interesting and economical is too low in performance for the requirements, whatever they are. Given that this hasn't happened, and that there are AMD FM2 parts that are higher in performance than anything ARM that you can find on a board, it seems to me that it is still in scope. It probably shouldn't be, though.

One other observation: If you did go for an FM2 processor with on-chip video (ie, not one of the 'Athlon' FM2s) and you do decide to upgrade, then you'll be throwing the video away. As a comparison, an 'Athlon' plus a low end video card is going to cost a similar amount to a similar performing Ax-xxxx part, but you will be able to re-use the video card. Err, including using the existing video card now.

I think that this is a point against the Ax-xxxx FM2 parts, unless AMD is prepared to discount the price of an Ax-xxxx relative to similarly performing non-integrated video solutions.

Nah, even when AMD had CPUs as fast or faster, Intel still had lots of 'OMG you want how much fro that CPU' models. Traditional Intel.

You are right, in the sense that Intel has always had a $1000 (+/-$5, in tray quantities) part that offers gobsmackingly poor price : perf compared to other offers available, its just that, right now, there seems to be less of an excuse for that than there once was. Not that there was ever a really good excuse...

For the record I want a desktop for development-programming and application use. But I also want a mobile device that's not quite a laptop (something like the sheevaplug or similar; want a multi-core however).

Just looked at an ati radeon 7750. Looks comparable to nvidia's gtx 645 gk106 except it's not OEM and more readily available. Prices seem really tight between nvidia and ati for the most part; and there's practically no discernable cost-perfmance ratio that I can see. Do want performance but I don't want headaches from price, power consumption, heat, taking up two slots, and botched memory (64-bit memory bus is kiddie fishing).

Besides finding the best cost effective card, it bothers me that there's no cards with at least 192-bit memory bus or more without requiring auxiliary power (anything over 128-bit memory bus seems to require external power and uses lots of energy; more than twice as much even). Someone correct me if I'm wrong.

Really miss the old days when cards were fast and didn't need external power (it's messy, ugly and seems a cheating way to get more performance). Seriously, if I needed maximum 3D performance, I'd rather have four cards running SLI (or crossfire) than two generating a bunch of heat and sucking up energy; nor should people need watercooling. 3DFX actually did this with their voodoo 2's (was an anti-aliasing demonstration that had quake running with 8 samples of anti-aliasing or something like that; there were like 6 voodoo2 cards running on pci slots if I remember right).

Going on the original header on this thread I am using a can't remember but around 3 gig dual core on an asus workstation 64bit motherboard and an nvidia gforce 210 silent. All about 7 years old. I run some heavy optical optimisation software and photo processing. It's more than adequately quick. 8 gig of ram and I don't think swap is hardly ever used except maybe when I have 30+ browser tabs in 2 different browsers and several other apps open at the same time including the optical stuff. I'm just about to upgrade mostly for more ram cause I do that sort of thing every now and again. Also because I grafted an ultra 320 scsi hot swap bay into the box when I built it up and disk replacements are now a little hard to find. The current ones have been running more or less 24hrs a day, 7 days a week for at least 5 years. The earlier period was covered with scsi's from my previous machine. The system disc is a 10k enterprise raptor. That to has been running for 7 years. Power supply went 2 weeks ago and was quickly replaced. Put it all together and I feel it's time for a new machine.

I like asus motherboards as they seem to be reliable. Nvidia cards always work with what I am running as well either with the os driver or nvidia's own. I favour their latest fastest silent ones.

I had better touch some wood quickly. The new machine isn't ready yet. I'm trying software raid this time.

John
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Originally Posted by salasi You have to remember that we don't have any idea of the performance target.

I dont know if the OP has a performance target.......seems to me that its being done 'by the numbers' (I've got system A with parts X, Y and Z, I dont want any part on my new system to have a lower numbers than what I already have)

Originally Posted by salasi One other observation: If you did go for an FM2 processor with on-chip video (ie, not one of the 'Athlon' FM2s) and you do decide to upgrade, then you'll be throwing the video away. As a comparison, an 'Athlon' plus a low end video card is going to cost a similar amount to a similar performing Ax-xxxx part, but you will be able to re-use the video card. Err, including using the existing video card now. I think that this is a point against the Ax-xxxx FM2 parts, unless AMD is prepared to discount the price of an Ax-xxxx relative to similarly performing non-integrated video solutions.

I can sort of see your point, but it could be worse. At least AMD does have cheaper CPUs sans-video. Newegg prices listed.

Athlon X4 750K (3.4Ghz, 4MB, quad core, no video)- $85
A8-5600K (3.6Gh, 4MB, quad core)- $100

i5-3470 (3.2Ghz, 6MB, quad core)- $200
Xeon E3-1225 V2 (3.2Ghz, 8MB, quad core, no video)- $227

Sure, you do get an extra 2MB L3 cache, and some stuff turned back on that is disabled in the 'dekstop' CPUs (mostly virtualisation options...which you'll need the 'right', more expensive motherboard to use in many cases)

Originally Posted by Holering For the record I want a desktop for development-programming and application use.

I cant see any reason you want 'powerful'/'gamers' video cards....

Originally Posted by Holering Besides finding the best cost effective card, it bothers me that there's no cards with at least 192-bit memory bus or more without requiring auxiliary power (anything over 128-bit memory bus seems to require external power and uses lots of energy; more than twice as much even). Someone correct me if I'm wrong.

GT545, various unaffordable ATI/AMD fire cards (eg FirePro V5900) quadros (eg Quadro FX 1800).

Originally Posted by Holering Really miss the old days when cards were fast and didn't need external power (it's messy, ugly and seems a cheating way to get more performance). Seriously, if I needed maximum 3D performance, I'd rather have four cards running SLI (or crossfire) than two generating a bunch of heat and sucking up energy; nor should people need watercooling.

Cards needing external power connectors have been common for over a decade now.

For maximum 3D performance, 1 x really powerful card is better than 4 x slower cards. Not everything supports crossifre/sli, some programs/games that do support it have a nasty performance hit. One really powerful card tends to run more consistently than crossfire/sli setups.

Its quite likely that 2-3 (or more) slower cards will use just as much or more power than 1 powerful card, in idle and at peak power use.

Originally Posted by Holering For the record I want a desktop for development-programming and application use. But I also want a mobile device that's not quite a laptop (something like the sheevaplug or similar; want a multi-core however).

OK, it hadn't been clear to me that we were talking about two different pieces of kit.

For the cheap/low power one, you probably need not look beyond ARM. There are other options, but it is hard to say that any of them offer decisive advantages over ARM and ARM has quite a bit of mindshare right now, and ARM does well in power-limited scenarios.

@cascade9

I cant see any reason you want 'powerful'/'gamers' video cards....

Exactly. You've got a card right now. You'd only buy something new if you've got a reason to do it, no? And you haven't mentioned a reason that the existing card is insufficient.

Athlon X4 750K (3.4Ghz, 4MB, quad core, no video)- $85 A8-5600K (3.6Gh, 4MB, quad core)- $100

£53.69, £67.19 respectively as cheapest prices here. At least these aren't $1 -> £1 any more... Those are decent prices for quad core processors, I just feel that the Athlon ought to be a little cheaper compared to the A8-5600, but maybe that's just me. There is probably an additional; advantage for the A8 in situations in which total power draw is a consideration (ie, the A8 takes more power than the Athlon, but not as much as the Athlon + video card, but that doesn't seem to be a big factor here.)

On the other hand, on the Intel side, these parts will be up against things like a Pentium G2020 2x 2.9 GHz, at £44.36, and that's going to be quite an interesting race, in spite of the AMD parts having twice as many cores and a higher clock speed. If you can really use all of the cores, AMD will almost certainly romp home quite easily ahead, but when you can only deploy one or two cores on your problem, then it will be closer.

Remember, you did ask for cheapest (and there is a useful looking Celeron 1610 dual core, which is cheaper still at £32.74, but that's probably going too far down the range for many people), which might not be best!

I've become curious about amd E350's since reading that they do hdmi graphics well and also shift data and process more quickly than the intel atoms. I read a review that when Linux is installed it's bound to request a video driver. Having had poor experiences with AMD and drivers I have to wonder about that. Seems it uses about 500mb of main memory for the video. The ideal board would be mini-itx, silent, several sata ports and a decent 4x or more pci-e slot and cheap. Also available easily in the UK. The cheap ones seem to be old stock and only have one PCI slot. No PCI-e.

John
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Reading all this...

It's about time the O(P lays out how much CPU/GPU power he is demanding, as has been mentioned earlier. The cheapest cpu out there atm is probably the z80, which sells for a few dollars. It is 8 bit 4Mhz, or 6Mhz if you get one of the better ones. All the support chips are dead cheap, and you can get boards very at very reasonable prices. It will address 64k of memory and will run CP/M. It's hardly what you want.

Lay out what's the performance requirements

The reason I mentioned the amd e-350's is that it does get into the desktop / laptop market and appears to be more capable than intel's atoms. Where I feel most in that area would fall down in max memory but much depends on what you want to do.

The reason I mentioned my kit at the moment was connected with usage. With 4gig of memory in that and 2 browsers, opera and firefox up and many tabs in both the swap discs start clunking and sometimes I found myself typing ahead. The nvidia card was needed to keep all of kde's desktop effects up and running. Once with 4gig of memory and the browsers and several dolphin windows and one or two other things open they turned themselves off. Before updating to the nvidia 210 card they were always turning themselves off with one or two light apps running.

Performance. The processor is an intel core 2 6700, 2.66ghz. That's well pre core 2 duo. For the usage mentioned by the op and beyond it's more than adequate. Graphics are fine too. The video at the bottom of this page displays smoothly full screen easily at 1920x1080. Ok for me as I am not a games player. VLC also has no problems playing any video I have tried full or reduces screen.

http://unigine.com/products/heaven/

John
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Changed my earlier post from

My main concern right now is a 9800gtx I still use. I find it plenty fast (faster than I need) and always have it downclocked to save energy and heat dissipation.

to

My main concern right now is a 9800gtx I still use. I find it plenty fast (faster than I need) but always have it downclocked to save energy and heat dissipation.

Mistake on my part. 9800gtx is a power monster and it definately runs hot (idles at 78 degress celcius). The amount of downclocking I have to do to keep system at reasonable temp doesn't justify the downclocked performance (it actually locks up if I go too low) and big card in my desktop; the fan sounds like a blow dryer when card is taxed (why do manufacturers still use this cooling design? The first card to introduce it got the worst reviews for cooling; Anyone remember the Nvidia FX 5800 ultra? To make matters worse, most cards use this setup enclosed in thick plastic). It is built like a tank though .

If a downclocked 9800GTX has given you more than you've ever needed, if you have no intentions of upgrading regularly, go with an AMD chip with integrated graphics. It's going to be fairly cheap, the boards are fairly cheap, the performance is great for the price, and the graphics are basically "free" and are superior by far to an underclocked 8 "generation" old high end card.

Originally Posted by Holering Mistake on my part. 9800gtx is a power monster and it definately runs hot (idles at 78 degress celcius). The amount of downclocking I have to do to keep system at reasonable temp doesn't justify the downclocked performance (it actually locks up if I go too low) and big card in my desktop; the fan sounds like a blow dryer when card is taxed (why do manufacturers still use this cooling design? The first card to introduce it got the worst reviews for cooling; Anyone remember the Nvidia FX 5800 ultra? To make matters worse, most cards use this setup enclosed in thick plastic).

Idle temps tend to be high on video cards. If you are comparing CPU and GPU idle temps, its not as big a problem as it seems, GPUs tend to have much high max temps.

Manufacturers still use 'blower' designs because they work and are cost effective.

The nVidia current range means you either get a 'GT' series card (single slot, cheap, low power consumption but with a fair bit of performance if you get teh higher models), or a 'midrange gamers' cards (GTX 650) with smaller RAM bandwidth and less rendering/output units and fairly higfh power consumption, or 'top of the range' gamers cards with even higher power consumption and performance.

While a GT series card with 192/256bit memeory bandwidth might sound like a good idea, they would be more expensive and probably offer very little real performance increase.

Originally Posted by salasi On the other hand, on the Intel side, these parts will be up against things like a Pentium G2020 2x 2.9 GHz, at £44.36, and that's going to be quite an interesting race, in spite of the AMD parts having twice as many cores and a higher clock speed. If you can really use all of the cores, AMD will almost certainly romp home quite easily ahead, but when you can only deploy one or two cores on your problem, then it will be closer.

Not quite that simple (and they arent 'real' 4 cores CPUs anyway), and in some cases where all cores are used the G2020 will be faster than a AMD FM2 priced about the same (A6-5400K in the US and here, not sure about UK prices)

However, the AMD 'trinity' APUs (GPU in the CPU) are always faster than Intel for any given price range, by a reasonable margin.

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu...vy-bridge.html

Originally Posted by Timothy Miller If a downclocked 9800GTX has given you more than you've ever needed, if you have no intentions of upgrading regularly, go with an AMD chip with integrated graphics. It's going to be fairly cheap, the boards are fairly cheap, the performance is great for the price, and the graphics are basically "free" and are superior by far to an underclocked 8 "generation" old high end card.

The graphics are not 'free' see post #19 on this thread.

Trinity systems are fine as long as you dont want to upgrade, and dont need or want more than 2 cores/4modules. It you want the abiltiy to upgrade later, or want 3core/6module or better AMD CPUs trinity is right out.

Originally Posted by ajohn I've become curious about amd E350's since reading that they do hdmi graphics well and also shift data and process more quickly than the intel atoms. I read a review that when Linux is installed it's bound to request a video driver. Having had poor experiences with AMD and drivers I have to wonder about that. Seems it uses about 500mb of main memory for the video. The ideal board would be mini-itx, silent, several sata ports and a decent 4x or more pci-e slot and cheap. Also available easily in the UK. The cheap ones seem to be old stock and only have one PCI slot. No PCI-e.

They are mostly 'old stock', E350s are 2011 CPUs. There are E350s with PCIe (x16 physical, x4 data rate) avaible in the UK.

http://www.eclipsecomputers.com/prod...ode=MBA-E350M1

Plently of others around as well.

How much main memory is 'shared' for video is something that can be changed.

The newer 'A' series (A4-5000, A6-5200) motherboards should be out soonish and would be a better choice than the old E350. ASRock KA5200-ITX is probably the closest to waht you are after-

http://www.hardwarezone.com/tech-new...-computex-2013

Originally Posted by ajohn The reason I mentioned the amd e-350's is that it does get into the desktop / laptop market and appears to be more capable than intel's atoms. Where I feel most in that area would fall down in max memory but much depends on what you want to do. The reason I mentioned my kit at the moment was connected with usage. With 4gig of memory in that and 2 browsers, opera and firefox up and many tabs in both the swap discs start clunking and sometimes I found myself typing ahead. The nvidia card was needed to keep all of kde's desktop effects up and running. Once with 4gig of memory and the browsers and several dolphin windows and one or two other things open they turned themselves off. Before updating to the nvidia 210 card they were always turning themselves off with one or two light apps running.

Says more about KDE and crappy Intel GMA video than it does about the G210.

Originally Posted by ajohn Performance. The processor is an intel core 2 6700, 2.66ghz. That's well pre core 2 duo.

No, it is a core 2 duo.

http://ark.intel.com/products/27251/...z-1066-MHz-FSB

[QUOTE=cascade9;4983319]

The graphics are not 'free' see post #19 on this thread.
[QUOTE]

If you're not familiar with English, quotes around a word generally mean a word is being used in a non-literal sense.