This small post about hyperthreading led off to a much larger and informative discussion about Intel vs. AMD CPU architectures and hyperthreading vs. multicore CPUs. (Summation so far: AMD and multicore are the better of the set.)
A running description of activity related to DragonFly BSD.
I am in a situation where I need to build a new computer. I have been looking at dual CPU system, but what I have found so far – and has been recommended – have been Intel solutions. I would like to know if anyone has experience with dual CPU AMD systems – good or bad. what motherboards to look for and so on? I hope there are some out there that can help me. Thanks in advance.
I use an AMD Athlon MP 2800+ system which I built in 2003, currently running FreeBSD 5.2.1, . The motherboard is MSI K7D with 1GB registered ECC SDRAM, has been rock solid so far.
If I were to build a new SMP computer today with a good price/performance ratio, I would probably go for AMD Opteron 2way 242 or 244 cpu and a MSI K8T motherboard.
There’s been some mentioning of it on the mailing lists:
http://leaf.dragonflybsd.org/mailarchive/users/2005-02/msg00271.html
Plus, there’s this really good article I linked some time ago, which talks about why some AMD multiCPU solutions are really fantastic:
http://www.samag.com/documents/s=9408/sam0411b/0411b.htm
We’re running a pair of 2U rackmount servers running dual-Opteron 242s with 4 GB ECC RAM. These are running Debian Linux and Fedora Core 2 (requirements for the software running on them). Prior to entering production, though, I had FreeBSD 5.2.1 running on one of them without any issues. Ran fine in 32-bit and 64-bit mode (tried both installs). The motherboard is an MSI something or other with the VIA K8T800 chipset.
We’ve also got a dual-AthlonMP 2U rackmount server running FreeBSD 5.2.1 (soon 5.3 or 5.4) without any issues. It’s only got 3 GB of ECC RAM. It’s an MSI Master something or other with a VIA chipset. No problems with it so far.
And, finally, we’ve got a pair of dual-AthlonMP systems with 2 GB ECC RAM running FreeBSD 5.3. No problems with that one either. It’s an MSI Master board as well, with a VIA chipset.
You should be able to run DFly on similar hardware. Just don’t get anything with an nForce chipset and you’ll be fine.