On Sat, 5 Jan 2013, Andrew Voumard <andrewv@melbpc.org.au> wrote:
6. Want Intel (not AMD) based, probably i7 & proably Ivy Bridge.
Why specifically Intel?
Previously had heat & driver issues with AMD (can't recall which chipset that was now), while I am sure many folks are happy with them, I am happy with all the Intel based boards I've used and haven't had similar issues with them.
Generally heat will be an issue of system design. Intel CPUs have broken many records for heat dissipation, the relevant issue is whether the cooling system can support the CPU properly. Get a name-brand system with all parts designed to work together and there shouldn't be any heat problems. If you buy a name-brand system you generally don't get a choice between AMD and Intel as it's not common for a company to make systems that are identical apart from CPU brand. If Dell makes systems that you consider to be good enough then a Dell system with an AMD CPU should be good enough - it will be as good as a Dell system with an Intel CPU. Generally AMD CPUs work well with Linux.
As has already been noted a PS/2 mouse port will be a really difficult requirement. Getting a system that has a PS/2 port and supports 64G of RAM will be really difficult. Maybe one option to consider would be NVRAM devices for swap to support the large tmpfs you need. Some of the better NVRAM devices are fast enough that you probably won't notice that it's not in main memory.
I am thinking NVRAM performance would be slower (to some degree) than main memory, and I expect the hardware is less mainstream & hence more expensive ?
A NVRAM storage device is a PCIe card with RAM, a battery, and a controller. It will be more expensive than a DIMM alone. But if you are comparing two different systems which support different amounts of RAM then the price difference can be significant. Supporting a large amount of RAM is a server feature and tends to attract a higher price. In terms of performance as a rule of thumb the more RAM you have the slower it will be. Sometimes the same system will run the RAM at a slower clock speed if you populate all DIMM sockets, sometimes to get the amount of RAM you want you need a system that has more sockets and a slower RAM clock speed. This is because longer wires to the DIMMs have higher capacitance which causes clock skew at high speeds. This is also why in the past it's been common for white- box systems to have higher RAM speeds than similarly specced name-brand systems - they just take a chance on data loss due to clock skew. So it is conceivable that a system with less RAM and some NVRAM will give better performance for some work. -- My Main Blog http://etbe.coker.com.au/ My Documents Blog http://doc.coker.com.au/