From owner-freebsd-hackers Mon May 5 07:46:22 1997 Return-Path: Received: (from root@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.5/8.8.5) id HAA28294 for hackers-outgoing; Mon, 5 May 1997 07:46:22 -0700 (PDT) Received: from elwood.pionet.net (ELWOOD.pionet.net [199.120.116.1]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id HAA28287 for ; Mon, 5 May 1997 07:46:16 -0700 (PDT) Received: from LAB_ROUTER (pm5_68.pionet.net [199.120.116.68]) by elwood.pionet.net (8.7.5/8.7.3) with SMTP id JAA32557; Mon, 5 May 1997 09:49:00 -0500 (CDT) Message-ID: <336DE306.623D@pionet.net> Date: Mon, 05 May 1997 09:39:18 -0400 From: Tyson Boellstorff X-Mailer: Mozilla 2.02E (OS/2; I) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: abial@warman.org.pl CC: hackers@freebsd.org Subject: Subject: SMP hardware recommendations Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-hackers@freebsd.org X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk My company considers buying a new SMP machine for some CPU/disk-intensive tasks (similar to news server: searching and processing large quantities of text files), and I convinced them to give a try to FreeBSD. The idea behind it is to save some money on another Sun Ultra, if possible... What hardware would you recommend? Now I'm thinking about the following setup: * MB: 2xPPro 200MHz, 512kB cache, manufacturer: ???, chipset: ??? * RAM: 256 MB (EDO ???) * SCSI: Adaptec 2940U * HDD: ??? (ca. 8 GB total) * Network: Intel EtherExpress 10/100 (fxp driver) * other hardware is less important (i.e. floppy, graphics, keyboard...) And what do you think about performance of such a machine (comparing to Sun Ultra 1/140)? Gateway 2000 has released a board that should do this on Saturday. Comes with these chipsets on the board: 2940 UW, ATI Mach 64 GT, Intel Etherexpress Pro, Intel FX 440, and of course, it supports 2 200 Mhz PPro chips. Supports up to 512 Mb Ram, and you could order it with a 9 Gb Seagate SCSI hdd. The board is made by Intel. I plan on getting the board and trying it on FreeBSD in the next couple of weeks. The standard config is G6 200**2 with 64 MB EDO, 4 G SCSI hdd, 12x SCSI CD-ROM, 256k Internal cache. (As with all P6's, this is on the CPU chip, so you may want to bear that in mind) The standard config is with single processor, $599 for number two. You'd have to talk to Sales to see if they could save you the effort of dumping the 256 k 200 Mhz processor & order with 512's. As to performance, I've been told it flies. I'll render my own opinion after I get it going.