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Hardware Selection for AMD64 + Linux?

Posted by Cliff on from the getting-it-working dept.

MrClever asks: "After a disaster involving my cat, a pot of coffee and my workstation, I am now in the market for a new machine. I thought I'd jump on the AMD64 wagon and keep running Linux. After some initial investigation, it became clear that ATi, Promise and other manufacturers don't have 64bit drivers for Linux, which rules out most motherboards with onboard P/SATA RAID, thus limiting my available choices. I know you can run 32bit on AMD64, but if I wanted that I'd get an AthlonXP. So, what AMD64 hardware is the best supported in 64bit mode under Linux? Seems NVidia have 64bit drivers, does anyone else?"

4 of 89 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Consider 3ware... by iamcadaver · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Please elaborate.
    I just deplowyed two Tyan Thunder K8W workstations equiped with Escalade 7500 RAID controllers.

    Its on a research vessel ready to SAT and deport by mid next month. I've never heard anything about this.

    *suddenly nervous*

    --
    Before I part with'em: two pennies weigh ~4.996+/-0.014g, have a zinc core, and the face of Lincoln. You can keep 'em.
  2. Re:Hardware RAID on the motherboard by Paladin128 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    The difference with the on-board RAID on most mobo's is that you can boot to the RAID array. With pure software RAID, you need a non-RAID drive to boot from.

    --
    Lex orandi, lex credendi.
  3. Re:Software selection by aminorex · · Score: 2, Interesting

    You *do* know that registered RAM is shooting your
    bandwidth to hell, right? Don't use registered
    unless you need it for SMP.

    --
    -I like my women like I like my tea: green-
  4. Re:Software selection by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting
    I'm guessing that you are planning on running very large memory applications (> 2 Gig per process), otherwise 64bit support is useless.
    The AMD64 architecture has numerous other advantages over 386, besides just the address space.

    Computing got corrupted when people started stressing "bits". It was worst in the Wintel world, when people used "32-bit" when they really meant "Win32 API" and "16-bit" when they meant MSDOS or Windows 3.x API. But that's another rant for another time.

    Whenever someone talks about bitness, kick 'em. If the 386sx or 68000 a 32-bit processor or a 16-bit processor? It a Pentium4 with AMD64 instruction set extensions, a 32-bit processor or a 64-bit processor? Bah.

    The path to enlightenment is to quit thinking of Opteron as a "64-bit processor" and starting thinking of it as a "kickass processor" that just happens to also support 64-bit addressing.