Best Motherboards With Large RAM Capacity?

cortex writes "I routinely need to analyze large datasets (principally using Matlab). I recently 'upgraded' to 64-bit Vista so that I can access larger amounts of RAM. I know that various Linux distros have had 64-bit support for years. I also typically use Intel motherboards for their reliability, but currently Intel's desktop motherboards only support 8GB of RAM and their server motherboards are too expensive. Can anyone relate their experiences with working with Vista or Linux machines running with large RAM (>8GB)? What is the best motherboard (Intel or AMD) and OS combination for workstation applications in terms of cost and reliability?"

Comments

Check your app first

[CastrTroy]

Before you go running off to buy a motherboard, and more memory, make sure Windows and the applications you're running can handle the extra memory. With 32 bit windows you could only allocated 2 gigs of RAM to any process unless the process did some really tricky hacking (like SQL Server, I'm not aware of any others) that let them use more. We have some web servers with 2 Gigs of RAM, and that probably the perfect amount, since most people report that you can't get ASP.Net to use more than 1.2-1.4 gigs anyway, no matter what you do. Even if you are running 64 bit windows, you would probably have to make sure that you're running a 64 bit version of MatLab, and that it's set up to handle having extra memory. Having lots of memory works well if you have lots of apps that need to access around 0.5-1 GB of RAM, but if you want 1 app to access 16 GB of RAM, it can get a little tricky.