[geeks] sun ultra 24

[Mark]

On 16 Oct 2007, at 20:59, nate at portents.com wrote:

>> Those are both Extended-ATX form factor motherboards that won't  
>> fit into
> standard desktop cases, they use LGA 771 (server) CPU sockets, the
> Greencreek (server) chipset, and FB-DIMMs (much higher latency,  
> more power
> hungry than standard DDR2), all of which needs some pretty specific  
> and
> dedicated cooling and comes at a higher cost.  (One of the big  
> advantages
> that AMD still has over Intel in the server sector is that they can  
> use
> standard DDR2 ECC modules thanks to their memory controller being  
> built
> into each CPU, lowering the power profile of their server boards
> significantly while keeping memory latency down.)

Fully Buffered memory offers greater reliability than ECC, which is  
slightly better than standard (cacky desktop) RAM. The CPU is greatly  
less likely to have to do a re-fetch on an FB-DIMM bus because of  
this, meaning the drop in speed is to some extent balanced out by the  
integrity and very high levels of first successes in data transfer.  
Standard DDR2 is great for Joe User but if you want to use a machine  
for *cringe* mission critical (I hate that phrase) computing and data  
handling then FB-DIMMs make a lot of sense. That's how I understood  
it anyway. It doesn't seem to make a lot of difference in most of the  
games I play on the Mac Pro at any rate ;).

-- 
Mark Benson

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