[geeks] Cheap Octocore

[Lionel Peterson]

>From: nate at portents.com
>Date: 2007/10/23 Tue AM 08:08:14 CDT
>To: The Geeks List <geeks at sunhelp.org>
>Subject: Re: [geeks] Cheap Octocore

>> An upgraded video card is possible, but you'd have to constrain yourself
>> to either PCI form card (Yech) or look for an x4 PCI-E card (like the
>> Matrox G550 PCI-E, an x1 card - Matrox has a couple x1 PCI-Express video
>> cards)...
>
>There's also ATI X1300, X1550, FireMV 2400, and NVIDIA Quadro 4 cards in
>PCI-E x1 form factors.  Nothing spectacular, but all better than the
>Matrox G550 in 3D performance.

The x4 link in an x8 physical slot limits (but does not eliminate) choices as far as graphics goes...

Something else about this server - the base (free) quad core Xeons are 5310s, which means they support Intel Virtualization Technology, useful for putting a bunch of virtual machines on one physical machine (like with Xen Source software, etc.).

Also, this machine is on the Solaris HCL: http://www.sun.com/bigadmin/hcl/data/systems/details/2034.html

And 4 Gigs (2x 2 Gig DIMMs) is $270 at Newegg.com: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820148118

For $1K + HDs you could make a nice compute/VM server on any number of Operating Systems...

Lionel