Looks like my current PC has some weird hardware problem that's behind
the problems I've been moaning about with my graphics resolution. (I
tried a brand new ATI card and the PC wouldn't even POST-beep; took it
back to Novatech who said it worked fine on their rig. Coupled with other
strangeness I think it's new PC time.)

Novatech have a variety of 'bare bones' units (just add HDD and DVD) from
about £120 up, and ebuyer, dabs and Uncle Tom Cobbleigh and all are in
the market too; and there's a bewildering variety of kit to choose from.

One thing I'm wondering is if it's worth going for a machine with a lot
of RAM - which AIUI requires a 64 bit CPU to access if it's over
2^mumble bytes - and running some sort of virtualisation s/w so I can
run different OSes or versions of an OS simultaneously rather than multi-
booting. That way I can try out a new distro or version of my current
distro without sawing off the branch I'm currently sitting on. Am I right
in thinking xen is the virtualisation code du jour for Linux distros? (I
can live without running windoze on this machine.) So would an AMD64 be
the CPU to go for?

In terms of tin and copper, I'd like a machine that can house at least 3
HDDs (as well as a DVD drive, natch), and that runs quietly and uses as
little power as possible (since the machine will run 24*7). I gather the
ones with variable-speed fans in the PSUs are quieter (when not running
at full load, presumably).

My typical use of the machine is
* web browsing (currently I have several dozen pages open in different
windows and tabs in firefox/iceweasel and usually have a dozen or so more
in chrome)
* office (OOo) apps - about half a dozen docs open
* maybe a few PDFs
* some images in a viewer (gwenview)
* file browsing - say a dozen konqueror/dolphin windows/tabs
* text file editing - few dozen files open in kate, some in kwrite
* jpilot, xsane, gimp, maybe a music player and other odds & sods

So altogether a lot of apps eating up memory. Maybe another reason for
loadsa RAM and 64bits?

And occasionally I'll do some video or audio file conversion e.g. editing
and then converting a DV video to H264 or FLV; or suchlike.

Graphics-wise I've a 19" CRT which I like to cram as much onto as
possible and within the life of the machine I expect to replace it with a
similar-sized or larger LCD. So I want some high-resolution modes. And I
watch and edit videos, but I don't do gaming, so I guess I don't need
fancy 3-D acceleration or whatever.

On that basis I'm thinking this one from Novatech might be OK
http://www.novatech.co.uk/novatech/p...BB-6404GA.html
I note that it can do 8G RAM but only comes with 2, as 2*2G modules using
up both slots, so if I wanted more I'd have to see if they'd do it at
time of sale otherwise I'd be throwing away the existing 2G modules to
install 4G ones.

Comments? Especially from a Linux perspective?

--
John Stumbles

On Mar 12, 12:16*am, John Stumbles wrote:
Looks like my current PC has some weird hardware problem that's behind
the problems I've been moaning about with my graphics resolution. (I
tried a brand new ATI card and the PC wouldn't even POST-beep; took it
back to Novatech who said it worked fine on their rig. Coupled with other
strangeness I think it's new PC time.)

Novatech have a variety of 'bare bones' units (just add HDD and DVD) from
about £120 up, and ebuyer, dabs and Uncle Tom Cobbleigh and all are in
the market too; and there's a bewildering variety of kit to choose from.

One thing I'm wondering is if it's worth going for a machine with a lot
of RAM - which AIUI requires a 64 bit CPU to access if it's over
2^mumble bytes

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/hardware/c...confusion/3124

- and running some sort of virtualisation s/w so I can
run different OSes or versions of an OS simultaneously rather than multi-
booting. That way I can try out a new distro or version of my current
distro without sawing off the branch I'm currently sitting on. Am I right
in thinking xen is the virtualisation code du jour for Linux distros? (I

I just try them using a live disc, and if that goes ok then putting it
on a secondary pc. It avoids any muckabout with the main machine.


can live without running windoze on this machine.) So would an AMD64 be
the CPU to go for?

One thing I've conistently noticed is that its RAM limits that usually
make PCs past their sell by dates. Lacking the ability to fit 8x the
amount of RAM required on day 1 shortens its life, so that suggests a
64 bit machine would last longer.


In terms of tin and copper, I'd like a machine that can house at least 3
HDDs (as well as a DVD drive, natch),

I cant see that being a problem. You can always put dvd on PATA if
needed.


and that runs quietly and uses as
little power as possible (since the machine will run 24*7). I gather the
ones with variable-speed fans in the PSUs are quieter (when not running
at full load, presumably).

In practice no, fan design characteristics make far more difference
than speed control. Better to look at dB specs or listen to the units.


My typical use of the machine is
* web browsing (currently I have several dozen pages open in different
windows and tabs in firefox/iceweasel and usually have a dozen or so more
in chrome)
* office (OOo) apps - about half a dozen docs open
* maybe a few PDFs
* some images in a viewer (gwenview)
* file browsing - say a dozen konqueror/dolphin windows/tabs
* text file editing - few dozen files open in kate, some in kwrite
* jpilot, xsane, gimp, maybe a music player and other odds & sods

So altogether a lot of apps eating up memory. Maybe another reason for
loadsa RAM and 64bits?

And occasionally I'll do some video or audio file conversion e.g. editing
and then converting a DV video to H264 or FLV; or suchlike.

Graphics-wise I've a 19" CRT which I like to cram as much onto as
possible and within the life of the machine I expect to replace it with a
similar-sized or larger LCD. So I want some high-resolution modes. And I

Even a basic 128M card should manage enough resolution to run a 19"
monitor in native res.


watch and edit videos, but I don't do gaming, so I guess I don't need
fancy 3-D acceleration or whatever.

On that basis I'm thinking this one from Novatech might be OKhttp://www.novatech.co.uk/novatech/prods/barebones/BB-6404GA.html
I note that it can do 8G RAM but only comes with 2, as 2*2G modules using
up both slots, so if I wanted more I'd have to see if they'd do it at
time of sale otherwise I'd be throwing away the existing 2G modules to
install 4G ones.

Comments? Especially from a Linux perspective?

Looks like an impressive deal for the money, and novatech are a pretty
reliable company. RAM expandability limits are poor on most new
boards, 8G limit isnt too bad.


NT

John Stumbles wrote:

One thing I'm wondering is if it's worth going for a machine with a lot
of RAM - which AIUI requires a 64 bit CPU to access if it's over
2^mumble bytes

Upgraded my WinXP 32bit laptop to Win7 64bit, for a start that means it
can use all 4 GB rather than 3.whatever GB, partly offset by all code
being larger due to 64 bit address space, but with Win7 it does seem to
actually make use of all memory better than WinXP.

and running some sort of virtualisation s/w so I can
run different OSes

I'm using VirtualBox it's free and more flexible than MS Virtual PC

Am I right
in thinking xen is the virtualisation code du jour for Linux distros?

I use Xen both at home and at work, but can't help thinking that KVM is
the really the hypervisor of choice nowadays.

I gather the
ones with variable-speed fans in the PSUs are quieter (when not running
at full load, presumably).

Yes look for 4-pin fans and connectors.

On 12/03/11 00:16, John Stumbles wrote:

On that basis I'm thinking this one from Novatech might be OK
http://www.novatech.co.uk/novatech/p...BB-6404GA.html
I note that it can do 8G RAM but only comes with 2, as 2*2G modules using
up both slots, so if I wanted more I'd have to see if they'd do it at
time of sale otherwise I'd be throwing away the existing 2G modules to
install 4G ones.

Comments? Especially from a Linux perspective?

It looks to be a perfectly adequate PC for today's requirements. The 8Gb
memory limit could be a problem in the near future. Bear in mind that to
expand it to 8Gb you probably have to throw away the 2Gb sticks it
already has. If you get a MB with 4 memory slots you can start with
2x2Gb then expand it by adding 2x4Gb. That's what I did although I used
an Intel i5 based board.

--
Bernard Peek

John Stumbles gurgled happily, sounding much
like they were saying:

One thing I'm wondering is if it's worth going for a machine with a lot
of RAM - which AIUI requires a 64 bit CPU to access if it's over
2^mumble bytes

4Gb, and it's 64bit OS rather than CPU.

but I don't do gaming, so I guess I don't need fancy 3-D acceleration
or whatever.

Probably not, but double-check that Compiz supports the graphics. I love
Compiz.

Andy Burns ) wibbled on Saturday 12 March 2011
07:26:

John Stumbles wrote:

One thing I'm wondering is if it's worth going for a machine with a lot
of RAM - which AIUI requires a 64 bit CPU to access if it's over
2^mumble bytes

Upgraded my WinXP 32bit laptop to Win7 64bit, for a start that means it
can use all 4 GB rather than 3.whatever GB, partly offset by all code
being larger due to 64 bit address space, but with Win7 it does seem to
actually make use of all memory better than WinXP.

and running some sort of virtualisation s/w so I can
run different OSes

I'm using VirtualBox it's free and more flexible than MS Virtual PC

Am I right
in thinking xen is the virtualisation code du jour for Linux distros?

I use Xen both at home and at work, but can't help thinking that KVM is
the really the hypervisor of choice nowadays.

It's going that way - I find KVM a lot nicer to work with.

But Sun/Oracle VirtualBox is very nice too, free for personal use.

I gather the
ones with variable-speed fans in the PSUs are quieter (when not running
at full load, presumably).

Yes look for 4-pin fans and connectors.

--
Tim Watts

John Stumbles wrote:
Looks like my current PC has some weird hardware problem that's behind
the problems I've been moaning about with my graphics resolution. (I
tried a brand new ATI card and the PC wouldn't even POST-beep; took it
back to Novatech who said it worked fine on their rig. Coupled with other
strangeness I think it's new PC time.)

..

My typical use of the machine is
* web browsing (currently I have several dozen pages open in different
windows and tabs in firefox/iceweasel and usually have a dozen or so more
in chrome)
* office (OOo) apps - about half a dozen docs open
* maybe a few PDFs
* some images in a viewer (gwenview)
* file browsing - say a dozen konqueror/dolphin windows/tabs
* text file editing - few dozen files open in kate, some in kwrite
* jpilot, xsane, gimp, maybe a music player and other odds & sods

So altogether a lot of apps eating up memory. Maybe another reason for
loadsa RAM and 64bits?

And occasionally I'll do some video or audio file conversion e.g. editing
and then converting a DV video to H264 or FLV; or suchlike.


The Gimp chews ram video conversion chews CPU

Sounds like you want what I have times about ten...





Graphics-wise I've a 19" CRT which I like to cram as much onto as
possible and within the life of the machine I expect to replace it with a
similar-sized or larger LCD. So I want some high-resolution modes. And I
watch and edit videos, but I don't do gaming, so I guess I don't need
fancy 3-D acceleration or whatever.


That's what I said till I discovered Eternal Lands on Linux..sigh..

Still the £30 graffix card was cheaper than having to BUY a game or a
subscription.

On that basis I'm thinking this one from Novatech might be OK
http://www.novatech.co.uk/novatech/p...BB-6404GA.html
I note that it can do 8G RAM but only comes with 2, as 2*2G modules using
up both slots, so if I wanted more I'd have to see if they'd do it at
time of sale otherwise I'd be throwing away the existing 2G modules to
install 4G ones.

Comments? Especially from a Linux perspective?

I go he

http://www.woc.co.uk


And arrived at a similar spec but different layout.

1/. ALL my data of any importance live on a separate server. This
changes every 5 years or so.. Currently its a linux engine on a cheap
low power ATOM bard with no video, no screen, no CD-ROM bugger all RAM
and tow of the biggest disks I could get in. Half of one is my data, and
my wife's, the other half is full of videos we record off air. The other
is a backup of our data mirrored every night plus backups of any other
desktop machines or other machines I add to the list. I think it cost me
£200 or so.

2/. The current desktop is short of CPU, short of RAM and less than two
years old. It's an entry level INTEL dual core board, 4GB or RAM and an
NVidia graffix card. Cheapest I could get. It runs Debian Lenny 64 bit,
with a virtual box for windows XP for the legacy **** I still need.
Today I'd go for 8, or 16 Gigs or RAM and as much power as I could
afford. It has the smallest disk I could buy, and a DVD burner. And put
a later installation - squeeze? on it.

3/. Problems I have had have been:-
- in getting suitable drivers for the scanner and printers.
- Running out of RAM especially when running a virtual XP AND the Gimp.
- getting anything more than barely adequate performance out of inboard
Intel chipset, solved with Nvidia graphics card.
- running out of cycles when doing BIG graphics or video manipulations.

What I found was that things never thought I would be doing, became
things I now do a lot. Like multimedia manipulations.

Things I thought I would be doing - using old windows stuff on a virtual
machine - I hardly do at all now. Windows is simply a program launcher
for two Programs - Corel Draw and Rhino CAD.

DO consider - however you arrange things - some sort of backup policy.
Even if it's not a total crash, I have found the 'oh bugger I didn't
mean to delete that' - followed by 'oh well I'll just fetch last nights
backup copy' to be a useful boon.

Likewise the ability to totally restore windows in seconds,if as often
happens it gets buggered beyond repair, is wonderful. Virtual box worked
better than VMware for me - screen driver is local, not a browser
plugin, so its faster..

And, if the server is tucked away..if some tea leaf nicks your shiny
desktop machine, chances are its only money, not invaluable
data..happened to me that way once, hence my decision to put everything
important in a boring looking cheap box.

So as far as the desktop goes - 64 bit, as fast as you can afford, and
with RAM as cheap as it is, stuff it full.

Put a cheap Nvidia card in it. You wont regret that.

Don't buy printers and scanners till you check the CUPS and SANE driver
situation first.

Either put in twin disks and mirror them, or a separate server crammed
full of disk. Videos take space!

Most useful addition has been DVB dongle (hauppage) to watch TV whilst
wittering on Usenet ;-) Does need a decent aerial tho:-).

On Fri, 11 Mar 2011, Tabby wrote:

On Mar 12, 12:16*am, John Stumbles wrote:

One thing I'm wondering is if it's worth going for a machine with a lot
of RAM - which AIUI requires a 64 bit CPU to access if it's over
2^mumble bytes

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/hardware/c...confusion/3124

This fails to mention PAE, which is still highly relevant for the amounts
of memory we have today. PAE adds four bits to the hardware memory address
on a 32-bit machine, meaning a chip with it can address 16 times more
memory than a purely 32-bit machine, ie 64 GB. 64 GB should be enough for
anyone.

Individual processes can still only address 32 bits' worth, but you can
fit more of them in memory at once, and keep them away from video memory,
etc.

What i don't know is that it's still possible to buy chips with PAE. As
Alex says, it's hard to find a chip that isn't 64-bit these days. Unless
you're buying a netbook.

This is annoying - a system with a 64-bit chip pays the 64-bit tax of
having to have pointers be twice as large (mostly - if you run 64-bit
software at least; an honourable mention goes to Java, which can use
32-bit pointers on a 64-bit system to address up to 32 GB), which means it
makes less efficient use of the memory it has. In the 4 - 64 GB range, a
32-bit CPU with PAE makes better use of memory and memory bandwidth than a
64-bit one (as long as you can live with the 4 GB limit on processes). On
the flip side, the 64-bitness of the registers only gives a speed boost to
code that specifically needs to manipulate wide operands - cryptography,
scientific computing, perhaps some SIMD-based graphics operations. For
most use today, 32-bit+PAE should be faster than 64-bit. And yet, the
market has moved almost entirely over to 64-bit. Grr.

- and running some sort of virtualisation s/w so I can run different
OSes or versions of an OS simultaneously rather than multi- booting.
That way I can try out a new distro or version of my current distro
without sawing off the branch I'm currently sitting on. Am I right in
thinking xen is the virtualisation code du jour for Linux distros?

No, i think Xen is a bit of an also-ran now. At work, we use:

- VMWare ESX; only the infrastructure guys use it directly, and seem to
like it, but everything they tell me makes me think it's complete crap (we
occasionally have the virtual DNS server lock up because we're doing a
complex query on the virtual Oracle server; it takes hours to clone an
image even on a RAID array; management is through some runty cut-down
version of Linux running underneath everything)

- VirtualBox; works nicely for simple uses, is awkward for more complex
uses, nicely interoperable with the Mac (ie we can make an image on Linux
and run it on a Mac)

- QEMU/KVM; works nicely, simple and so powerful to manage, does require
unixy skills to make the most of it (last time i used it - the GUIs might
be pretty good now), doesn't have the nice networking options that
VirtualBox does (QEMU pretty much requires a bridged network, which is a
minor nightmare; VirtualBox will do its own virtual network with NAT,
which is lovely)

I prefer the userland-based options (VirtualBox and QEMU) to the
hypervisor-based ones (Xen and VMWare) because they don't involve having
some random dwarf operating system in control of your hardware. The
userland options use a perfectly normal OS as the host, which will mean
less trouble finding drivers, configuring things, etc.

If i was in your position, i would install a sensible middle-of-the-road
Linux on the physical machine, then install QEMU/KVM, and run things on
top of that. I'd use Fedora for the host, because it's solid enough, gets
updates at a good rate, and benefits from Red Hat's ownership of KVM.

Although to be honest, i would probably actually *not* run things on top
of that, because i'm a confirmed Fedora fan!

tom

--
The term Nihilartikel for a fictitious entry originated at the German
Wikipedia but was later identified as a hoax. -- Wikipedia

Tom Anderson writes:

[...]

On the flip side, the 64-bitness of the registers only gives a speed
boost to code that specifically needs to manipulate wide operands -
cryptography, scientific computing, perhaps some SIMD-based graphics
operations. For most use today, 32-bit+PAE should be faster than
64-bit. And yet, the market has moved almost entirely over to
64-bit. Grr.

IIUC the 64 bit instruction set has lots more registers (not just bigger
ones), and that's a significant benefit for lots of applications.

[...]

In article , John Stumbles wrote:
Novatech have a variety of 'bare bones' units (just add HDD and DVD)
from about £120 up, and ebuyer, dabs and Uncle Tom Cobbleigh and all
are in the market too; and there's a bewildering variety of kit to
choose from.

Barebones setups can be cost-effective (but compare with the prices of
the individual components to be sure) and should have been competently
assembled and have received a basic burn-in test from the dealer, which
is all to the good.

However, you get more control over the actual selection of components if
you build yourself, and PC assembly these days is almost as easy as
Lego. Barebones bundles tend to be built to a price, so you may prefer
to choose your own components ... particularly as you say you're
concerned about power consumption.

One thing I'm wondering is if it's worth going for a machine with
a lot of RAM - which AIUI requires a 64 bit CPU to access if it's
over 2^mumble bytes ...

It's always worth having the ability to expand to a lot of RAM, even if
you don't need/use it straight away.

32-bit CPUs can handle 2^32 bytes (4GB) of address space at a time. Some
of the address space is mapped to video, network, PCI, etc., so you'll
find that typically 3.5GB or less is available for RAM. Some Intel
CPUs/chipsets support a feature called PAE (Physical Address Extension)
which allows them to support more physical RAM which can be mapped by
the OS so that the 2^32 limit applies per-process and not to the system
overall (server versions of Windows support this, as does Linux (but you
may need to rebuild the kernel)).

If you have a 64-bit CPU and a 64-bit OS you can support more RAM ...
IIRC current x86-64 chips only support a 2^48 byte physical address
space, but that's 256TB which is thousands of times more than any
current motherboard supports.

"Consumer" motherboards usually have 2 or 4 RAM slots that may hold
DIMMs of 2GB or 4GB (the largest DIMM I've seen is 16GB, which costs a
bomb and not all boards can use it). Motherboards with 3-channel memory
support (e.g. Intel socket 1366 boards) may have 6 RAM slots for up to
24GB (at sensible cost) with a 64-bit OS.

... running some sort of virtualisation s/w so I can run different
OSes or versions of an OS simultaneously rather than multi-booting.
That way I can try out a new distro or version of my current
distro without sawing off the branch I'm currently sitting on.

The other way to do it is to have removable hard drives in bays, so that
you can always try out a new distro on a clean drive without having
dual-boot partitioning. Virtualization is nice though (I still have to
pinch myself when I cat/paste data between applications running under
different OSes).

Am I right in thinking xen is the virtualisation code du jour for
Linux distros?

I use VirtualBox on Debian AMD64 ... I think it's a bit less /du jour/
now that Oracle own it, but it works well.

(I can live without running windoze on this machine.)

I run Win7 and XP in VMs.

So would an AMD64 be the CPU to go for?

Just about every current x86 CPU I can think of (except some Atoms and
VIA CPUs) runs the AMD64 instruction set, whether it's from AMD or Intel
(who call it EMT64, but it's the same thing). It's more usually called
x86-64 nowadays.

If you meant "Would a 64-bit AMD CPU be the CPU to go for" then it
depends. AMD chips are good value at the low end of the range and tend
to be more power-economical, the fastest CPUs are Intel, but tend to be
power-hungry.

In terms of tin and copper, I'd like a machine that can house at
least 3 HDDs (as well as a DVD drive, natch), and that runs quietly
and uses as little power as possible (since the machine will run
24*7).

Have you seen the HP Microserver box, which is currently available for
between £200 and £250 (depending on configuration and where you buy it)
and is eligible for a £100 cashback from HP until the end of the month?
It's discussed in more detail in another thread here.

http://www.serversplus.com/hp_proliant_microserver

It comes without an OS -- just add $DISTRO of choice (and a USB keyboard
and mouse, and a monitor, and maybe a DVD drive).

It has limited expansion but it's incredibly cheap, for what it is, and
ticks a number of your boxes. Only two memory slots for up to 4GB of
DDR3 ECC memory each, but with 2x4GB would have plenty of memory for
your proposed usage (even in a VM or two).

I gather it will work with non-ECC memory, but as the board supports ECC
I'd recommend using it ... it pays to be safe.

Graphics-wise I've a 19" CRT which I like to cram as much onto as
possible and within the life of the machine I expect to replace it
with a similar-sized or larger LCD. So I want some high-resolution
modes. And I watch and edit videos, but I don't do gaming, so I
guess I don't need fancy 3-D acceleration or whatever.

I've been spoiled by a client who provided 24" monitors for all
developers, and had to buy one myself. I have a Dell U240 (IPS panel)
which is lovely, but I've also been very impressed by a Nec EA241WM 24",
that I bought for SWMBO, which is cheaper and also provides a very good
image.

Most 24" monitors are now 1920x1080 (16:9 ratio) but these two are both
1920:1200 (16:10) which will give a little more vertical height, which
is useful for text editing. Both have USB hubs built in, the Dell also
has an SD card reader while the Nec has (rather tinny) speakers.
--
Cheers,
Daniel.

On 12/03/2011 04:17, Tabby wrote:
On Mar 12, 12:16 am, John wrote:
Looks like my current PC has some weird hardware problem that's behind
the problems I've been moaning about with my graphics resolution. (I
tried a brand new ATI card and the PC wouldn't even POST-beep; took it
back to Novatech who said it worked fine on their rig. Coupled with other
strangeness I think it's new PC time.)

Novatech have a variety of 'bare bones' units (just add HDD and DVD) from
about £120 up, and ebuyer, dabs and Uncle Tom Cobbleigh and all are in
the market too; and there's a bewildering variety of kit to choose from.

One thing I'm wondering is if it's worth going for a machine with a lot
of RAM - which AIUI requires a 64 bit CPU to access if it's over
2^mumble bytes

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/hardware/c...confusion/3124

- and running some sort of virtualisation s/w so I can
run different OSes or versions of an OS simultaneously rather than multi-
booting. That way I can try out a new distro or version of my current
distro without sawing off the branch I'm currently sitting on. Am I right
in thinking xen is the virtualisation code du jour for Linux distros? (I

I just try them using a live disc, and if that goes ok then putting it
on a secondary pc. It avoids any muckabout with the main machine.


can live without running windoze on this machine.) So would an AMD64 be
the CPU to go for?

One thing I've conistently noticed is that its RAM limits that usually
make PCs past their sell by dates. Lacking the ability to fit 8x the
amount of RAM required on day 1 shortens its life, so that suggests a
64 bit machine would last longer.


In terms of tin and copper, I'd like a machine that can house at least 3
HDDs (as well as a DVD drive, natch),

I cant see that being a problem. You can always put dvd on PATA if
needed.


and that runs quietly and uses as
little power as possible (since the machine will run 24*7). I gather the
ones with variable-speed fans in the PSUs are quieter (when not running
at full load, presumably).

In practice no, fan design characteristics make far more difference
than speed control. Better to look at dB specs or listen to the units.


My typical use of the machine is
* web browsing (currently I have several dozen pages open in different
windows and tabs in firefox/iceweasel and usually have a dozen or so more
in chrome)
* office (OOo) apps - about half a dozen docs open
* maybe a few PDFs
* some images in a viewer (gwenview)
* file browsing - say a dozen konqueror/dolphin windows/tabs
* text file editing - few dozen files open in kate, some in kwrite
* jpilot, xsane, gimp, maybe a music player and other odds& sods

So altogether a lot of apps eating up memory. Maybe another reason for
loadsa RAM and 64bits?

And occasionally I'll do some video or audio file conversion e.g. editing
and then converting a DV video to H264 or FLV; or suchlike.

Graphics-wise I've a 19" CRT which I like to cram as much onto as
possible and within the life of the machine I expect to replace it with a
similar-sized or larger LCD. So I want some high-resolution modes. And I

Even a basic 128M card should manage enough resolution to run a 19"
monitor in native res.


watch and edit videos, but I don't do gaming, so I guess I don't need
fancy 3-D acceleration or whatever.

On that basis I'm thinking this one from Novatech might be OKhttp://www.novatech.co.uk/novatech/prods/barebones/BB-6404GA.html
I note that it can do 8G RAM but only comes with 2, as 2*2G modules using
up both slots, so if I wanted more I'd have to see if they'd do it at
time of sale otherwise I'd be throwing away the existing 2G modules to
install 4G ones.

Comments? Especially from a Linux perspective?

Looks like an impressive deal for the money, and novatech are a pretty
reliable company. RAM expandability limits are poor on most new
boards, 8G limit isnt too bad.


NT

I had a couple of PCs and a laptop from Novatec but after some research
my latest PC came from Chillblast about 14 months ago and has had
absolutely no problems whatsoever. I opted for the "Quiet cooling fans
Upgrade Pack" and it is pretty quiet.
I have had no reason to investigate what is on the market since I bought it.
I tend to go for a high spec with heaps of RAM because previously I have
found that updating odd bits tends to cause bottlenecks in other places.
I have little experience of Linux which I only use on an ageing laptop.
Windows 7 is not bad once you have tweaked it to do things the way you
want them done. Some software did not like 64 bit.

Bruce Stephens wrote:
Tom Anderson writes:

[...]

On the flip side, the 64-bitness of the registers only gives a speed
boost to code that specifically needs to manipulate wide operands -
cryptography, scientific computing, perhaps some SIMD-based graphics
operations. For most use today, 32-bit+PAE should be faster than
64-bit. And yet, the market has moved almost entirely over to
64-bit. Grr.

IIUC the 64 bit instruction set has lots more registers (not just bigger
ones), and that's a significant benefit for lots of applications.

[...]

64 bit code is a bit larger, because it carries 64 bit entities...but
that's usually more than made up for by the faster speed of computation.

Linux wise the only real downside is dealing with legacy 32 bit code
which doesn't always work, especially if its a 3rd party kernel module :-(

In uk.comp.os.linux Daniel James wrote:
If you meant "Would a 64-bit AMD CPU be the CPU to go for" then it
depends. AMD chips are good value at the low end of the range and tend
to be more power-economical, the fastest CPUs are Intel, but tend to be
power-hungry.

When I looked at the market about 6 months ago, the sweet spot on
power/performance was the Intel i3 (530 at that time). The then-current AMD
chips were all on a 45nm process which took more power, while the i-series
are on 32nm. The i3 also brings in the video controller to the same package
(at 45nm). The H55/H57 motherboard chipsets allow the use of the integrated
graphics, so you don't need to spend 20-30W on a graphics card if you're not
doing any gaming - but you can add a separate graphics card later if you
want. The P55 motherboards require an additional video card.

The only difficulty is that most of the H55 boards are micro-ATX, so don't
have many PCI/PCI-E or memory slots for expansion.

Some of the i5s also have integrated graphics as well, though I haven't
looked at those so much for price reasons.

Most 24" monitors are now 1920x1080 (16:9 ratio) but these two are both
1920:1200 (16:10) which will give a little more vertical height, which
is useful for text editing. Both have USB hubs built in, the Dell also
has an SD card reader while the Nec has (rather tinny) speakers.

It seems that all large panels are now 1920x1080, and there isn't much of a
price difference between 21" and 26", so just pick whichever size you
prefer.

Theo

Theo Markettos wrote:
In uk.comp.os.linux Daniel James wrote:
If you meant "Would a 64-bit AMD CPU be the CPU to go for" then it
depends. AMD chips are good value at the low end of the range and tend
to be more power-economical, the fastest CPUs are Intel, but tend to be
power-hungry.

When I looked at the market about 6 months ago, the sweet spot on
power/performance was the Intel i3 (530 at that time). The then-current AMD
chips were all on a 45nm process which took more power, while the i-series
are on 32nm. The i3 also brings in the video controller to the same package
(at 45nm). The H55/H57 motherboard chipsets allow the use of the integrated
graphics, so you don't need to spend 20-30W on a graphics card if you're not
doing any gaming - but you can add a separate graphics card later if you
want. The P55 motherboards require an additional video card.

The only difficulty is that most of the H55 boards are micro-ATX, so don't
have many PCI/PCI-E or memory slots for expansion.


Not normally a problem since most stuff tends to be USB these days..or
already built n..


Some of the i5s also have integrated graphics as well, though I haven't
looked at those so much for price reasons.

Most 24" monitors are now 1920x1080 (16:9 ratio) but these two are both
1920:1200 (16:10) which will give a little more vertical height, which
is useful for text editing. Both have USB hubs built in, the Dell also
has an SD card reader while the Nec has (rather tinny) speakers.

It seems that all large panels are now 1920x1080, and there isn't much of a
price difference between 21" and 26", so just pick whichever size you
prefer.


IIRC in X windows you CAN rotate the display 90 degrees, if you can prop
the monitor on edge..


Theo

On Sat, 12 Mar 2011 11:23:05 +0000, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

DO consider - however you arrange things - some sort of backup policy.
Even if it's not a total crash, I have found the 'oh bugger I didn't
mean to delete that' - followed by 'oh well I'll just fetch last nights
backup copy' to be a useful boon.

Heh, yes: BTDTGTTS

I have a home-brewed rsync snapshot backup/archive system to an external
2TB HDD. I've lost count of the number of times I've smugly trawled
through the daily/weekly/yearly backups to find a version of the file I
wanted before it got deleted or corrupted from the main drive ...

Likewise the ability to totally restore windows in seconds,if as often
happens it gets buggered beyond repair, is wonderful.

.... until a week ago when my OS (Debian in this case) got thoroughly
shagged up and I had to ask myself why, with an almost entire backup of
my 1.5TB home drive, I'd skimped on the OS drive and only backed up its
config files :-(

--
John Stumbles

Life is nature's way of keeping meat fresh

In message , Bernard Peek
writes
On 12/03/11 00:16, John Stumbles wrote:

On that basis I'm thinking this one from Novatech might be OK
http://www.novatech.co.uk/novatech/p...BB-6404GA.html
I note that it can do 8G RAM but only comes with 2, as 2*2G modules using
up both slots, so if I wanted more I'd have to see if they'd do it at
time of sale otherwise I'd be throwing away the existing 2G modules to
install 4G ones.

Comments? Especially from a Linux perspective?

It looks to be a perfectly adequate PC for today's requirements. The 8Gb
memory limit could be a problem in the near future.

Near future ?




Bear in mind that to
expand it to 8Gb you probably have to throw away the 2Gb sticks it
already has. If you get a MB with 4 memory slots you can start with
2x2Gb then expand it by adding 2x4Gb. That's what I did although I used
an Intel i5 based board.


--
geoff

In ,
The Natural Philosopher wrote:

Bruce Stephens wrote:
Tom Anderson writes:

On the flip side, the 64-bitness of the registers only gives a speed
boost to code that specifically needs to manipulate wide operands -
cryptography, scientific computing, perhaps some SIMD-based graphics
operations. For most use today, 32-bit+PAE should be faster than
64-bit. And yet, the market has moved almost entirely over to
64-bit. Grr.

IIUC the 64 bit instruction set has lots more registers (not just bigger
ones), and that's a significant benefit for lots of applications.

I heard the 64-bit ISA is especially beneficial to video processing,
which the OP did mention as one of his uses for the new PC. I presume
one of the major advantages is that the "lowest common denominator" of
FP/SSE/MMX is a lot newer for 64-bit than 32-bit.

64 bit code is a bit larger, because it carries 64 bit entities...but
that's usually more than made up for by the faster speed of computation.

Linux wise the only real downside is dealing with legacy 32 bit code
which doesn't always work, especially if its a 3rd party kernel module :-(

Also, nearly all Linux software is compiled with gcc. This is a lot of
conjecture on my part, but gcc was originally designed for Unix
workstations with better architectures with more registers, and it used
to generate quite poor IA32 code because of the lack of registers. I
think that was one of the things that egcs aimed to improve, but AIUI
gcc's IA32 code generation still isn't great, while the greater number
of registers in amd64 should help it generate better code. So what I'm
saying is that 64-bit should be a bigger win for Windows (where there
are still very few 64-bit applications anyway) than Linux.

--
TH * http://www.realh.co.uk

Tony Houghton wrote:
In ,
The Natural Philosopher wrote:

Bruce Stephens wrote:
Tom Anderson writes:

On the flip side, the 64-bitness of the registers only gives a speed
boost to code that specifically needs to manipulate wide operands -
cryptography, scientific computing, perhaps some SIMD-based graphics
operations. For most use today, 32-bit+PAE should be faster than
64-bit. And yet, the market has moved almost entirely over to
64-bit. Grr.
IIUC the 64 bit instruction set has lots more registers (not just bigger
ones), and that's a significant benefit for lots of applications.

I heard the 64-bit ISA is especially beneficial to video processing,
which the OP did mention as one of his uses for the new PC. I presume
one of the major advantages is that the "lowest common denominator" of
FP/SSE/MMX is a lot newer for 64-bit than 32-bit.

64 bit code is a bit larger, because it carries 64 bit entities...but
that's usually more than made up for by the faster speed of computation.

Linux wise the only real downside is dealing with legacy 32 bit code
which doesn't always work, especially if its a 3rd party kernel module :-(

Also, nearly all Linux software is compiled with gcc. This is a lot of
conjecture on my part, but gcc was originally designed for Unix
workstations with better architectures with more registers, and it used
to generate quite poor IA32 code because of the lack of registers. I
think that was one of the things that egcs aimed to improve, but AIUI
gcc's IA32 code generation still isn't great, while the greater number
of registers in amd64 should help it generate better code.

Okk..

So what I'm
saying is that 64-bit should be a bigger win for Windows (where there
are still very few 64-bit applications anyway) than Linux.

Surely you mean the exact opposite?

In ,
The Natural Philosopher wrote:

Tony Houghton wrote:
So what I'm saying is that 64-bit should be a bigger win for Windows
(where there are still very few 64-bit applications anyway) than
Linux.

Surely you mean the exact opposite?

Oops, yes.

--
TH * http://www.realh.co.uk

The Natural Philosopher writes:

[...]

64 bit code is a bit larger, because it carries 64 bit entities...but
that's usually more than made up for by the faster speed of
computation.

That's my guess. It's worth mentioning that (I suspect) 64 bit code
spends most of its time handling 32 bit data (the benefits being the
saner instruction set and the extra registers).

In C-terms int is still 32 bit (and on Windows so is long). It's only
longs (on Windows long longs) and pointers that are 64 bit. So it's
certainly not the case that a 64 bit program will take twice as much
memory as a 32 bit equivalent; an array of 1000 ints is the same size in
both.

Linux wise the only real downside is dealing with legacy 32 bit code
which doesn't always work, especially if its a 3rd party kernel module
:-(

Yes, but how often does that happen? It's worth stressing that 64-bit
linux kernels can (unless you deliberately disable the feature) run
32-bit binaries (presuming that the necessary 32-bit libraries are
available, and distros make that easy to arrange).

My guess is that nowadays most people will be better off running 64-bit
for the most part (with the occasional 32-bit app). (I think the only
32-bit GNU/Linux application I have now is google earth, now that 64-bit
flash is available.)

On Sat, 12 Mar 2011 11:23:05 +0000, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
1/. ALL my data of any importance live on a separate server. This
changes every 5 years or so.. Currently its a linux engine on a cheap
low power ATOM bard with no video, no screen, no CD-ROM bugger all RAM
and tow of the biggest disks I could get in. Half of one is my data, and
my wife's, the other half is full of videos we record off air. The other
is a backup of our data mirrored every night plus backups of any other
desktop machines or other machines I add to the list. I think it cost me
£200 or so.

That's what I'd like to do. I did have my raid, mail, webserver and usb-
attached external drives on an old PC in a cupboard but that died (while
I was away on holiday, trying to access it remotely, natch :-() and I
haven't got round to replacing it (got the pre-loved box sitting here for
it, just lacking the Tuits). A low-power box would be nice but £200 is a
chunk to spend on another box.


--
John Stumbles

Time flies like an arrow
Fruit flies like a banana
Tits like coconuts

Bruce Stephens wrote:
The Natural Philosopher writes:

[...]

64 bit code is a bit larger, because it carries 64 bit entities...but
that's usually more than made up for by the faster speed of
computation.

That's my guess. It's worth mentioning that (I suspect) 64 bit code
spends most of its time handling 32 bit data (the benefits being the
saner instruction set and the extra registers).

In C-terms int is still 32 bit (and on Windows so is long). It's only
longs (on Windows long longs) and pointers that are 64 bit. So it's
certainly not the case that a 64 bit program will take twice as much
memory as a 32 bit equivalent; an array of 1000 ints is the same size in
both.

Linux wise the only real downside is dealing with legacy 32 bit code
which doesn't always work, especially if its a 3rd party kernel module
:-(

Yes, but how often does that happen?

Every time for me out of a sample of one :-)

It's worth stressing that 64-bit
linux kernels can (unless you deliberately disable the feature) run
32-bit binaries (presuming that the necessary 32-bit libraries are
available, and distros make that easy to arrange).

Can. but not always and not always seamlessly. If the right 2 bit
libraries are not available, you are in serious geek territory to get
things working.


My guess is that nowadays most people will be better off running 64-bit
for the most part (with the occasional 32-bit app). (I think the only
32-bit GNU/Linux application I have now is google earth, now that 64-bit
flash is available.)

But doesn't work properly. Ditto acrobat.

Things that have caused me issues were
32 bit HP scanner module. Simply did not work
Lack of proper CUPS support for brand new laser printer. Didn't work on
the OSX Tiger either. Needed to find something close.. NOT a 32/64 bit issue
Google earth. Needed extra stuff to work
32 bit Adobe acrobat. Didn't work at all.
64 bit Flash plugin. Breaks on some sites.

Now that's on Lenny. Debian have new release and it looks a lot better.
Maybe the non-free stuff will work.

I wouldn't go back to 32bit, but don't expect there to be instant third
party support for 54 bit to the level that exists on 32 bit.

In article ,
says...
Graphics-wise I've a 19" CRT which I like to cram as much onto as
possible and within the life of the machine I expect to replace it with a
similar-sized or larger LCD. So I want some high-resolution modes. And I
watch and edit videos, but I don't do gaming, so I guess I don't need
fancy 3-D acceleration or whatever.


High resolution shouldn't be a problem - I snaffled a spare 19" TFT the
other day which runs at 1280x1024 and even my 2003 laptop can drive it.

--
Skipweasel - never knowingly understood.

John Stumbles wrote:
On Sat, 12 Mar 2011 11:23:05 +0000, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
1/. ALL my data of any importance live on a separate server. This
changes every 5 years or so.. Currently its a linux engine on a cheap
low power ATOM bard with no video, no screen, no CD-ROM bugger all RAM
and tow of the biggest disks I could get in. Half of one is my data, and
my wife's, the other half is full of videos we record off air. The other
is a backup of our data mirrored every night plus backups of any other
desktop machines or other machines I add to the list. I think it cost me
£200 or so.

That's what I'd like to do. I did have my raid, mail, webserver and usb-
attached external drives on an old PC in a cupboard but that died (while
I was away on holiday, trying to access it remotely, natch :-() and I
haven't got round to replacing it (got the pre-loved box sitting here for
it, just lacking the Tuits). A low-power box would be nice but £200 is a
chunk to spend on another box.



The actual box and psu/ram is not that much. If you have the drives already.

ATOM Motherboard is £63.60, or less for low spec: Case is £55.20 and a
tenner buys you a gig of ram.

Two SATA drives..well wherever you store the data you need to buy or
have those.

In my case it made the desktop cheaper, because it needed less disk.

IN a sense the opportunity cost of having a server versus 'all on the
desktop' is the cost of the case, motherboard and a bit of ram only,.
About £120 or so. And maybe a small extra disk for the desktop.

Skipweasel wrote:
In article ,
says...
Graphics-wise I've a 19" CRT which I like to cram as much onto as
possible and within the life of the machine I expect to replace it with a
similar-sized or larger LCD. So I want some high-resolution modes. And I
watch and edit videos, but I don't do gaming, so I guess I don't need
fancy 3-D acceleration or whatever.


High resolution shouldn't be a problem - I snaffled a spare 19" TFT the
other day which runs at 1280x1024 and even my 2003 laptop can drive it.

I bought an end of line 1650 by something LCD cheep. Even the Intel
onboard **** drove it reasonably. Enough for text and static graffix.

Full screen Flash movies stressed the CPU tho.

In article , lid says...
High resolution shouldn't be a problem - I snaffled a spare 19" TFT the
other day which runs at 1280x1024 and even my 2003 laptop can drive it.

I bought an end of line 1650 by something LCD cheep.


WSXGA+ (1680x1050) or UXGA (1600x1200) probably. Might be cheap, but all
I had to do was walk off with mine. Legitimately, I might point out.

--
Skipweasel - never knowingly understood.

Skipweasel wrote:
In article , lid says...
High resolution shouldn't be a problem - I snaffled a spare 19" TFT the
other day which runs at 1280x1024 and even my 2003 laptop can drive it.

I bought an end of line 1650 by something LCD cheep.


WSXGA+ (1680x1050)

Thats the bunny.


or UXGA (1600x1200) probably. Might be cheap, but all
I had to do was walk off with mine. Legitimately, I might point out.


Lucky you.

In article , lid says...
I had to do was walk off with mine. Legitimately, I might point out.


Lucky you.

Well, they do get a lot of unpaid work out of me, and have done for
years, and the monitors are just sitting around doing nothing.

--
Skipweasel - never knowingly understood.

In article , Theo Markettos
wrote:
When I looked at the market about 6 months ago, the sweet spot on
power/performance was the Intel i3 (530 at that time). The then
current AMD chips were all on a 45nm process which took more power,
while the i-series are on 32nm.

There are (and were) "Energy Efficient" versions of, for example, the
quad-core Athlon II that have a TDP of only 45W despite being 45nm
technology. The i3 chips are 73W (Clarkdale) or 65W (Sandy Bridge, which
wouldn't have been available at the time?) despite being only 32nm.

Of course, TDP is only a rough indication of the actual power drawn by
any particular chip, but it gives an idea of the upper limit.

It's true that the i3 CPUs have more L2 cache than the Athlon IIs, and
that their clock speeds are higher than the EE version of the Athlon IIs
... but the Athlons are cheaper and are true quad-core rather than dual
core with hyperthreading. I think my money's still on the AMD parts
where power consumption is important.

Cheers,
Daniel.

In article , The Natural Philosopher
wrote:
I bought an end of line 1650 by something LCD cheep.

1680x1050? That'd be WSXGA+ in the mad babbling of monitor makers.

Cheers,
Daniel.

On Sat, 12 Mar 2011 19:09:48 +0000, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

Can. but not always and not always seamlessly. If the right 2 bit
libraries are not available, you are in serious geek territory to get
things working.

I'm thinking that if I run a basic 64-bit Debian on the machine with
VirtualBox, I can then run a 32-bit distro in one VM so I should be able
to use whatever works with my peripherals. Wouldn't I?

--
John Stumbles

No Rules OK

In article , Daniel James
scribeth thus
In article , Theo Markettos
wrote:
When I looked at the market about 6 months ago, the sweet spot on
power/performance was the Intel i3 (530 at that time). The then
current AMD chips were all on a 45nm process which took more power,
while the i-series are on 32nm.

There are (and were) "Energy Efficient" versions of, for example, the
quad-core Athlon II that have a TDP of only 45W despite being 45nm
technology. The i3 chips are 73W (Clarkdale) or 65W (Sandy Bridge, which
wouldn't have been available at the time?) despite being only 32nm.

Of course, TDP is only a rough indication of the actual power drawn by
any particular chip, but it gives an idea of the upper limit.

It's true that the i3 CPUs have more L2 cache than the Athlon IIs, and
that their clock speeds are higher than the EE version of the Athlon IIs
.. but the Athlons are cheaper and are true quad-core rather than dual
core with hyperthreading. I think my money's still on the AMD parts
where power consumption is important.

Cheers,
Daniel.





My machine is now some 5 years old is a 1.7 Ghz but does all I need fro
it including some complex maths and radio coverage prediction stuff. The
only thing that might push me to a new machine is newer ones seem to be
very quiet nowadays...


--
Tony Sayer

On Sat, 12 Mar 2011 19:21:59 +0000, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

John Stumbles wrote:
On Sat, 12 Mar 2011 11:23:05 +0000, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
1/. ALL my data of any importance live on a separate server. This
changes every 5 years or so.. Currently its a linux engine on a cheap
low power ATOM bard with no video, no screen, no CD-ROM bugger all
RAM and tow of the biggest disks I could get in. Half of one is my
data, and my wife's, the other half is full of videos we record off
air. The other is a backup of our data mirrored every night plus
backups of any other desktop machines or other machines I add to the
list. I think it cost me £200 or so.

That's what I'd like to do. I did have my raid, mail, webserver and
usb- attached external drives on an old PC in a cupboard but that died
(while I was away on holiday, trying to access it remotely, natch :-()
and I haven't got round to replacing it (got the pre-loved box sitting
here for it, just lacking the Tuits). A low-power box would be nice but
£200 is a chunk to spend on another box.



The actual box and psu/ram is not that much. If you have the drives
already.

ATOM Motherboard is £63.60, or less for low spec: Case is £55.20 and a
tenner buys you a gig of ram.

Any particular atom board (& supplier?) you'd suggest?
I've got a variety of cases & PSUs around, and the gig of RAM in the
dodgy rig I'm replacing anyway, if they'd work with the Atom.


Two SATA drives..well wherever you store the data you need to buy or
have those.

Got them anyway. If the Atom mobo has 2 SATAs I could put the disk with
the OS + snapshot backup in there as well and save an external USB drive.
In fact I'd have to do something like that unless the Atom has IDE since
my raid disks don't have the OS on and I don't want to faff around
reformatting them to add a non-raid partition.

--
John Stumbles

Hypnotising Hypnotists Can Be Tricky

On Sat, 12 Mar 2011, Bruce Stephens wrote:

Tom Anderson writes:

On the flip side, the 64-bitness of the registers only gives a speed
boost to code that specifically needs to manipulate wide operands -
cryptography, scientific computing, perhaps some SIMD-based graphics
operations. For most use today, 32-bit+PAE should be faster than
64-bit. And yet, the market has moved almost entirely over to 64-bit.
Grr.

IIUC the 64 bit instruction set has lots more registers (not just bigger
ones), and that's a significant benefit for lots of applications.

It has more *architectural* registers - ones that a program can refer to
explicitly. But CPUs since the 90s have had more actual registers than
that, and have used register renaming to supply them to the program. That
has never been perfect, and it hasn't made compiler writers' lives any
easier, but it means the impact of adding more registers to an
architecture is not as great as you might think.

Someone must have done a properly-controlled benchmark of 32-bit vs 64-bit
on the x86 at some point (same hardware, same source code, same compiler).
It doesn't seem like it would be hard to do. Does anyone know of one?

tom

--
It sounds very much like a rock group consisting of a drum machine and
a few 56k modems. -- Jon

John Stumbles wrote:
On Sat, 12 Mar 2011 19:09:48 +0000, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

Can. but not always and not always seamlessly. If the right 2 bit
libraries are not available, you are in serious geek territory to get
things working.

I'm thinking that if I run a basic 64-bit Debian on the machine with
VirtualBox, I can then run a 32-bit distro in one VM so I should be able
to use whatever works with my peripherals. Wouldn't I?

Yes. Probaly use a windoze for the scanner at least, as Xsane is a bit crap.

But you do need to talk to printers directly. Thst not a 64 bit issue
tho, its a cups PPD issue.

John Stumbles wrote:
On Sat, 12 Mar 2011 19:21:59 +0000, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

John Stumbles wrote:
On Sat, 12 Mar 2011 11:23:05 +0000, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
1/. ALL my data of any importance live on a separate server. This
changes every 5 years or so.. Currently its a linux engine on a cheap
low power ATOM bard with no video, no screen, no CD-ROM bugger all
RAM and tow of the biggest disks I could get in. Half of one is my
data, and my wife's, the other half is full of videos we record off
air. The other is a backup of our data mirrored every night plus
backups of any other desktop machines or other machines I add to the
list. I think it cost me £200 or so.
That's what I'd like to do. I did have my raid, mail, webserver and
usb- attached external drives on an old PC in a cupboard but that died
(while I was away on holiday, trying to access it remotely, natch :-()
and I haven't got round to replacing it (got the pre-loved box sitting
here for it, just lacking the Tuits). A low-power box would be nice but
£200 is a chunk to spend on another box.



The actual box and psu/ram is not that much. If you have the drives
already.

ATOM Motherboard is £63.60, or less for low spec: Case is £55.20 and a
tenner buys you a gig of ram.

Any particular atom board (& supplier?) you'd suggest?
I've got a variety of cases & PSUs around, and the gig of RAM in the
dodgy rig I'm replacing anyway, if they'd work with the Atom.


I bought mine from http://www.woc.co.uk because they are local.
Other sources are

http://www.mini-itx.com/store/?c=60

But bewa these things may not fit the cases you have.
DDR-3 is the RAM you need, but you don't need much for a server really.
half a gig is fine. If you can find DDR-3 hat small..



Two SATA drives..well wherever you store the data you need to buy or
have those.

Got them anyway. If the Atom mobo has 2 SATAs

No, its 2 drives only IIRC.

You need t go to a slightly different board with a fan fr 4xSATA

http://www.mini-itx.com/store/?c=71


I could put the disk with
the OS + snapshot backup in there as well and save an external USB drive.
In fact I'd have to do something like that unless the Atom has IDE since
my raid disks don't have the OS on and I don't want to faff around
reformatting them to add a non-raid partition.


I think if you have case and PSU and disks, then a low power ATOM based
mini-itx board is the way to go, if it fits the case. Otherwise expect
to spend a bit more on that.

Tom Anderson wrote:
On Sat, 12 Mar 2011, Bruce Stephens wrote:

Tom Anderson writes:

On the flip side, the 64-bitness of the registers only gives a speed
boost to code that specifically needs to manipulate wide operands -
cryptography, scientific computing, perhaps some SIMD-based graphics
operations. For most use today, 32-bit+PAE should be faster than
64-bit. And yet, the market has moved almost entirely over to 64-bit.
Grr.

IIUC the 64 bit instruction set has lots more registers (not just
bigger ones), and that's a significant benefit for lots of applications.

It has more *architectural* registers - ones that a program can refer to
explicitly. But CPUs since the 90s have had more actual registers than
that, and have used register renaming to supply them to the program.
That has never been perfect, and it hasn't made compiler writers' lives
any easier, but it means the impact of adding more registers to an
architecture is not as great as you might think.

Someone must have done a properly-controlled benchmark of 32-bit vs
64-bit on the x86 at some point (same hardware, same source code, same
compiler). It doesn't seem like it would be hard to do. Does anyone know
of one?


Many linux ones were done.

I read em all when making up my mind.

As you might expect, graphics and data crunching a lot better, normal
stuff not much different, program loading a bit worse on 64 bit.

Really where it counts, is driving your screen, or doping huge
processing on graphics or video style objects.


tom

tony sayer wrote:
In article , Daniel James
scribeth thus
In article , Theo Markettos
wrote:
When I looked at the market about 6 months ago, the sweet spot on
power/performance was the Intel i3 (530 at that time). The then
current AMD chips were all on a 45nm process which took more power,
while the i-series are on 32nm.
There are (and were) "Energy Efficient" versions of, for example, the
quad-core Athlon II that have a TDP of only 45W despite being 45nm
technology. The i3 chips are 73W (Clarkdale) or 65W (Sandy Bridge, which
wouldn't have been available at the time?) despite being only 32nm.

Of course, TDP is only a rough indication of the actual power drawn by
any particular chip, but it gives an idea of the upper limit.

It's true that the i3 CPUs have more L2 cache than the Athlon IIs, and
that their clock speeds are higher than the EE version of the Athlon IIs
.. but the Athlons are cheaper and are true quad-core rather than dual
core with hyperthreading. I think my money's still on the AMD parts
where power consumption is important.

Cheers,
Daniel.





My machine is now some 5 years old is a 1.7 Ghz but does all I need fro
it including some complex maths and radio coverage prediction stuff. The
only thing that might push me to a new machine is newer ones seem to be
very quiet nowadays...



yes. I don't expect to upgrade any time soon either.

But get that lot backed up now. 5 years is about MTBF on most disk drives.

My machine is now some 5 years old is a 1.7 Ghz but does all I need fro
it including some complex maths and radio coverage prediction stuff. The
only thing that might push me to a new machine is newer ones seem to be
very quiet nowadays...



yes. I don't expect to upgrade any time soon either.

But get that lot backed up now. 5 years is about MTBF on most disk drives.



What!, As long as that;?...
--
Tony Sayer

On 13/03/2011 13:28, Daniel James wrote:
In , The Natural Philosopher
wrote:
I bought an end of line 1650 by something LCD cheep.

1680x1050? That'd be WSXGA+ in the mad babbling of monitor makers.

Isn't that a sort of motorcycle?