ITman

I agree with the previous post (each brand is more or less the same) however, I'd like to give my two cents worth about 64bit. I run a medium IT shop at a research lab and we support Dual AMD Opteron's (250's). Ported 64bit Red Hat Linux. The computational group runs crash simulations. Under dual Xeon 2.8Ghz..it used to take close to 18hrs to complete a simulation. Under the Dual 250 Opterons..less than 4hrs. Now granted this is on a 64 bit OS and the simulation software was optimized for 64bit instructions. It jsut goes to show you the huge potential for 64bit computing. Thats in the business world. In the home world, video games are what drives the push towards faster, more powerful computers. That being said.... FarCry (video game) is being recompiled for 64bit instructions and slated for release in <60days. Im betting we are going to see a big boost and that is going to drive software vendors towards 64bit ports.

Geil RAM is notorious for being touchy with aggressive CAS/RAS/etc.... settings. I wish you had asked for reccomendations on RAM before buying that brand. AMD CPU's benefit more from lower latancy RAM than over clocking the frontside bus. Here is a review of that memory: http://www.pcstats.com/articleview.cfm?articleid=1447&page=1 If possible, you should check out this website for many AMD overclocking guides: http://www.amdboard.com/ocspecial.html

Ty! I do agree that many times a company is pushing new technology to make money, but I believe that is called innovation. Most people dont work long hours inventing new technology just for the sheer joy of it.

I've been lurking around the forums for a while and finally decided to contribute what I have been taking I manage a medium IT dept for a research lab. If there is a new technology or gadget we are usually buying it!

I've been lurking around the forums for some time now. Seeing this thread made me want to register, which is a good thing . I manage a medium size IT shop for a research lab. Reading your conversation, I cant help but wonder when did this convo take place? Davis is wrong on several accounts: 1) Seagate, Maxtor, Fujitsu all have native SATA drives (although I dont think the general public can get the Maxline III's yet) 2) SATA is not more expensive. The drives are comparable in price (to PATA), however in the IT world, it is flat out blowing away SCSI. I just purchased an Triton 16Bay hot-swap Raid 5 SATA. It holds 6TB and it costs about $15k less than any comparable solution out there AND Im getting 220MB/s sustained transfer. Granted this is an extreme comparison because a majority of the forum users are home users. 3) 1 device per controller??!! He must mean mobo designers are only including 1 or 2 SATA pinouts. Each controller can actually support 2,4,6,8,16 SATA devices (depending if its a CERC, adaptec, Promise, etc) 3) His statements about P4, gigabit lan, etc..its not even worth rebutting Bottom line, every mobo made in the last 6 months (that isnt some value line ) comes standard with SATA and most of the times Serial Raid 0/1. Try comparing the performance between ANY PATA Raid 0 setup with Serial Raid 0. On one of my test box's I had a pair of Fujitsu PATA 120GB, 8MB cache, 7200rpm Raid 0 vs Maxtor Maxline Plus II SATA, 8MB cache, 7200rpm. Sandra Sisoft: PATA = 68MB/s, SATA = 93MB/s Just my 2.5 cents worth.