[vox-tech] Hardware Question

[Bill Broadley]

> In my limited experience, Athlon systems build by small outfits or
> individuals are unstable. I would not use such machines for an important
> server.

In my experience athlons are fine.

Dual athlon (appro/small outfit):
sine:~> uptime
  9:16pm  up 44 days, 11:42, 20 users,  load average: 2.00, 2.31, 2.60
cosine:~> uptime
  9:17pm  up 44 days, 11:37,  8 users,  load average: 0.00, 0.00, 0.00
tangent:~> uptime
  9:15pm  up 29 days, 10:10,  2 users,  load average: 0.17, 0.04, 0.01

Dual athlon (lnxi/small outfit):
beowulf:~> uptime
  9:18pm  up 26 days,  4:53,  6 users,  load average: 2.28, 2.19, 2.11

Homebuilt desktop (single cpu):
[bill@bilbo bill]$ uptime
  9:18pm  up 19 days, 22:04, 19 users,  load average: 1.06, 1.06, 1.03

Some random cluster nodes (lnxi/dual):
[n1]
  9:19pm  up 21 days,  7:19,  0 users,  load average: 2.00, 2.00, 2.00
[n2]
  9:19pm  up 21 days,  7:20,  0 users,  load average: 2.00, 2.00, 2.00
[n3]
  9:19pm  up 21 days,  7:19,  0 users,  load average: 1.00, 1.00, 1.00
[n4]
  9:19pm  up 21 days,  7:19,  0 users,  load average: 1.00, 1.00, 1.00
[n5]
  9:19pm  up 21 days, 11:53,  0 users,  load average: 1.99, 1.98, 1.99
[n6]
  9:19pm  up 26 days,  2:12,  0 users,  load average: 1.99, 1.98, 1.99
[n8]
  9:19pm  up 21 days,  7:19,  0 users,  load average: 2.00, 2.00, 2.00
[n9]
  9:19pm  up 21 days,  7:19,  0 users,  load average: 1.99, 1.98, 1.99
[n11]
  9:19pm  up 21 days,  7:18,  0 users,  load average: 2.00, 2.00, 2.00
[n13]
  9:19pm  up 21 days,  7:19,  0 users,  load average: 2.00, 2.00, 2.00
[n15]
  9:19pm  up 26 days,  2:16,  0 users,  load average: 2.00, 2.00, 2.00
[n16]
  9:19pm  up 26 days,  2:15,  0 users,  load average: 2.00, 2.00, 2.00
[n17]
  9:19pm  up 26 days,  2:15,  0 users,  load average: 2.00, 2.00, 2.00
[n18]
  9:19pm  up 26 days,  2:14,  0 users,  load average: 2.00, 2.00, 2.00
[n19]
  9:19pm  up 26 days,  2:15,  0 users,  load average: 2.00, 2.00, 2.00

Of course there are bad motherboards out there, and of course people
often ignore a vendors recommendation on dimms and instead of getting
certified memory they get generic memory from a random vendor, or a
non-athlon certified power supply etc.

Buy quality stuff the chances are better that it will work (amd or intel),
buy crap and your likely to have more problems.  

The last big vendor athlon I bought was a micron, worked fine, had a
ibm deskstar death, but otherwise worked.  Unfortunately it was sold into
microsoft slavery so I can't run an uptime on it to see how long it's
been up 8-(.


-- 
Bill Broadley
Mathematics/Institute of Theoretical Dynamics
UC Davis