Parts worth using for a Gentoo box?

dabinka · n00b Joined: 28 Oct 2004 Posts: 29

Greetings to all!

I recently aquired a AP550 Workstation machine from Compaq. By the looks of it, the motherboard is standard 24-Pin ATX (Server PS). Here are the specs to the best of my memory:

Dual P3 Slot 1's
4 Rambus 800mhz Slots
UW160 (Adaptec chipset) SCSI (Ultra3)
2 IDE headers (UltraATA66)
4 PCI Slots
1 AGP 4X Slot
Onboard 10/100 Ethernet
Onboard PCI SoundBlaster 128 Pro Audio

I was planning on upgrading this machine to a Dual P3/1ghz with Slotkets and at least 512mb RAM (256mb already installed). Probobly a Radeon video card..

Anyhow. I was just wondering what anybodies opinion was on this machine. I might drop some money into it; buy it a new case, more RAM, those dual 1ghz procs, etc, but I'm not sure if the money spent is worth it or if the system ultimately with Dual P3/1ghz will be decently fast or not.

Is it worth it to preserve the board and make a system out of it? Or would something like a cheapo P4 kick the crap out of this system in Gentoo/Gnome (2.

?

bishop00s · Posted: Thu Oct 28, 2004 4:46 pm Post subject:

Dual processors have certain advantages over fast single processors. Each core has its own cache for example. Some of the advantages of are dependent on what youre doing. some applications dont work well in multiple threads. I know with windows this can make a big difference. Linux seems to handle both cpus well so I havent noticed this being a problem. One thing to keep in mind is last time I checked rambus memory had gotten quite a bit more expensive than ddr-sdram. Are you sure its rdram? I thought that was just for certain p4s. If it came with decent size scsi disks this is a bonus. Scsi can get expensive. I like using pricewatch.com to find good prices on hardware and making a comparative analysis of the cost/benefits in a spreadsheet. Hope this helps a little.
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bendagr8 · Posted: Thu Oct 28, 2004 5:14 pm Post subject:

Right before the P4 came out I built myself a dual p3 system. I only had both chips in there for a short period of time, (the board was capable of running off one) so it's not the fairest comparison.
Also as far as cost is concerned, I wasn't using RDRAM, nor SCSI (but the P3's were probably at least a little more expensive back then).

Anyway, the short of the long of it is, it really didn't provide all that much bang for my buck. Certain applications ran faster, but a majority of things were the same speed.

I went to a P4 2.4ghz about 2 years ago, and although the speed increase over the dual P3s wasn't as great as I had expected, the cost was a little better, plus the life expectancy of the parts was better.

I wanted to keep that thing running forever though, because it's two processors, that's just awesome... The power supply ended up shorting out the motherboard in the end. Make sure you have a good quality power supply in there, as the bad ones, when they get old, can do some nasty things.

dabinka · n00b Joined: 28 Oct 2004 Posts: 29

Hmm.

For the first post: I am sure it is RDRam. The stuff has blue heatsinks on it, according to Compaq its 800mhz RDRam.

My biggest thing with this board is if I'm going to see a preformance increase over what I *had*. Once upon a merry time, I had the following system running Gentoo:

P4 3.0C
Gigabyte 8KNXP
Maxtor ATA66 60gb HD
GeForce 3 64mb DDR (4x AGP)
256mb Micron PC3200

The system wasn't bad except for the fact that I completly nuked the distro by running etc-update and forcing it to up date everything (oops).

I'm trying to figure out if I upgrade this Dual, primarily to 512mb RDRam, 2 1ghz P3's, some sort of GeForce 4 or something, etc, will it ultimately be better then the P4 as above? I might pull the board from the crappy Compaq case with the noname 375watter PS and give it a nice new Lian Li PC65 case with a Antec Server PS.

I'm going to be running Gnome 2.8 and probobly Xorg with the Composition stuff, the HD will be a SATA Drive running through a SATA->Ultra3 SCSI Converter...

I'm leary about wasting money on this thing or something.

BTW: What did you mean by the Life expectancy? Do P3's have a stupidly short lifetime or something?

bendagr8 · Posted: Fri Oct 29, 2004 12:52 am Post subject:

I meant that, in most cases, a part manufactureed in 2002 will last longer than a part manufactured in 2000. Not always true, but worth thinking about.

ao · n00b Joined: 05 Jan 2004 Posts: 38

dabinka · n00b Joined: 28 Oct 2004 Posts: 29

Hmm.

Well I almost did it. I have located sources for the parts, and what really sucks is that I just bought another VRM for the sucker and now I'm not going through with it

.

The board is a standard ATX, heck, even the back panel for the plugs fits in any old case like a LianLi.

But, alas. This is Compaq. And Compaq must make things hard. The ATX plug is 24 Pin, and some of the pins are swapped (I checked). And then there is the matter of the nice little 6 Pin Aux connector that puts out some strange voltage (4.8v, 3.2v, and 1.5v) through the 6 pins and isn't like anything I've seen before

. The PS is non-standard mountings, so I can't take the board and put it in a nice case.

If I would have been able to do that, then I'd be on my merry way to a new Gentoo box.... Blah.

Looks like for $600 I can get a NICE system off Newegg.com though.

Thank yee all for helping!

Cintra · Advocate Joined: 03 Apr 2004 Posts: 2111 Location: Norway