New board for a newbie

[Brian Myers]

Yes, I realized I didn't mention how I was using it just after I 
posted. Surprised I got away with it this long.

Initially it will be primarily a server machine. It will be a 
database/webserver/app server all-in-one box. Occasionally it will do 
some more hefty database and ETL work.

I might want the AGP graphics card in it though, because eventually I 
may try to turn it into a video editing box running Cinnerella.

For now, I'd like to keep the cost under $2K.

Thanx

Brian

On Dec 28, 2004, at 10:49 AM, David O'Brien wrote:

> On Thu, Dec 23, 2004 at 04:11:27PM -0800, Brian Myers wrote:
>> 2) I've seen much conversation on which boards, memory, and SATA
>> controllers were supported by FreeBSD. So much so that I have no idea
>> what the current state of things is. So, if you were building a new
>> dual Opteron from scratch, what would you get? For cost reasons, I'm
>> going with 1.8 ghz processors and probably only 2GB of ram. I'll have
>> two RAID 1 SATA hard drives, but should I use an onboard controller, 
>> or
>> purchase a separate controller? Note that I may at some point upgrade
>> to 4 RAID 0+1 disks. What about video cards? I don't need much so, are
>> the onboard ones useable or not? Also, I, of course, would like the
>> onboard LAN controller to be supported.
>
> You really don't mention the use of the machine -- server or 
> workstation
> (or mix)?  Do you need an AGP slot for high-end graphics, or is low-end
> on-board VGA just fine?  How many 64-bit PCI-X slots do you need?
>
> -- 
> -- David  (obrien at FreeBSD.org)
>