cpu/mainboard recommendations?

Dieter BSD dieterbsd at gmail.com
Sun Aug 3 06:36:55 UTC 2014


Current machine is getting flakier by the day (hour?),
I need to get a new one before something vital dies altogether.

want list:
  non-inthell
  ecc
  smp (4 is probably about right)
  lots of sata ports (with NCQ, PM(FIS), hotplug, ...), sata3 if possible
  1 or 2 PCI slots would be good, the remainder PCIe (v3 if possible)
    more than 7 slots would be great
  console can be rs-232 (multiple rs-232 ports would be good)
  floss firmware; dual-bios, socketed, or some failsafe
  gpu can drive 4k display, displayport would be nice
  usb3 (in case anyone ever makes a decent usb-sata bridge)
  firewire that actually works with bsd (as opposed to via)
  gig-ethernet (2 if possible)

If AMD's Kaveri had ecc I would have gotten one months ago.
Berlin should have most of this, but will AMD ever release it?
Berlin was supposed to be out in first half of 2014, where is it?

At this point I can't keep waiting for Berlin.  So....
Phenom II?  Bulldozer/Piledriver?  The ARM stuff is still fairly
slow, correct?  Anything else worth considering?

I'll probably try 2 or 3 of the BSDs, but no penguinix,
no microshit, no gaming, no overclocking, no watercooling.
Need a reasonably fast cpu (not looking for warp factor 8,
warp 2 will be fine), lots of i/o, and very reliable.
Don't need an over-the-top gpu.  Enough resolution and
color depth, fast enough to display video properly.
Ability to offload video decoding would be nice.


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