Reintroduction to 64bit
 

Hello everyone,

I've been watching the posts over the last month and due to the promise of an adequate tax return I have again plunged myself into the world of 64bit processing.

I own a Sun UltraSparc 2S, 2*299MHz, 512MB RAM, 3D Creator Frame Buffer (UPA), 9.1 GB 10k rpm HDD1, 36.6 GB 10k rpm HDD2, Dual boot: HDD1 Solaris 8, HDD2 Solaris 9

It is in my garage making sure the shelf it is on does not move. A very menial task for such processing power.

I have dabbled in Linux since Red Hat 6.2 and various Unix's on Sun, HP, and DIGITAL/Vax.

The company I work for phased out all Unix versions of our software in 1999 and 2000 and mothballed all of our heavy iron. Now all software development is MFC with VS.NET. Since then I am extremly out of practice on shell and have existed in a Windows-only bubble since. At home the Wife v12.5 and Daughter v11.25 must run under Windows only (married 12.5 years, daughter 11.25 years old, tee-hee) as there is a dependancy on MS Office and Age of Empires series of games respectivly. That and IE will display and play just about anything (even the unwanted/undesired).

So, anyways, I've been wanting an upgrade and was very tempted by the Athlon 64. So I broke down and ordered my components. Everything should be in by Wednesday afternoon. Here is what I settled on.

Gigabyte - K8N Pro - nVIDIA nForce3 - Socket 754 ATX Motherboard with Audio, AGP8X/4X, S/PDIF, IrDA, USB 2.0, FireWire, RAID, Serial ATA, HyperTransport and Gigabit LAN Support
AMD AthlonT 64 3000+ / 512KB Cache / 1600MHz FSB / Socket 754 / Processor
Ultra 512MB PC3200 DDR 400MHz Memory 2 Pack (1024MB Total)
Western Digital Caviar SE 160GB / 7200 / 8MB / ATA-100 EIDE Hard Drive
Liteon DVD 16X LTD166/XJHD166S Black Retail
Liteon DVD+/-RW 8x LDW-851S Black Retail
Diablo Tek Black Demon ATX Mid-Tower Case with Front USB Ports
Diablo 550Watt Dual LED ATX Power Supply with SATA Power Connectors

I know, I know, the HT bus speed on the NF3 is only 600MHz but the board has other great features I wanted. 1) Supports up to 3GB RAM. 2) Number of drive connectors, I will be connecting the new HDD and the DVD & DVD+/-RW in addition to my current CD-RW drive, 60GB Quantum Fireball, 30GB Quantum Fireball, and 2 WD 30 GB drives in raid 1 mirror. That will fill all but the 2 SATA and every 3.5" drive bay will be full after I drop in a floppy drive. and the remaining 5.25" bay will be home to my internal 7-in-1 multi card reader/writer.

Well, I look forward to next week and will let everyone know how it all goes.

I'm planning on installing WinXP Pro, WinXP 64-bit, and a 64-bit Linux Distro and would like to know if anyone has suggestions on install order. I am planning install them all on the 160GB WD in different partitions. Also any experience with or pointers to sites overclocking on the K8N Pro and in particular with the 3000+.

I look forward to hear from you all. Have a good Easter

DMF

Calvin Coolidge wrote:
"Nothing in the world can take the place of
persistence. Talent will not.... Genius will not."