In article ,
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"KR Williams" wrote in message
a.net...

Well... Graphics cards look like a big bugaboo. Unless anyone
can convince me otherwise, I think I'm going safe: Matrox G550.
I'm really a 2D kinda guy anyway (and dual monitors are a must).

BTW, my board of choice is the Tyan 2875S and a Opteron 144. I'd
like to go more, but the CFO has already expanded the budget a
few times. Going back for even more may get expensive. ;-).

Any suggestions on what we should put in our next desktop box for our
top developers? Our current box has dual 2.4Ghz Xeons on a Tyan i7505
Thunder (S2665), 4 512Mb ECC DIMMs, a 3Ware 7500-4LP with 4 120Gb Maxtor
drives. The graphics card is a Matrox Parhelia with two 18" LCD monitors
(Currently NEC LCD1850X).

Without knowing your build process, this would be an impossible
task. If they build on their own systems (ick) you may want to
give them some peachy-keen latest stuff. If you're doing
software for the general public, you'll likely want a variety of
hardware to test/develop on. If you're doing large development,
you really ought to have a background build system that doesn't'
rely on the developer's desktop much at all.

In any case, give them at *least* two 20" monitors in a dual-
screen setup. If you can afford laptops, do the same. Dual
screen is a huge benefit to anyone doing development. Flat-
displays are an incremental bonus.

Our plan is tentatively a dual Opteron box with 4 SATA RAID drives,
probably using a 3Ware controller as well. We're hoping for 4Gb of RAM as
dual 128-bit memory busses. I've looked at many motherboards and they all
have large numbers of insane drawbacks. (Who thought it was a good idea to
connect the onboard gigabit LAN to the legacy 32-bit/33Mhz PCI bus?)

I'm assuming all of your developers work independently. If so,
fine. If they're collaborating, you'd better get a little
stronger. CVS and background builds are in your future.
Building software (or hardware in my case) just isn't reasonable
peace-meal.

I'd love suggestions on the graphics card

So far the Matrox G550 is winning my popularity contest. It has
the reputation (as all Matro cards) of being a business graphics
card, and isn't really suitable for 3D. As is designed, so be
it.

and motherboard especially.

That obviously depends on the processor you choose.

Also SATA RAID recommendations would be appreciated.

Why? What are you going to do for backup? Me thinks you have
the horsed after the cart.

Anybody have a gut
reaction of whether a developer would prefer dual xeons or dual opterons,
assuming they're not religious.

This "developer" certainly does. Though I don't do that icky
"software" stuff. ;-). Indeed if I truly had my choice, well
nevermind , the CFO would never approve.

--
Keith