Although this isn't necessarily a Linux question, I know this would be a good 
place to come and ask about which dual processor solution would be the best? 
Since I administer a fairly busy web site (my, ahem, picture galleries) and 
I've noticed quite a large load over the last few days, 5k hits each day for 
last 5 days, 12k Feb. 15th, and seen how my computer managed the load, I 
decided I finally need a new server system. Although page generation times 
took about 5 seconds, that's pretty good for my system. A 75*8*MHz Duron with 
256MB of PC133 RAM, running several servers (Apache, Apache-SSL, ProFTPd, 
MySQL, SSHd, exim) serving out pretty much just PHP pages, with mod_gzip 
compressing all of the content and XF86 with Mozilla and XMMS running pretty 
much all the time, I would think this box handled it quite well. 

This system has served me well for the last 2 years but I really need a good 
one. I am split between either a dual Pentium 3 or Athlon MP system. I am 
leaning toward the Athlon MP since that would be "the best bang for my buck" 
or $268 for two 1800+s. I've had some experience with a dual Pentium 3, at 
school, I've installed Mandrake on it a while back and put it under a kind of 
"simulated" load. 10 processes of 'top' refreshing every "0" seconds and all 
of the computers in the lab going on the SSL web site and refreshing as fast 
I can get to each computer and click the refresh button. I though the system 
handled it pretty admirably. Now it gets to where I'm sort of stuck. I 
haven't had any real experience with a Athlon MP system so I'm asking those 
who have. What are some issues you experienced, except the processor temp. 
related ones. What are the pros and cons over a dual P3 system?

Stepping away from the processors, I am looking at which motherboards would 
some one recommend for each of the set of processors. For AMD, I was 
recommended to Tyan and it wasn't too helpful since it seems they're the only 
one making dual Athlon MP motherboards and they're pretty expensive too. 
Anybody else make motherboards for the Athlon MP? And which motherboard would 
be a decent (*cheap* but stable) one too?

The price is a bit of an issue. I am willing to spend at least $700, no more, 
on the processors and motherboard together. Since RAM is pretty much dirty 
cheap, I'll go for at least 768MBs of either PC133 or DDR2100 and it will 
cost under $100.

Next, I'll be shopping for T-1 since this Earthlink DSL connection with 
15KB/s up isn't helping. Maybe later, I'm getting ahead of myself...


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