> Which disk controller should I use for best performance and > driver support? > > AHCI based: > SB600 > IHC9 > Jmicron JMB363 (supported?) > > Marvel based: > Marvell 88SX6081
this isn't a complete list of supported ahci or marvell parts. i don't know about jmicron support. i tried to add it without having any hardware to test. i have always chosen other hardware over jmicron. it seems to benchmark poorly and be unnecessarly incompatable. i have not done systematic benchmarking of the various parts. however .. 1. unless one needs more ports than the motherboard offers, i would stick with on-board ports. 2. note that the marvell 88sx card is pci-x but will function properly in a pci slot. the marvell 88se64* parts are a pci-e option. 3. if you set up a venti+fossil fileserver, you will have a quite seeky load and the performance of the controller should not be a big factor. but the performance of the disks will be. > For network cards the intel gbe cards seems to be the best? yes. the 82563 and 8257[12456] are particularly good. > Which CPU should I use? Can Plan9 use multicore processors? > Is it right that Plan9 runs in 32 bit modus (no need for a 64 bit > processor)? plan 9 can use multicore processors. but it does not recognize the hyperthreads on core i[357] and atom processors. - erik
