Hi, G Karunakar wrote: > Hi, > I have been looking to assemble up a PC - primarily to be used for > 1) Graphics, Photo editing, printing , management, Blender etc. > 2) Running multiple distro's in Xen (or other virtualization).
Those two things you mentioned might not go too well with each other. At the moment, neither the ATI nor nvidia prop drivers work well with Xen ( although, the xorg-drv-ati in recentish Xorg will give you reasonable and effective 2d accelerated support, so you dont need the prop driver unless you plan on playing games etc ). There have been patches floated around for nvidia drivers to work with Xen, however, nothing that actually really works the way things are meant to. Btw, afaik, this includes the full-virt stuff as well. > So whats a recommended hardware -for motherboard, graphics card, > Monitor, photo printer etc which are better compatible.. > > Intel Core 2 Duo or Quad Core / AMD Athlon X2 > - which specific processor is better to do virtualization (running Xen). > the box would run Debian testing/unstable with other distros > configured through Xen. I like the AMD's. A lot. But if I was builing a desktop for myself right now, given that I do some development work, and need a reasonable performance for other stuff ( I have been accused of using Eclipse often ) - the sweetspot 'right now' is the intel Core2 Quad Q6600. Dont bother with the Core2 duo - the AMD x2 is way better than them. So if you do decide on going with a dual core, get an AMDx2 something like 4800 which overclocks to 6.4 or something silly like that. I wouldnt look at the dual cores at all anymore, unless you just wanted a gaming machine. However, the AMD Quad cores so far ( they are cheaper, yes ) dont really match the Intel quads. That might change in the future, but at the moment - the Q6600 is the desktop chip to get. w.r.t Virtualisation - you will get h/w virt on the Q6600 and on the AMD Phenom, and I dont think there is much to choose between them really. AMD might be better in some fringe or corner cases, but in most mainstream deployments its the BIOS on the machine and how it handles the fullvirt stuff that might have more of a role to play than the cpu. > with ATI/nVidia graphics card (I guess as of now only binary > propreitry drivers work well). not necessarily :) check my comment about the ati drivers in new xorg > if i take a nVidia GForce 7200 etc card, would blender utilise it > well? (i wonder so on linux!) i dont know, dont use blender, will leave that for someone who knows that app :D > 2-4GB RAM > 2x320 GB HDD. > - which of cheaper motherboards have SATA RAID? if you get a quad core, dont touch the h/w onboard sata raid. Just stick with linux mdraid. The fact that you retain portability and are more or less assured compliance and functionality with any/every linux setup is well worth it. The el-cheapo onboard sata raid's are just sata interfaces with badly done in-software raid implementations. This includes lower end highpoint. Sil and Jmicron stuff. What I would recommend is get a mobo that has PCI-E support ( the Asus M2N-E SLI is nice ), it has 2 8x PCI-E slots ( you can use them as 16x with 2 grfx cards, or actually use one for a data or something else, while you use 1 for grfx. Not all motherboards support this ( I had to go through about 27 mobos before I found this one )!. Ymmv > Good LCD/TFT 17"/19" monitor? which can do good color.. (preferably > non-wide screen), can these be color-calibrated well or using CRT is > better? The good ones are expensive. and almost none non-widescreen. I use both a CRT ( Mitubishi Diamondtron 21" and a LCD ( Apple 23", the one with the big white border ). I much prefer the LCD for coding and reading things. And the CRT for playing games. Although the CRT is a power hog :( The Mitsubishi is calibrateable but the calibration equipment costs a few thousand dollars. and atleast I've not been able to find anyone who owns it and isnt a design studio or a newspaper company. No idea about colour calibration on a LCD. Dont think thats going to be easy either. > Any recommended multifunction photoprinter (Epson/HP only seem to be > better drivers wise)? Printing stuff is overrated :D save the tree's dont print anything! With the money you save, get a better quieter power supply and a quieter / faster graphics card! > offcourse I could google much.. but just if anyone has experiences to > share doing similar stuff. hummmm slacker!!! :D btw, if you do decide on the Q6600 cpu, make sure you get the updated 2.4Ghz model ( there is a 2.6 as well, but the increase in cost is not worth the extra .2Ghz you get, also intel never revised that 2.6 model ). If you check the intel site, they will have the stepping model ref number for the updated 2.4Ghz. HTH -- Karanbir Singh : http://www.karan.org/ : [EMAIL PROTECTED] _______________________________________________ ilugd mailinglist -- ilugd@lists.linux-delhi.org http://frodo.hserus.net/mailman/listinfo/ilugd Next Event: http://freed.in - February 22/23, 2008 Archives at: http://news.gmane.org/gmane.user-groups.linux.delhi http://www.mail-archive.com/ilugd@lists.linux-delhi.org/
