[Discuss] best dual core Linux box

[edwardp at linuxmail.org (edwardp at linuxmail.org)]

Robert Krawitz wrote:
> On Sun, 18 Sep 2011 11:29:27 -0400 (EDT), Daniel Feenberg wrote:
>    
>> We are in the midst of licensing the SAS software product for a
>> server. This is an extremely expensive product, and the charge for a
>> quad-core machine is tens of thousands of dollars more than for a
>> dual-core machine. If you are unfamiliar with SAS, it does lots of
>> sequential I/O and is rarely CPU bound. So we are looking to put
>> together a high performance machine that uses only a dual-core
>> processor. I know that dual-core is now usually very low-end (or
>> laptop) but creative suggestions are welcome. Ideally we would like
>> PCI-e slots for SAS or SATA controllers so that we can have a lot of
>> fast local storage.
>>      
> You might look at something like an older Core 2 Duo E8600, possibly
> overclocked.  I have an E8400 (actually the Xeon equivalent, due to
> availability at the moment I bought it) that's rated for 3.00 GHz but
> I've OC'ed it to 3.60 with no difficulty (the limit was probably how
> fast I could clock the memory, plus I didn't try for anything more).
> Those processors have always overclocked very well.
>    

I bought a Compaq AMD Athlon X2 dual core just under two years ago, it 
has never given me a day of trouble.  I'm very happy with it.