> Hiya folks,
>
> Wooter is not the only person looking at this, and it has been some
> time since something of this has been discussed.
>
> My background is that while I have a pretty good number of machines
> here, ranging from a Dual-P90 system (which was at one time a machine
> at CompuServe) serving as my bastion host, clear up to Athlon systems
> including a 2500+ Barton system with 1GB of RAM and a Radeon 9500Pro
> system I use as a workstation and on which play games.  I even have
> some Sun 3's and a HP9000/F10 (800 series unfortunately) which I play
> with from time to time.  But I have decided that my workstation has
> started getting a bit old, and I am debating on upgrading it and
> moving my MB/CPU/RAM around so that I can possibly retire the dual P90
> to the "play" pile.    So when my system drive decided to clip from
> 40GB to 33GB, I started thinking...
>
> As Wouter said, getting a Semperon based system does not really pay
> off anymore.  While I can get a good AMD CPU/motherboard for around
> $220, another $50 gets me the same features in an AMD64 system
> (though, unfortunately still not a FX-53 or Opteron CPU).  And at the
> same time, I could start using SATA drives which have nicer cabling
> than their EIDE equivalents, and are much less costly than the
> equivilent SCA SCSI drives I used to prefer.
>
> So, I too would ask that you please share your more recent experiences
> with AMD64 systems, and include details such as which MB/CPU you are
> using, what quirks you may have seen, etc.
>
> Thanks!
>
> - Doug
>
> Quoting Wouter Schoot (wouter@schoot.org):
>> Heya guys,
>>
>> I'm considering to buy a new server. Getting a normal (sempron) AMD
>> doesn't pay off anymore, so I decided to go for AMD64.
>>
>> I read on the site of the AMD64 port that the port is fully functional.
>> Does that mean that all features/bugs/etc are in the AMD64 port too, or
>> is it a bit behind on other ports?
>>
>> Of course I could run just the normal i386 port on it, but that would be
>> a bit of a shame to do. But, how much difference does it really make?
>>
>> Thanks for any new insights!
>>
>> Wouter
>
> --
> Douglas Wade Needham - KA8ZRT        UN*X Consultant & UW/BSD kernel
> programmer
> Email:  cinnion @ ka8zrt . com       http://cinnion.ka8zrt.com
> Disclaimer: My opinions are my own.  Since I don't want them, why
>             should my employer, or anybody else for that matter!
>
>

My experience so far has been to pretty positive.  I have run a few
motherboards with VIA chipsets and I've got X, KDE3, decent audio, gige,
and sata running.  I'm missing flash on the browser but that's about it. 
I'm burning cd's and dvd's, and am downloading music to my mp3 player. 
One should definitely consider running something -current-ish though.

I've had success with the following motherboards:

Socket 754 -> Epox 8hda5+, MSI k8t800.
Socket 939 -> Asus a8v.

I've stayed away from nforce boards because I don't think they're as well
documented and are a bit more proprietary, but others have them running.

skd