Gigabit Ethernet Server
This one is a problem.
Gigabit ethernet has approximately the same bandwidth as the PCI
bus, so if you expect to use most of that gigabit bandwidth you
will also be using most of your PCI bandwidth.
That's a bottleneck you'd like to avoid.
The solution is to use 64bit 66MHz PCI, which most gigabit
ethernet cards support.
However, this severely limits your choices for the rest of the system.
The only chipset which currently supports fast wide PCI is the i840.
(The
Micron Samurai
chipset will support it too, but isn't quite out yet.)
As noted earlier, the i840 is designed to work with RAMBUS memory,
which sucks, but if it's your only choice then the question
becomes how to make it suck the least.
You can either use actual RDRAM, which is hugely expensive,
or you can use regular SDRAM via the "memory translator hub"
which is slow.
Plus Intel recently
admitted that the MTH causes crashes!
That's a showstopper, so we must go with RDRAM.
This narrows down the choice of motherboards.
Intel's reference i840 board, the OR840, uses RDRAM but does not
do fast wide PCI.
SuperMicro and Tyan both have i840 boards with fast wide PCI, but
they all use SDRAM/MTH only, no RDRAM.
Then there's the
Iwill DCA200
Four RDRAM slots, two fast wide PCI slots (plus four regular PCI).
Just what the doctor ordered.
Couple of minor drawbacks: it's WTX form instead of ATX (WTX cases are
expensive), and it's Slot-2 instead of Slot-1 (there's an adaptor, or you
could use Xeons).
- Iwill DCA200 dual Slot-2 i840 WTX motherboard, $590
- Pentium III EB 866MHz Slot-1, $650
- Pentium III EB 866MHz Slot-1, $650
- Slot-1 to Slot-2 adaptor, $25
- Slot-1 to Slot-2 adaptor, $25
- 128MB PC800 ECC RDRAM, $500
- 128MB PC800 ECC RDRAM, $500
- IBM 30GB ATA/66 7200 RPM disk, $238
- NetGear GA620 gigabit ethernet card, $300
- CD-ROM reader, $50
- floppy drive, $15
- cheap AGP video card, $40
- SuperMicro SC830W WTX case, $570
- TOTAL $4170
Woo hoo!
Note that to take advantage of the i840's dual RDRAM channels you
must install RDRAM in identical pairs; a single 256MB module will
not work.