Does Linux benefit from the most recent technology?

[TomX]

Hey,

I've been saving for a computer of my own for a while now and I've worked out I will have enough for a new computer by this Christmas (2005). Dual booting, I have seen how slow computing can be when using Windows and I would not rather have a seperate partition for Windows and have to have my /home partition of file type FAT32, therefore I do not want to install Windows what-so-ever, Cedega will have to do for Steam (since I hear there is a performance drop).

Now, I'm thinking about getting one of AMD X2 Dual-Core processors but I was wondering whether or not Linux (am I right in thinking processor compatibility is dependant upon what the Kernal says?) can utilize these. I'm also considering SLI, does Linux support this too?

Thanks in Advance
Tom

PS. Any comments on peoples opinions on Steam running through Cedega are welcome.

[Odd_Bloke]

This would probably be better off in the Games/Multimedia forum...

[techieMoe]

If you do a search in this section of the forum ("Games/Gaming/Multimedia") and the "Wine" section you'll find several threads on the trials and tribulations of getting Steam to work in Linux. The ones I've seen aren't pretty.

As for SLI, are you sure it's worth it? The benchmarks I've seen said it was only marginally better performance to have 2 SLI cards than one very nice PCIe card. Same goes for a dual-core CPU. Is it worth it? A single-core AMD64 will handle most modern games quite well. Just food for thought.

As far as Linux supporting SLI, I wouldn't know. Never tried it.

[TomX]

Thanks for the replies.

The reason I'm somewhat over-estimating the components I will need is that I am going to university next year and from what I've heard students struggle to afford food and books, nevermind upgrades for their computer so I was planning on getting the best computer I can for now, hoping it will last 4 years without that many upgrades (I'm assuming RAM & Graphics card would need updating for latest games).

I do think that an AMD 64-bit processor would be sufficient for my needs for a long time though.

Sob story: I've had to share my computer with my family all my life, it's had to stay in the living area where this is two TVs (i.e. way too much noise; noise pollution indoors), I've had a trial run with the family computer in my room against their will and it feels so great, I cannot wait to finally have a PC in my room where I can run Linux exclusively). On the contrary though, some people have no access to a computer, I guess I should be grateful.

[techieMoe]

If you're looking for easy upgrades, make sure you go with a Socket 939 processor and motherboard rather than a Socket 754. The 754s are cheaper for a reason: they're going to eventually be phased out in favor of the 939s/940s.

I would recommend a board with PCI express but not necessarily SLI, just because as I said my personal research hasn't seen any enormous gain in performance and it ties you into a proprietary video interface.

Serial ATA is pretty standard right now for motherboards, and I like my SATA drives. RAID is still spotty in Linux, but honestly I don't see a reason why a desktop user/gamer would want to do that.

If you're looking to play games in Linux the only real way to go with your display card is an Nvidia. Nvidia has by far the best 3D driver support out there IMO.

[thanks]

I and many others agree with your opinion on SLI technology, however I do not agree with your view on dual-core cpu's. I just recently read a couple articles on the differences between the Pentium D's and the Athlon X2's, and I've got to honestly say I'd love to have the 3800+ X2. It's about 20 dollars more than a 1mb l2 cache san diego 754, and everything is slowly going to standardize dual-core technology. Software is catching up to dual-computing way faster than any graphics card improvements such as SLI. I've seen the benchmarks, dual-cpu's are no longer a gimmick. That is, the X2's at least hahah. As long as you don't buy a Pentium D, you're getting your money's worth. The X2's are work horses.

[LondoJowo]

"I've seen the benchmarks, dual-cpu's are no longer a gimmick."

Granted a dual core is better than a single core or hyperthreaded processor but is no different than a real dual processor setup. If an application is not written for to take advantage of SMP it will be no different when running it on a single core processor. The only thing you will gain with a dual core or true dual processor setup is the ablility to multitask without taking a performance hit..

[thanks]

Of course it's not better than a true dual processor setup, however it's much more cost effective for home users.

[LondoJowo]

Of course it's not better than a true dual processor setup, however it's much more cost effective for home users.

I agree

[techieMoe]

Of course it's not better than a true dual processor setup, however it's much more cost effective for home users.

However, as stated before, most applications that home users are going to use from day to day are not designed to take advantage of a dual-cpu or dual-core-single-cpu architecture, so at this point I would argue the most "cost effective" CPU is a powerful single core.