hardware questions, Ubuntu and Dell

[Michael March]

> der.hans wrote:
>  > I'm wanting to do some virtual machine testing.
>  [snip]
>
> > With this box, though, I'd like something that'll handle well for
>  > virtualization stuff, but not be a power hog.
>  >
>  > I would generally prefer something from AMD. Would the Intel quad core
>  > CPUs make a huge difference?
>
>  You just said one of the (very few) magic words that can actually be
>  used to justify a quad-core CPU -- virtualization.  Quad-core chips are
>  massive (mostly unused) overkill for 99% of the people who get them, but
>  for those that have CPU bound apps, they can be a boon.
>
>  This, of course, is assuming that you will be doing mostly CPU intensive
>  stuff in the VMs.  VMs are pretty poor at I/O bound usage patterns, in
>  any event.
>
>  Quad-core CPUs also excel at development.  I was doing a bit of
>  development on a quad-CPU system (pre "core" CPUs) for a while and was
>  in heaven very time I did a compile.
>
>  To skew this a bit closer to reality, though, you might want to consider
>  just how many VMs you will be running simultaneously.  If it's only one,
>  then quad-core isn't worth it.  Go with a faster dual-core for the same
>  money... it'll be far more useful.
>
>  One final thing: while I completely understand the urge to go with AMD
>  vs Intel (I have the same tendency), I don't know that it's easy to
>  justify that right now.  The Intel Core2 chips are amazingly fast for
>  about the same price as the AMD chips.  They whip even the latest and
>  greatest AMD chips on not only the top-end, but bang for the buck.

Yeah.. Up until last year I was an AMD fanboy.. but they've lost it
recently. And the Phenom Quad-Core is a POS (the other kind).  It
specifically has a horrible bug that makes it super sucky for running
64bit VMs. Unfortunately, its Intel all the way for the short term
future.