Need Help: Building cheap rig for game server

[Liquid Snake]

Alright, yesterday I set up a CS server for any MURCers who play CS. It's a very old machine (P166, 32MB RAM), and was quite laggy with 8 people (bandwidth was not a problem). So I thought about building a cheap (<$1000) rig. I want a dual-proc rig (CPU 1 = server, CPU 2 = SETI).

Here's what I have so far:
PC Power & Cooling Personal Mid-Tower ($59)
PC Power & Cooling Silencer 275W ATX ($99)
2 P3-533EB (~$120 each)
2 Mushkin PC133 64MB modules (~$75 each)
IBM 75GXP 15GB HD (~$110)
Matrox Millenium I 2MB ($0, have an old one lying around)
3Com 3C905B-TX-NM NIC (~$45)

Well, I still need a dual-proc mobo. Any suggestions? I also considered an AMD rig, but I have little experience with AMD machines (except the crap ones at school) and I'm not sure if there are any dual-proc mobos. But the AMD CPUs are VERY cheap compared to the Intel CPUs.

[Humus]

Currently there is no dual CPU mboards for AMD processors. But within a month or two AMD will release the AMD760MP chipset which will enable multiprocessor systems for Durons and Tbirds.

[Brian R.]

Matrox has not released any W2K drivers for Millenium I.

[Liquid Snake]

Guess I'll have to go the Intel route.

Don't worry, I'm running Linux, and its only text-mode, so I'm not too concerned about what video card I'm using, but I just had an old Millenium I lying around.

[Brian R.]

Sounded like you were going to run Win2K. Linux does SMP?

[Liquid Snake]

Yeah, because I already have Linux. Anyway, Linux is good for small/medium servers (exactly what a game server is). The current Linux kernel (2.2) does SMP, and I heard the SMP will be improved in 2.4 (coming soon). The HL dedicated server doesn't support SMP, neither does SETI, but I know you can tell SETI CLI which CPU to use. So then server will, by default, take CPU 1. Then I assign SETI to CPU 2.

I also considered a BP6 with dual Celerons (cheaper) but I heard that they are rather unstable since Celeron is not designed for SMP.

[Pace]

Hehe, I think Linux will support it!

Paul.

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[Liquid Snake]

I've heard good things about the ASUS P2B-D (is that what its called?), but its rather expensive. Anyone know of a good dual-proc mobo?

[Rags]

If you run a server, I wouldn't recommend running SETI on it, even in dual processor mode. You will get more lag and the memory bus will be hogged, and SETI will not be all that productive. Stick with a single processor for a game server, IMO.

Rags

[paulcs]

MSI makes a VIA Apollo Pro 133A dual CPU motherboard, and I've read reports that it is actually stable. It might save you some money, as it supports the Socket 370 form factor, so you won't have to invest in slockets. It has onboard sound, which isn't ideal, but it should be fine for a server.

I'm not sure what the ramifications of running Linux on it would be. Most of the tests I've seen have been with W2K.

Paul
paulcs@flashcom.net

[This message has been edited by paulcs (edited 26 August 2000).]