Yes, you anticipate some of my concerns: Namely simplicity and small footprint. I did not know there was a way to control memory usage by onboard video chipsets. If you can, please elaborate where I'd find the controls for that.
Further, I'll be using ASUS A7N8X-E mobo's which have onboard video. If anyone has some suggestions on tweaks, send them along.
I do not think the A7N8X-E has onboard video, what your looking for is the A7N8X-VM/400. The A7N8X-VM/400(Great motherboard, the onboard Geforce4MX is much better then the crud some board makers put onboard)is what I'm using on all my machines at work, works great. I'll recomend that if you use this board, to run 2 x 256mb of memory so that you can use the dual channel memory, this will help with any hit you take on the video GPU and CPU both using the memory bandwidth. Even still, I doubt you'll notice a hit in performance with a single stick of memory, especially if the machines only being used for running einstein and will probably be in a state where it has the monitor output powered down most of the time anyway. Either way the board does have an AGP slot, so if you did want to check if an AGP card would help, you can plug it in and do some bench marking on it.
Under the BIOS, go to ADVANCED->CHIPSET->VIDEO FRAME BUFFER SIZE, this controls how much memory the GPU will steal from system memory. I'll recomend 32mb. Since your only running einstein you shouldn't have any worry abot running low on memory. You could probably get away with 256mb if cost is a concern.
An important thing to keep in mind concerning cheap AGP Cards and modern Motherboards :
All modern Motherboards are 4x/8x (1.5v/0.8v) AGP only these days, installing an old/cheap card with 1x/2x (3.3v) AGP specifications into such a motherboard can physically destroy the Card and/or the Motherboard.
(unless there is AGP protection circuitry onboard, which will simply prevent power-up of such a combination)
Some 1/2x AGP Cards even run for a while in 4x/8x AGP Motherboards, but the components are suffering extremely, prone to catastrophic failure any day.
My dedicated Systems all have cheap PCI Cards (way cheaper than 10$ ;) ) running, never had any Problems with them and the power consumption is also absolutely minimal.
Those can often be catched in lots of 5 or more on Ebay, for almost nothing.
(we're talking stuff like S3 Trio, ATI Rage, Trident or Matrox Mystique, being perfect ultra-low-power server cards producing almost no heat)
It depends on how much time you want to invest, but choosing Linux over Windows for dedicated crunchers eventually saves money and yields much more flexibility.
My latest upgrade is a So939 Athlon64 3000+ (Winchester Core) consuming only 82W running at full steam.
All modern Motherboards are 4x/8x (1.5v/0.8v) AGP only these days, installing an old/cheap card with 1x/2x (3.3v) AGP specifications into such a motherboard can physically destroy the Card and/or the Motherboard.
(unless there is AGP protection circuitry onboard, which will simply prevent power-up of such a combination)
I think you'll find that it is nearly impossible to insert an AGP Spec 1.0 card into an AGP Spec 2.0 or 3.0 slot, because of the position of a pin at the front of the AGP slot, which only fits in the notch on an AGP Spec 1.0 card. All other cards don't have this notch in their connector.
And I said nearly impossible, as I've seen people who managed to put 184pin RAM in a 168pin RAM slot and even one person putting a PCI card in an AGP slot. Everything fits if you use a hammer, I bet. ;)
And I said nearly impossible, as I've seen people who managed to put 184pin RAM in a 168pin RAM slot and even one person putting a PCI card in an AGP slot. Everything fits if you use a hammer, I bet. ;)
And I said nearly impossible, as I've seen people who managed to put 184pin RAM in a 168pin RAM slot and even one person putting a PCI card in an AGP slot. Everything fits if you use a hammer, I bet. ;)
If you are able to read German, you will have much fun here ;^)
In one of the air safety magazines they showed a tailhook "shoe" that is so designed that it can only go on one way, mounted on the upper side of the tail hook ... now you gotta ask, a shoe that is designed to take the abuse has to be pretty darn hard ... how much work did it take to install it wrong ...
It is tough to "idiot-proof" things as idiots are so darn ingeneous ...
Yes, you anticipate some of
)
Yes, you anticipate some of my concerns: Namely simplicity and small footprint. I did not know there was a way to control memory usage by onboard video chipsets. If you can, please elaborate where I'd find the controls for that.
Further, I'll be using ASUS A7N8X-E mobo's which have onboard video. If anyone has some suggestions on tweaks, send them along.
A7N8X-E
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16813131478
A7N8X-VM/400
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16813131483
I do not think the A7N8X-E has onboard video, what your looking for is the A7N8X-VM/400. The A7N8X-VM/400(Great motherboard, the onboard Geforce4MX is much better then the crud some board makers put onboard)is what I'm using on all my machines at work, works great. I'll recomend that if you use this board, to run 2 x 256mb of memory so that you can use the dual channel memory, this will help with any hit you take on the video GPU and CPU both using the memory bandwidth. Even still, I doubt you'll notice a hit in performance with a single stick of memory, especially if the machines only being used for running einstein and will probably be in a state where it has the monitor output powered down most of the time anyway. Either way the board does have an AGP slot, so if you did want to check if an AGP card would help, you can plug it in and do some bench marking on it.
Under the BIOS, go to ADVANCED->CHIPSET->VIDEO FRAME BUFFER SIZE, this controls how much memory the GPU will steal from system memory. I'll recomend 32mb. Since your only running einstein you shouldn't have any worry abot running low on memory. You could probably get away with 256mb if cost is a concern.
An important thing to keep in
)
An important thing to keep in mind concerning cheap AGP Cards and modern Motherboards :
All modern Motherboards are 4x/8x (1.5v/0.8v) AGP only these days, installing an old/cheap card with 1x/2x (3.3v) AGP specifications into such a motherboard can physically destroy the Card and/or the Motherboard.
(unless there is AGP protection circuitry onboard, which will simply prevent power-up of such a combination)
Some 1/2x AGP Cards even run for a while in 4x/8x AGP Motherboards, but the components are suffering extremely, prone to catastrophic failure any day.
My dedicated Systems all have cheap PCI Cards (way cheaper than 10$ ;) ) running, never had any Problems with them and the power consumption is also absolutely minimal.
Those can often be catched in lots of 5 or more on Ebay, for almost nothing.
(we're talking stuff like S3 Trio, ATI Rage, Trident or Matrox Mystique, being perfect ultra-low-power server cards producing almost no heat)
It depends on how much time you want to invest, but choosing Linux over Windows for dedicated crunchers eventually saves money and yields much more flexibility.
My latest upgrade is a So939 Athlon64 3000+ (Winchester Core) consuming only 82W running at full steam.
All modern Motherboards are
)
All modern Motherboards are 4x/8x (1.5v/0.8v) AGP only these days, installing an old/cheap card with 1x/2x (3.3v) AGP specifications into such a motherboard can physically destroy the Card and/or the Motherboard.
(unless there is AGP protection circuitry onboard, which will simply prevent power-up of such a combination)
I think you'll find that it is nearly impossible to insert an AGP Spec 1.0 card into an AGP Spec 2.0 or 3.0 slot, because of the position of a pin at the front of the AGP slot, which only fits in the notch on an AGP Spec 1.0 card. All other cards don't have this notch in their connector.
And I said nearly impossible, as I've seen people who managed to put 184pin RAM in a 168pin RAM slot and even one person putting a PCI card in an AGP slot. Everything fits if you use a hammer, I bet. ;)
And I said nearly impossible,
)
And I said nearly impossible, as I've seen people who managed to put 184pin RAM in a 168pin RAM slot and even one person putting a PCI card in an AGP slot. Everything fits if you use a hammer, I bet. ;)
Or use a rasp!
http://www.dau-alarm.de/pictures/hardware/ram-014_k.jpg
If you are able to read German, you will have much fun here ;^)
And I said nearly impossible,
)
And I said nearly impossible, as I've seen people who managed to put 184pin RAM in a 168pin RAM slot and even one person putting a PCI card in an AGP slot. Everything fits if you use a hammer, I bet. ;)
Or use a rasp!
http://www.dau-alarm.de/pictures/hardware/ram-014_k.jpg
If you are able to read German, you will have much fun here ;^)
In one of the air safety magazines they showed a tailhook "shoe" that is so designed that it can only go on one way, mounted on the upper side of the tail hook ... now you gotta ask, a shoe that is designed to take the abuse has to be pretty darn hard ... how much work did it take to install it wrong ...
It is tough to "idiot-proof" things as idiots are so darn ingeneous ...