Thanks for all the input - some clarifications.
1. Budget is 50K - monitors not required.
2. Have a special prediliction towards Adaptec SAS controllers which need a PCI Express 8x slot - do any of these motherboards support both PCI-e 8x for peripheral cards AND PCI-e 16x for graphics ? I know that most server boards don't have the 16x support for the graphics card.
3. Which operating system will allow me to see 6 or 12Gb of RAM and yet be stable ? I have had excellent performance stability with Win 2K and Win 2003 Server (though limited to 3Gb / 4Gb ram), but XP and VISTA seemed much slower with the same hardware. Is Windows 7 an option ?
4. I know that SAS SCSI was due for an upgrade to higher throughput - has this happened yet ?
5. Will a XEON not be wasted on the fact that most of my work is graphics based ? I sometimes work with huge files - 1Gb and larger.
6. In reviews I've seen regarding SSD's (places like tom's hardware), they say that the SSD performance degrades very rapidly as it becomes fragmented, and that even after defragging it, and even reformatting it, they could never get back to the original performance it has when still new.
7. Does Windows 7 support win 2k programs, or should I run a virtual machine within Win 7 of win 2k ?
8. If my choice is between blinding speed with mediocre stability, or good speed with incredible stability, I choose incredible stability.
1. Budget is 50K - monitors not required.
2. Have a special prediliction towards Adaptec SAS controllers which need a PCI Express 8x slot - do any of these motherboards support both PCI-e 8x for peripheral cards AND PCI-e 16x for graphics ? I know that most server boards don't have the 16x support for the graphics card.
3. Which operating system will allow me to see 6 or 12Gb of RAM and yet be stable ? I have had excellent performance stability with Win 2K and Win 2003 Server (though limited to 3Gb / 4Gb ram), but XP and VISTA seemed much slower with the same hardware. Is Windows 7 an option ?
4. I know that SAS SCSI was due for an upgrade to higher throughput - has this happened yet ?
5. Will a XEON not be wasted on the fact that most of my work is graphics based ? I sometimes work with huge files - 1Gb and larger.
6. In reviews I've seen regarding SSD's (places like tom's hardware), they say that the SSD performance degrades very rapidly as it becomes fragmented, and that even after defragging it, and even reformatting it, they could never get back to the original performance it has when still new.
7. Does Windows 7 support win 2k programs, or should I run a virtual machine within Win 7 of win 2k ?
8. If my choice is between blinding speed with mediocre stability, or good speed with incredible stability, I choose incredible stability.