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Dave wrote: > Hi All, > > I am looking to spec a machine for a LINUX MCE Core. Because it is a > Core I am trying to make it as powerful as I can afford but this had led > to a couple of questions regarding LINUX which I must profess to be > ignorant in and was wondering whether anyone could provide the answers > to. Please bear in mind I will be using Kubuntu 7.10 because that is the > latest version LINUX MCE will run on. Hopefully before April 2009 they'll update it to run on 8.04.1 (April 2009 is the Kubuntu 7.10 end of life). > Firstly I am looking to put in 4 Gig Memory (the max for the MB) but am > unsure as to whether a 32 Bit LINUX can address such a large amount > directly and if not what happens to the rest of it; does it sit idle > (and wasted) or will it become a RAMDisk or similar? 32-bit Linux won't use 4GB. It can only address up to about 3.5GB, I presume the rest isn't accessible. I have 4GB Ram in my PC running Ubuntu 8.04.1 64-Bit and when I first boot up it uses a couple of hundred meg, but after a while with lots open it will eventually use about 3GB memory. > Secondly I was going to get a Quad-Core Processor but again I wasn't > sure whether LINUX would make use of all the Processors (ditto > Dual-Core) or would be better saving money and using a single-core > Processor instead? (or at least the cheapest Dual-Core). You should bear in mind a quad core CPU uses a lot more power (as in electricity). You might find a Core 2 Duo around 2.4 or 3Ghz to be a better option? AMD also have a range of low power dual core Athlons. IIRC the Quad Core Phenoms (I have a Phenom X4 9500 with the TLB bug) use around 120 Watts of power. From experience on my system, it doesn't seem much quicker with a quad core CPU than it does with a dual core. Of course if you're going to be running video transcoding tasks etc then the extra cores may come in useful although looking at this... http://wiki.linuxmce.org/index.php/Hardware It suggests a P4 2.4GHz can encode 2 streams and serve content to a remote frontend, so a Core 2 Duo or Athlon X2 will probably be fine. I presume the content will be standard definition with maybe a bit of FreeSat HD chucked in for good measure? Rob -- The Mailing List for the Devon & Cornwall LUG http://mailman.dclug.org.uk/listinfo/list FAQ: http://www.dcglug.org.uk/linux_adm/list-faq.html