[lug] Tyan - Typhoon DX-630 Personal Supercomputer ? Good Thing?

[dio2002 at indra.com]

> Someplace like serversdirect.com will sell something about equivalent to
> the compute nodes for $1,200-$1,500.
>
> So, 5 1U rackmounts would be about $7,500. That would leave $12,500 to
> purchase a rack and the operating systems.

1) Have you bought a box from these guys and recommending them on
experience or did you just find this link on the net somewhere?

and if anybody else wants to chime in about first hand experience online
server shops they've used i'd love to hear recommendations both positve
and negative (e.g. definitely don't use this outfit, beware, etc).

2) And a related question  that probably should be a separate topic but
i'll put it here for better context to serversdirect:

If you look at this link:

http://serversdirect.com/config.asp?config_id=SDR-6015B-TB

When it comes to the following first two cpu choices:

Intel Dual-Core Xeon 5050 Processor 3.0GHz 667MHz
Intel Dual-Core Xeon 5060 Processor 3.2GHz 1066MHz

General cpu questions:

a) Is it possible to mix and match different speed processors if you
decide to go dual cpus(e.g. say you buy a certain processor today but 8
months down the road you have more money to spend so opt for a second and
faster processor)?

b) would it be better to spend the money on ONE FASTER Intel Dual-Core
Xeon 5060 Processor 3.2GHz 1066MHz (single cpu with faster bus) or go with
a TWO Intel Dual-Core Xeon 5050 Processor 3.0GHz 667MHz (two cpus with
slower bus)?

It's a hypothetical question where both come in at about the same price
point of a given budget.

c) any way to guage the objective performance of all these cpus in the
real world combinations / configurations (answer hypothetical questions
like i presented in "b" above - if you have 1 processor type x at speed a
versus 2 processors of type y at z speed, etc)?

d) in the model spec'd in the link i posted, can i assume that later
release linux distros support these xeon / dual core processors?  i ask
because the model presented only offers support for windows-based servers.

thanks