> What is the best dual process motherboard, and processor to buy for a
> small - medium sized web/mysql server It is for my home, I have
> started a business and I am running it from home, and have no exp yet
> with dual processor combinations? I will be running RedHat 7.0. I
> have the machine up and running now, but its an older AMD K6-3 450
> with a promise 66 raid controller...
Beware the i840 chipset, it has a broken IO-APIC (with it disabled
responsiveness is badly hurt). Most anything else runs nicely. Lately I
have considered the ServerWorks chipsets the choice if you need 64-bit
PCI; otherwise, there are a lot of good boards out there (BX chipset has
been quite solid for a long time). FYI, a valid reason for SMP is to
maintain responsiveness under load; this can be a problem for web
servers, and SMP does help there. Often a concern is hard drive access
speed, since multiple persons may be reading web pages at nearly the
same time. In which case you should definitely consider SCSI, especially
ultra-160.