[Adium-devl] Hardware plans

[Chris Forsythe]

On Aug 23, 2007, at 6:57 PM, David Smith wrote:

>
> On Aug 23, 2007, at 4:53 PM, Evan Schoenberg wrote:
>
>>
>> On Aug 23, 2007, at 7:23 PM, David Smith wrote:
>>
>>> On Aug 23, 2007, at 4:17 PM, Peter Hosey wrote:
>>>
>>>> On Aug 23, 2007, at 16:03:49, Evan Schoenberg wrote:
>>>>> 2 GB DDR2 SDRAM
>>>>
>>>> Would this be expansible to 4 if we find that 2 GiB isn't enough?
>>>>
>>>> If so, then that'd be good to start. If not, let's order it with 4,
>>>> on the principle that too much is better than not enough.
>>>>
>>>
>>> Apple claims 2GB max; I suspect that's just due to the very high
>>> prices of 2GB dimms, but I wouldn't be surprised if the real max was
>>> 3GB. I'd say go for 2G. I run IntelliJ + 3 browsers + 3 chat  
>>> programs
>>> + Mail + etc... on 2GB, and it's generally fine. I like this plan.
>>
>> The real max is indeed 3 GB.
>>
>> According to the performance benchmarks from Other World Computing
>> [1], XBench performance is best at paired 2 GB, Halo is best at
>> paired 2 GB, and all Photoshop tests are best at paired 4 GB with
>> unpaired (1 GB + 2 GB) 3 GB a very, very close second.  (Paired is
>> better performance than unpaired for this chipset, all else being
>> equal).
>>
>> We could go with 3 GB for $179, or with 2 GB from Apple for $135
>> (which turns out to be a pretty competitive price for 2 x 1 GB).
>> I'm inclined to think that XBench is a better measure of
>> compilation speed -- the most intensive task the system will be
>> performing -- than Photoshop filters. Seem reasonable?
>>
>> [1] http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/apple/memory/
>> iMac_and_Mac_mini_memory_performance_testing
>>
>> -Evan
>
> I'm inclined think that XBench is BS, actually :/
>
> 3GB for $179 is pretty hard to turn down though... I had no idea
> prices had fallen that far.

Who's going to put 3 gb into the system and is that apple memory?  
We're getting apple care, so if we get third party that would make  
shipping a box to NR and having them ship that to apple a lot tougher  
since the NR technicians would need to pop the box open to remove the  
non-apple memory and throw in whatever default we get from apple in  
there.

I'm inclined to go with whatever apple provides as the max in the  
store configurator, and leave it at that, for every device we  
purchase. The max for a mini on the store is 2 gb. Since we fully  
intend to get more machines, we can move services around as required.  
NR is going to have to mount a tray into a rack in their rackspace,  
so we'll have room to grow since a tray will accommodate more than  
just one mac mini. As David said, his mini can do a lot. If we're  
going to use it to host the random SEE document and be used as a  
buildbot and we find that it's using more than it should be, we can  
move things around.


Chris