Hello James, thank you for your answer.
2008/6/30 James Cornell <sparcdr at gmail.com>: > TSC support is required under Solaris for cpufreq on MP systems due to > realtime accounting needs. Systems before Barcelona will not work in MP > mode with frkit on PowerNow K8. Replacing with Barcelona will allow you to > use cpufreq, reducing your power bill. I read some docs on this issue, and see where this is coming from. One forum thread mentioned that the AMD Phenom should not show this behaviour, can someone here second that? Since my mobo features an AM2 slot I can't switch to the newer Opterons. Sounds like overkill, too. But if the Phenom is a working alternative to the Athlon64 X2 I'm eager to get one. > Power savings will be offset by > initial upgrade cost, which involves a new board and the cpu, but you should > see $25/mo savings per unit. I cannot afford to upgrade as I do so only > every 2 years, so Solaris is quickly becoming a non-option as it is becoming > an expense as opposed to a gain. I got the entire machine in the beginning of this year, so changing the entire hardware isn't an option for me neither. [...] > FreeBSD, Windows XP/Vista, and Linux do not have the same realtime > architecture (Or in cases no realtime at all) so they can save you money on > your older hardware. I would be running FreeBSD if VirtualBox were > available, though I'm evaluating other systems as well. OpenSolaris is > becoming worthless for my needs because they will not even attempt to > backport, insisting that TSC dependence is a requirement, when I personally > would care less about time drift if I could actually save money. Disabling > the second core is also an option, which in large could be a stop-gap until > an upgrade is possible. IMO every OS has its pros and cons nowaday. I migrated from FreeBSD because the virtualisation capabilities (jails) can't be compared to what Solaris offers with Zones. Linux was fine in the past, but the introduction of many new drivers and file systems opened up some stability issues. Then there are some merely political aspects why I started to dislike these two. Additionally I work as an Solaris SysAdmin so having Solaris at home makes dealing with another OS simply a loss of spare time. I guess the reasons what OS to choose, and why, are an individual matter. For me, I not only want a machine that can act as a media server (record DVB-S video streams from some external source, for example) but for some smaller website. Gives me the power of having all data in a secure environment. And I don't need a contract with any company to grant me some service that might turn out to be unreliable eventually. [...] Regards Christian
