Hi, For a workstation, you could look at the Ultra 27 workstation which has a i7 core processor in it:
http://www.sun.com/desktop/workstation/ultra27/index.xml With that one could get a nice NVidia card from Sun or your favorite retail site for PC gear. One could also build something from scratch since this is not a server and on x86. For me, I have an older Ultra20 and a Levono laptop running OpenSolaris. Windows works great in VirtualBox, but plan on having some extra RAM around for running it. For OpenSolaris, Virtualbox, Windows, and MCAD work.. the more RAM the better. Luckily, RAM is pretty cheap these days on the desktop side. *-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-* Octave J. Orgeron Solaris Virtualization Architect and Consultant Web: http://unixconsole.blogspot.com E-Mail: [email protected] *-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-* ----- Original Message ---- From: Ken Gunderson <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Sent: Sun, January 17, 2010 8:33:29 PM Subject: [sysadmin-discuss] Xeon E5520 Supported Mainboard Hello: I've got a buddy looking to build a workstation grade system. Seasoned HP-UX guy who wants to learn Solaris. Also wants this machine to do double duty as CAD workstation so rather than dual booting he might like to run Windows in VirtualBox session. If he can accomplish this with OpenSolaris as host OS then box will also serve as small home file server. In any event, he's presently eyeballing an Intel quad core Xeon E5520 w/8MB of cache: <http://ark.intel.com/Product.aspx?id=40200> I've trawled through the HCL and not really coming up with any suitable mainboards. This is workstation grade machine not server so single socket should suffice. Else if he's barking totally up the wrong tree w/this CPU, what alternative supported CPU/mainboard would you suggest (I'm primarily AMD based so not up on Intel offerings)? Finally, this might not be best list but he obviously needs to have pretty decent GPU for CAD and 3D modeling purposes. With OpenSolaris release just around the corner, any new supported chipsets we should be looking at? Worst case he can dual boot into Winblows but all other things being equal it would be nice to have Open/Solaris supported card. Thanks-- Ken -- Ken Gunderson <[email protected]> _______________________________________________ sysadmin-discuss mailing list [email protected] http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/sysadmin-discuss _______________________________________________ sysadmin-discuss mailing list [email protected] http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/sysadmin-discuss
