[dundee] Opinions on the Sun Ultra 24 Box - Good bang-per-buck?

[Andrew Clayton]

On Thu, 24 Apr 2008 17:06:04 +0100, Rick Moynihan wrote:

> Hey, everyone.
> 
> My development machine (at work) is getting a little bit long in
> the-tooth (being a modest 4 year old machine), and I'm considering
> upgrading.
> 
> I was just wondering on whether anyone had any opinions on the
> bang-per-buck of the Sun Ultra 24 box?
> 
> http://uk.sun.com/catalog/?n-state=http://catalog.sun.com/productinfo.xml?site%3dUNITEDKGB%26catalogue%3dFC%26segment%3dFC_R%26item%3dFC_SC_CAT%26group%3d2005%26fid%3d5090%26id%3d15078%26partnerid%3dunitedkingdomcontext~~~G!06D635ED06CD!WBPkexcnEpBE33lB~standard~ws-nocache~~@http://syndicator.sun-catalogue.com/ukunited/unitedkingdomcontext
> 
> At about £1300 for an Intel Core 2 Quad Extreme Processor it seems
> pretty decent, but I've not really been following hardware over the
> past year?  I don't mind paying slightly over the odds for Sun kit, as
> experience has shown it to be many times more reliable than anything
> else I've seen.

Would that still hold out for their PC based stuff?, where all the bits
likely come from the same place anyways...

> The machine will primarily be used as a desktop workstation, for
> software development.
> 
> So, I want something that is:
> 
> 0) Runs Linux.
> 1) Bloody quick at compiling (mostly Java apps)
> 2) Got enough oomph to occaisionally support virtualisation of Windows
> XP (mainly for Software testing)
> 3) Got enough oomph to support a couple of virtual Linux servers
> running simultaneously (again for testing).
> 3) Is multi-core - (as we've written some pretty thread intensive
> software) 4) Is also great for web-browsing and good for more typical
> desktop workloads. 5) Can easily handle dual-head monitors 1280x1024
> (it'd also be nice to support higher resolutions in the future)
> 
> The spec is:
> 
> Sun Ultra 24 Workstation,
> 1 Intel Core2 Quad Extreme QX6850 3.0 GHz,
> 2 GB Memory,
> 1 x 250 GB SATA Disk Drive,
> NVS290 Graphics,
> 1 DVD-Dual,
> 1 x 10/100/1000 BaseT Ethernet Port,
> 2 x 1394 Firewire, Audio, 6 USB2.0 Ports, 2 Full-Length PCI Slots, 4
> PCI Express slots,
> Solaris Licence, Solaris 10 Operating System and Sun Development Tools
> Preinstalled, RoHS-6 Compliant
> 
> I can imagine I'll be primarily running Ubuntu (which has also been
> certified by Canonical on this machine), and perhaps occaisionally
> Windows.  I'd probably leave Solaris 10 on, incase I ever fancy
> testing under it (and perhaps using dtrace! :-) )
> 
> Concerns.
> 
> 1) Is the graphics card any good?  I don't care for games, but I hate
> seeing screen updates!  And how does it compare to the Nvidia Quadro
> FX 370???

Personally, until Nvidia get their head out of their arse, I'd avoid
Nvidia gfx.

> 2) Is 2gig adequate for typical use + some background virtualisation
> (of pretty minimal machines) + Netbeans & java development?  I suspect
> it'd easily handle it, but that 4gig would be better...

From experience you'll probably want at least 128-256MB per VM. So yeah
a few VM's and you should still have plenty of RAM.

> 3) Is quad extreme noticably better than the intel core 2 quad?

Don't know
 
> Thanks again,

Andrew