[TriLUG] AMD and reliability

[Ken Wahl]

I've been using AMD processors exclusively since 2000 starting with the
K6-2 up through the Athlon XP (1800, 2000, 2600 and 3000 that I'm using
currently). Out of all of them, I've only had the K6-2 fail after a year or
so which I blame on sub-par cooling on my part. I've always ran my boxes
24/7.

I think your choice of AMD vs Intel is less relevant to reliability than
your choice of motherboard and memory as flakey motherboards and ram
along with insufficient cooling seem to be the biggest causes of
instability in my limited experience.

I had excellent reliability/stability running a combination of an AMD
Athlon 2600+, a Tyan Trinity KT-400 and a pair of matched Corsair
Extreme XMS DDR modules. This was the case not only with Linux but with
OpenBSD as well.

Since the death of K6-2 I've gone overboard with the cooling on my
systems and haven't lost a processor yet. I still have all of them and
they are all still functional. A cool case seems to lead to long life.

Regardless of whether you go Intel or AMD, do your research on not only
the motherboards themselves but the associated chipsets and don't be
cheap with the quality of RAM or with the case fans. For RAM, Corsair
has made a loyal customer out of me.

To answer your question directly, a pair of opterons on a Tyan board
with Corsair RAM and a well-reviewed PSU would be my choice.