02/18/2003 11:08:00

Well after months of planning and years of dreaming it has finally happened... I have built the dream machine. It cost $3000+ dollars but it is finally here. Yes it is an SMP box and as you may have guessed based on the title - it uses Xeon processors. Here are the raw specs:

2x 2.6ghz Xeons 1024mb PC800 RDRAM 70 gigs harddrive capacity ATI Radeon 9700 Pro Memorex DVD+RW 2.4x Soundblaster Live 5.1+ (Audigy 2 had SMP compatibility issues)

Yes the machine is truly a pleasure to use. As you may have also guessed - I built it on my own and purchased the parts from various online retailers. So the real question is of course, what OS is this monster sporting? For right now and the forseeable future its running Windows XP. I've spent some time attempting to work with Linux on this machine and while it does run like a dream, the drivers for the 9700 series video card are a bit immature as of now. Currently the ATI drivers do not allow me to drive both of my monitors off the same video card like I am able to in windows. So for now - this is a Windows only workstation.

If anybody is interested in building a box like this - just drop me an email and I'll give you the specifics on what to buy and where to buy it. A great place to start would be The Arstechnica System Guide . These people know their stuff and without them I may not have fared quite as well.

J