Hey Im thinking of getting a new system and i cant decide if i should get a P4 2.2GHz i850 or not. Im basically running server application on this system Windows 2000 Adv Server Citrix Server 5-10 users and Im also using VMWare on this system to run multiple OS'es at a time Im going to be running Novell Netware 6 and Windows XP Pro on VMWare on 2000 Adv Server at the same time plus the citrix clients and a LAN Proxy and NAT/VPN/DNS/Intranet Web/Directory Server some Oracle databases. I noticed that the P4 has 512K of cache right now. Basically I will need at least 2GB of RDRAM to support everything on here. Will that ATA100 be enough/do i need RAID? Ocasionally I play some games on the system while all that is going on in the background (our athlon XP system is currently OVERLOADED by all this). This is basically a test system (on a small office network) and not a mission critical server and cost is not a concern right now. Will a P4 offer enough power for all of this or should I really be leaning more towards the high end stuff like 8way / P4 Xeons systems? Recommend something for me :) Thanks

Office system and cost is not a concern? Can I come work for you? My 2¢ 2GB of RDRAM is going to cost you. With RAM prices rising, I'm not sure how that works out vs DDR RAM. Not sure if you'll even find a none server mobo to support 2GB RDRAM. RDRAM has more latency than DDR, but in certain applications is the fastest thing going (DDR is catching up though). The new 512K cache CPU will certainly help power things. But for the heat, the latest Athlon CPU is still a little faster, in certain applications. Unless all the instaled s/w is going to be hitting the disk a lot, ATA100 should do you fine. Besides, the reviews I've read indicate you won't see much of a differece like you would from ATA33 to ATA66 or ATA100. See post #17545 (xp forum) for the links. And since money is no object, get a RAID board that does RAID 5, (stripping with partiy) to play I mean test out. Mirroring is okay, at the cost of another disk and speed, plain stripping fool hardy. Lastly, getting one of those 4way or 8way server boxes is very expensive and usually require an air conditioned environment, not an regular office environment. Let me know about the job :)

You probably should get a dual CPU motherboard, with dual P4, or dual Athlon MP, since Windows 2000 Adv Server & Windows XP supports dual processors (I think it does, you should check with Microsoft). That would boost your speed by 2x.