SUMMARY: Chipsets with AMD Processors

[devnull@adc.idt.com]

Many thanks to Dave McFerren, Dan.Burton, Calvin Dodge, Donald B. Altman
and Jim Coleman

In general XP seems to be getting a big thumbs up from all. I have used
MP's with great success myself and so this is not surprising.

The Asus A7N8X and the A7V333 and A7V-266C(running the via chipset)
received great reviews. Dan and Calvin didnt seem too pleased with VIA
chipset

The Nvidia geforce and the ATI cards seemed to popular as video cards.

I have pasting my original question and the emails that i received below.

Thanks for your time.

Original Posting
----------------
Hey All,

We are planning to buy some linux machines with AMD XP processors.
In the past of the linux machines that we have bought have been AMD MP
with the Tyan or Asus MoBo.

I would like to ping the group on any suggestions/horror stories with the
variety of chipset manufacturers that are available for XP.

I heard some bad things a couple of months back about the NForce2(NVIDIA)
in general.

Your thoughts on the VIA chipset and SIS chipset would be welcome.

Thanks and i really appreciate the time.

Dan.Burton
----------
Subject: Re: Chipsets with AMD Processors


What are these machines going to be used for?   I'm not sure if they've
resolved any of these issues or not, but there used to be some issues with
buffering in the VIA chipsets that were potentially very problematic if
you
were dealing with moving lots of data around in a relatively
time-sensitive
manner  - video & audio work, in particular.  That's why I opted for the
Intel chips instead.

Dave McFerren
-------------
Subject: Re: Chipsets with AMD Processors

Gents,

I have used the AMD XP processors with NO problems.  I have them in over
20 machines, (since they are a little less expensive than intel) that are set
up as routers, emailer etc.  I even use the 1800XP chip on my machine at home
that is running redhat 8, mandrake 9, XP, and server 2000.  I have had not
one problem.  I heartily recommend it.

Both old ECS motherboards and Asus A7V333, and A7V-266C.  I have also used
the A7N's from Asus, but found I didn't like the video taking ram.

I had problems with win2k on that board, with sound cutting out.  But had
no problems at all with linux.  I have used Redhat 7.3 and 8.0 and Mandrake
on them without incident.  I run a stock kernel with the machine at my house,
but the linux routers, I strip all the services but the ones I need
running, and recompile so the will run the ipsec freeswan stuff.
Most are using kernel 2.4.20.

The routers don't even have heads on most of them.  We have been putting
ati 32 mb cards in them.  Works good.  I have an NVidia geforce at my
house and it runs like a champ.  I did have to download drivers and compile
them for my home machine, but it was fairly painless, and it is a 64 MB
card, so I am happy.

Calvin Dodge
------------
> We are planning to buy some linux machines with AMD XP processors.
> In the past of the linux machines that we have bought have been AMD MP
> with the Tyan or Asus MoBo.
>
> I would like to ping the group on any suggestions/horror stories with the
> variety of chipset manufacturers that are available for XP.
>
> I heard some bad things a couple of months back about the NForce2(NVIDIA)
> in general.

I've been using a couple of Asus A7N8X boards with Linux (RH 8.0). FWIW,
I'm usin XP 1700+ CPUS.

They work quite nicely with the following caveats:

1) You need a patched kernel to get DMA on hard drive access (3-4 MB/second
    without it, 40 MB with)
2) Sound is not yet supported in Linux
3) the built-in NIC requires a binary-only driver from Nvidia. I had problems
   with this NIC in Windows, so I simply installed an Intel NIC, and disabled
   the onboard unit.

> Your thoughts on the VIA chipset and SIS chipset would be welcome.

VIA has a STINKY reputation (poor performance and reliability). I avoid it
like th plague.

The newer SIS chipsets for Socket A (735 and 745, IIRC) have a good
reputation.
I'd use them IF Nforce2 boards are unsuitable for your application.

Calvin





/dev/null

devnull@adc.idt.com
_______________________________________________
LinuxManagers mailing list - http://www.linuxmanagers.org
submissions: LinuxManagers@linuxmanagers.org
subscribe/unsubscribe: http://www.linuxmanagers.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxmanagers