[gentoo-amd64] Recommended Motherboards?

[gentoo-amd64] Recommended Motherboards?

[Hamish Marson]

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Hi all.

My son's PC died (Bad caps) so he's getting my old one (Asus A8V with
AMD64 3200) and I'm going to buy a new motherboard & a 4200 X2
processor. The question is, what's a good motherboard nowadays for
AMD64 x2 processors?

I have used an Asus A8VE in the past with gentoo, and apart from a few
problems with ethernet it worked fine (Not mine, I installed it for
someone else). But the A8Ve doesn't appear to be available any more,
so I need to find a current one that's good with Linux.

Does anyone have any recommendations? The reviews at linuxhardware.org
seem a bit dated, and no-one else really seems to say much except
windoze windoze windoze...

The only specs I really have are amd64 x2, enough PCI slots (at least
4) and PCI-express for graphics (Might as well move up while I"m at
it). And needs both PATA & SATA, GigE and decent sound... (i.e. a good
replacement for the A8V/A8Ve boards).

Oh... Horror stories welcomed too. At least I'll know what to avoid
from those:)

TIA

Hamish.

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Re: [gentoo-amd64] Recommended Motherboards?

[William Tetrault]

On Tuesday 04 July 2006 06:26, Hamish Marson wrote:
> Hi all.
>
> My son's PC died (Bad caps) so he's getting my old one (Asus A8V with
> AMD64 3200) and I'm going to buy a new motherboard & a 4200 X2
> processor. The question is, what's a good motherboard nowadays for
> AMD64 x2 processors?

I'm using an Asus A8N-SLI Premium with my Opteron 180 and love it.  Haven't 
had any problems with any of the nvidia chipset features, it's stable (30+ 
days uptime running foldingathome 24/7 on both cores), and, if you only run 
one PCI-E graphics card, you'll have an x8 PCI-E slot for 
[you-fill-in-the-blank].  Sound is not audiophile-quality but is definitely 
more than decent.  There are two GigE ports [one nvidia and one Marvell (uses 
the SKGE driver)].  There are only 3 PCI slots, however, but you could easily 
make up the difference with the extra x8 and x4 PCI-E slots and adaptors.

Bill
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[gentoo-amd64] Re: Recommended Motherboards?

[Duncan]

Hamish Marson <hamish@travellingkiwi.com> posted
44AA506E.70105@travellingkiwi.com, excerpted below, on  Tue, 04 Jul 2006
12:26:38 +0100:

> The question is, what's a good motherboard nowadays for
> AMD64 x2 processors?

Tyan has probably the best Linux support you'll get from a mobo
manufacturer.  They tend more towards server/workstation and high end
desktop, and are priced a bit higher than some, but many of their boards
are pre-certified with Red Hat, SuSE/Novel, and TurboLinux.  I have a dual
Opteron board (the s2885), and have been very happy with it.  (I plan
upgrading it to dual-cores later this year or early next, after AMD
changes socket and the socket 940s start dropping in price, I'm currently
running Opteron 242s, 8 gig memory, 4 x 300 gig SATA drives in kernel-raid
0/1/6, dual 21 inch monitors in 1600x1200 each on a Radeon 9250 AGP
(freedomware X drivers), etc.)  Tyan even supplies an appropriate
lm_sensors.conf file for the board, and unlike some makers, uses plain zip
and pdf for its BIOS packages and documentation, not MSWormOS executables.

As I said, they tend toward the server/workstation side (Opterons), so
their selection of Athlon64/X2/socket-939 boards is a bit limited. 
However, they do have one board that fits the bill, NVidia NForce
Pro2200/Ultra chipset, depending on whether you want SLI config or not!

The model name/number is Tyan Tomcat K8E, s2866.  I just downloaded the
pdf of the manual, and it says it's RH and SuSE certified, so Linux
shouldn't be an issue.  (Unless I'm mistaken, which I might be as I don't
know NVidia's chipsets too well, lmsensors doesn't support that chipset
yet, so no config file.)  I should note it has only 3 PCI 2.2 slots, plus
the two PCI-E for the SLI, of course.  Single channel (2 drive) IDE, 4
channel SATA.

http://tyan.com/products/html/tomcatk8esli.html

Price?  As I said, not cheap.  Pricewatch.com has them starting at $223
(SLI version).



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"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman

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