well-supported motherboard

well-supported motherboard

[carloschoenberg]

I am looking for a motherboard that is known to work well with Linux.
"Known to work well" means:
1) working open source drivers exist for all onboard components
2) most people are not experiencing random crashes or data corruption,
or the reason for such is understood and a proper fix exists.
3) multiple people are using the board successfully
4) no VIA northbridge/southbridge, though other VIA components might
be OK.  Although there are people successfully using VIA chipsets, I
do not believe that VIA considers the stability of their products to
be an important concern.
                                                                                
It seems that no one does proper testing of motherboards with Linux.
Although I can find reviews that put a variety of boards through a
handful of tests in Windows, I can't find any reviews that properly
test Linux.
                                                                                
I had preferred AMD CPUs, but if my choices for motherboards are VIA
and nforce2 (random crashing) chipsets, it looks like I will have to
go with P4.
                                                                                
My other requirements/desires are:
1) AGP 8X (this is the only hard requirement for features)
2) Dual ethernet
3) lots of USB2.0
4) firewire
5) four IDE controllers
6) audio with SPDIF out that will not resample 44100khz output (I'm not
sure if this exists).

Re: well-supported motherboard

[Joel Jaeggli]

On Sun, 25 Apr 2004 carloschoenberg@yahoo.com wrote:

> I am looking for a motherboard that is known to work well with Linux.
> "Known to work well" means:
> 1) working open source drivers exist for all onboard components
> 2) most people are not experiencing random crashes or data corruption,
> or the reason for such is understood and a proper fix exists.
> 3) multiple people are using the board successfully
> 4) no VIA northbridge/southbridge, though other VIA components might
> be OK.  Although there are people successfully using VIA chipsets, I
> do not believe that VIA considers the stability of their products to
> be an important concern.

notwithstanding any previous issues we've had I've found our via k8t800 
chipset mainboards (amd64 cpus) to be very stable. the one we use for 
desktop machines is the msi kt8 neo fisr and we been very happy with the 
hardware support in modern distros for these boards. 
                                                                                 
> It seems that no one does proper testing of motherboards with Linux.
> Although I can find reviews that put a variety of boards through a
> handful of tests in Windows, I can't find any reviews that properly
> test Linux.

Both supermicro and tyan do fairly extensive testing of their server and 
workstation product lines with linux. If you think there's a lot of dual 
itanium II's and 4-way opterons out there running windows you'd be wrong. 
They both make boards that ought to be pretty attractive to building 
single cpu desktops boxes such as the supermicro p4sct+II (intel 875p) or 
the tyan Tiger K8WS (amd chipset)
                                                                                 
> I had preferred AMD CPUs, but if my choices for motherboards are VIA
> and nforce2 (random crashing) chipsets, it looks like I will have to
> go with P4.
>                                                                                 
> My other requirements/desires are:
> 1) AGP 8X (this is the only hard requirement for features)
> 2) Dual ethernet
> 3) lots of USB2.0
> 4) firewire
> 5) four IDE controllers
> 6) audio with SPDIF out that will not resample 44100khz output (I'm not
> sure if this exists).

I'd look at the msi 875P NEO-FIS2R for p4, the K8T_Neo-FIS2R for athlon64 
and the tyan thunder K8W or ws for an opteron solution. given how cheap 
pci ethernets are you shouldn't be concerned about that most workstation 
boards don't come with two.

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-- 
-------------------------------------------------------------------------- 
Joel Jaeggli  	       Unix Consulting 	       joelja@darkwing.uoregon.edu    
GPG Key Fingerprint:     5C6E 0104 BAF0 40B0 5BD3 C38B F000 35AB B67F 56B2

Re: well-supported motherboard

[Gene Heskett]

On Sunday 25 April 2004 13:31, carloschoenberg@yahoo.com wrote:
>I am looking for a motherboard that is known to work well with
> Linux. "Known to work well" means:
>1) working open source drivers exist for all onboard components
>2) most people are not experiencing random crashes or data
> corruption, or the reason for such is understood and a proper fix
> exists. 3) multiple people are using the board successfully
>4) no VIA northbridge/southbridge, though other VIA components might
>be OK.  Although there are people successfully using VIA chipsets, I
>do not believe that VIA considers the stability of their products to
>be an important concern.
>
>It seems that no one does proper testing of motherboards with Linux.
>Although I can find reviews that put a variety of boards through a
>handful of tests in Windows, I can't find any reviews that properly
>test Linux.
>
>I had preferred AMD CPUs, but if my choices for motherboards are VIA
>and nforce2 (random crashing) chipsets, it looks like I will have to
>go with P4.
>
>My other requirements/desires are:
>1) AGP 8X (this is the only hard requirement for features)
>2) Dual ethernet
>3) lots of USB2.0
>4) firewire
>5) four IDE controllers
>6) audio with SPDIF out that will not resample 44100khz output (I'm
> not sure if this exists).
>-

I'm in the same boat as the caps on my M7VIB are slowly fading and it 
takes a half an hour to get it booted from cold.  So I am also 
intersted in the results of your question.

-- 
Cheers, Gene
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
 soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)
99.22% setiathome rank, not too shabby for a WV hillbilly
Yahoo.com attornies please note, additions to this message
by Gene Heskett are:
Copyright 2004 by Maurice Eugene Heskett, all rights reserved.

Re: well-supported motherboard

[Rob Couto]

On Sunday 25 April 2004 01:31 pm, you wrote:
> I am looking for a motherboard that is known to work well with Linux.
> "Known to work well" means:
> 1) working open source drivers exist for all onboard components
> 2) most people are not experiencing random crashes or data corruption,
> or the reason for such is understood and a proper fix exists.
> 3) multiple people are using the board successfully
> 4) no VIA northbridge/southbridge, though other VIA components might
> be OK.  Although there are people successfully using VIA chipsets, I
> do not believe that VIA considers the stability of their products to
> be an important concern.

a friend has nothing wrong with his 845PE-based ABIT BE7. everything works, 
down to the sensors (which i still have to tweak in /etc/sensors.conf for 
accuracy). no 1394, only 4x agp, and 1 ethernet, so not quite your speed. 
also 2GB is the RAM ceiling.

now if the 875P-based IC7-MAX3 is as good, it has most if not all of what 
you're after, I wonder: has anyone tried this board? I'm thinking in that 
direction, dual channel DDR, 1394, etc. and especially the CSA gigabit 
ethernet. I would like to keep it free from butterfly infestation... 

> It seems that no one does proper testing of motherboards with Linux.
> Although I can find reviews that put a variety of boards through a
> handful of tests in Windows, I can't find any reviews that properly
> test Linux.

this BE7 cheerfully runs a 2.0A P4 at 3.1GHz, Vcore at +15%, about 70 deg. 
*celsius* core temp in an air-conditioned room at 100% load for as long as 
you want. GCC stabilizes at 2.8~2.9GHz where you can get away with Vcore at 
+10%. The AGP is quick, in fact, opengl (and lately some direct3d) in wine is 
about as fast as that other OS. never got 3dMark2001 to run in wine, so it's 
hard to say for sure... it only screws up when you get irresponsible with 
gentoo's optimizer settings. a stock slackware is solid, also with a -ck 
patchset.

-- 
Rob Couto [rpc@cafe4111.org]
computer safety tip: use only a non-conducting, static-free hammer.
--