which motherboard and which chipset?

[Peter Wemm]

On Tuesday 17 February 2004 01:18 pm, Andrew Gallatin wrote:
> David O'Brien writes:
>  > nVidia nForce3 [for AMD64] chipsets are very problematic for
>  > Unix(BSD)/Linux.  I would avoid them if you want to run a
>  > non-MS-Windows operating system.
>
> Whew.  Just in time, I was just about to order an SK8N.  What do you
> suggest for a solid single-CPU socket-940 board which will use ECC
> memory?  Asus SK8V?

I'd love to get hold of a SK8V if only I could find one. :-)  I have two 
K8V deluxes (one at home, the other at work, both with ECC 
non-Registered PC3200 memory from crucial.com).  My SK8N with my (then) 
$750 cpu and $350 of  ECC/REG PC3200 ram is on a shelf gathering dust 
because I lost my trust in the board.

Personally, I prefer the ASUS boards over the tyans because of the 
flexibility in the bios and the vastly superior active fan speed 
control system.  But I have a slight preference for the AMD 8xxx 
chipset over the VIA K8T800, but its only slight.  Both are (IMHO) way 
ahead of the nVidia nForce3-150.  If you have to listen to the machine 
next to your desk, I suggest an asus - the tyan fans run at full speed 
all the time, with no thermal based fan throttling.  If you don't have 
to listen to it, and want something slightly more server-oriented then 
the tyans are probably a slightly better bet because the AMD chipset 
has had longer to shake out the bugs.
-- 
Peter Wemm - peter at wemm.org; peter at FreeBSD.org; peter at yahoo-inc.com
"All of this is for nothing if we don't go to the stars" - JMS/B5