which motherboard and which chipset?

[Joseph Fenton]

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.


The MSI Master1-FAR is just a single CPU version of the
MSI Master2-FAR K8T800 motherboard. I have the Master2-FAR
and it works great. The only problem I ran into was the
memory - I bought bargain basement RAM; when the CPU got
too loaded, it would crash. I was able to cure this by raising
the memory voltage a little. The system has been rock-stable
since then, even with el-cheapo memory. :)