Recommendations?

[O. Hartmann]

David O'Brien schrieb:

>On Sat, Apr 16, 2005 at 01:03:31PM +0200, O. Hartmann wrote:
>  
>
>>I have ASUS A8N-SLI Deluxe mobo. BIOS revision is 1006. I have no 
>>problems with
>>ACPI. APIC works with NO_MIXED_MODE commented out in kernel.
>>    
>>
>
>Disable the NO_MIXED_MODE option is a performance degradation.
>Bending over and taking it up the a** across all motherboards (which DES
>has forced on 5.4-RELEASE); makes the ASUS A8N-SLI Deluxe not "perfectly
>working".
>  
>

All right, this answeres an earlier question. Is it legitim to say 'it 
is not yet perfectly
working' or is it a 'it will never perfectly work within the next time'? 
nForce4 chipset
is new and I would not expect immediately support with an existing 
-RELEASE, but with
a matured -STABLE as this will happen with the if_nve driver.

>So yes people, you CAN get FreeBSD working on nForce-based motherboards.
>BUT how much do you want to sacrifice??  Degradation performance, not
>being able to use PowerNow!, not being able to use on-board NIC's, not
>being able to use on-board sound, etc...  Why go thru all this when there
>is ZERO need to?????????????  When one buys a motherboard, they have the
>choice to pick a motherboard that won't cause you major pain.  So why not
>just do that??
>  
>

In case I spend the money of my department and I'm in need of a 
instantly working system,
I would do a deeper investigation in what kind of motherboard I'll buy 
and what motherboard
will work with the preferred operating system. Then I may decide 
obtaining a still working and
maybe 'mature' and therefore older mainboard. Otherwise, if it is not 
desireable building hand
crafted servers, I would buy complete solutions and in Germany that 
means in most cases
Linux.

For my peronal use and for my science use, I can not buy new hardware 
within a short range
of time, it's not affordable and therefore I would like to have a 
powerful solution I can get now and that
means in many cases new mainboards with less support by actual operation 
systems of the OpenSource
area. Well, this can't be the way if the motherboard is absolutely not 
working with the desired operating
system, but in this case, the A8N-SLI Deluxe works great for me, not in 
strictu sensu, but in sense of what
is possible at this stage of FreeBSD's development. My personal 
calculation is to get within the next two months a
'perfectly' working hardware with FreeBSD. This may be a faulty thaught ...
I know this way isn't a very 'commercial' way, but it is my way of 
spending money in the future of a futureless
object (in sense of the fast aging of hardware/technology).

>
>  
>
>>The only point I would complain about is the still 'GENERIC' 
>>SATA150/SATA300 (switched back to UDMA33)
>>controller of the nForce4 chipset, but as DES answered me on a prior 
>>posting this is due to a too fresh chipset.
>>    
>>
>
>Another thing that isn't working for some nForce-based motherboards.
>Why not buy hardware that is well supported by FreeBSD today?
>
>  
>
Buying 'well supported' hardware NOW means buying hardware from 
yesterday and as I tried to explain above I do not have the money
buying every year new hardware. nForce4-SLI based motherboards seem to 
me to have the best cost/technology ratio. And they outperform
VIA based motherboards in some tests I read about. This in summa is the 
reason why I decided to buy a nForce4 based platform. The way of the common
man and not that of the aces in OS development.

O.