On 20-Aug-07, at 3:06 PM, Philip Webb wrote:
(1bd) The mobo listed is described on the ASUS site under 'VGA' as
"Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 3100
integrated High-definition video processing
with maximum resolution 2048 x 1536 bpp @ 75 Hz ;
maximum shared memory 256 MB ; supports OpenGL 1.5, Pixel Shader
2.0 ".
It appears that with this mobo I don't need a separate graphics card
unless I want very high-performance gaming or similar;
also, it uses open-source drivers (can anyone confirm?).
I've only had experience with the Intel GMA 950 (listed as "Intel
Corporation 82945G/GZ Integrated Graphics Controller" in the lspci
output). However, it's worked fantastic for me so far with the
opensource driver (on a Fedora 7 box). In my xorg.conf, the driver
is "intel" instead of "i810"; iirc the "intel" driver is the newer
driver and has better support for the newer chipsets.
OTOH, I do have a couple of words of caution about the Motherboard.
The new Intel chipsets do not provide an IDE controller so
motherboard manufacturers have to go get a third party IDE/PATA
controller if they want that support on their Intel motherboards.
Most of the manufacturers seem to have gone with JMicron's
controller, but my experience with it so far has been rather
frustrating. Supposedly its drivers have been in the mainline kernel
since 2.6.18 but It's been pretty flaky for me when I had to deal
with it (I felt horribly sorry for suggesting the Asus P5B Deluxe to
my dad after all the problems we had with the IDE :( ). Hopefully
someone else will have had better experiences with this and can chime
in.
The other item that concerns me is the Marvell Gigabit Ethernet
controller. Your motherboard apparently has a "Marvell88E8056® PCI-E
Gigabit LAN controller", my experience is with a "Marvell 88E8053 PCI-
E Gigabit Ethernet Controller" but they'll both be using the sky2
driver likely. Once again, it's been mostly functional but not
perfect and sometimes a little flaky. My file server was using this
and I ended up switching over to the other onboard NIC (forcedeth
driver) after discovering that it was flaking out something in the
network stack on big long transfers (think multi-gig transfers).
You should be able to deal with both chipsets, but just be prepared
for a little bit of extra effort to get them working perfectly.
(1c) I'm usually using 300 - 400 / 1000 MB memory at present,
so this sb enough, while giving me higher speed + certified dual-
channel.
Especially for compiling, memory tends to be one of the best things
you can add for improving performance on a general purpose machine
and extend the life of an existing machine. 1GB seems a little low
to me longterm. That said, I never swap with my 2GB of memory on my
box, so it's entirely possible you'll be fine. I guess it really
depends on your budget. You should be just fine with the 1GB, but I
would look to double that up if I felt I could afford it.
Hope this helps,
Aaron
--
"In the last, lorn fight
'gainst the fall of long night,
the mountains stand guard,
and the dead shall be ward,
for the grave is no bar to my call."
--The Horn Of Valere
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