Ok, I may be a bit behind the times (in the non-server market anyway) but I was not aware that nVidia made chipsets? By chipset, I, and I assume the OP, are referring to the planar chipset, not a video chipset.
On Fri, 22 Apr 2005 10:03:35 -0700 "Garrett P. Taylor" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > **Edit: This message if very long winded, but I covered a lot about > newer hardware here. > > > VIA isn't my favorite chipset by any means. It's sort of a > bargain-basement chipset in my opinion. They seem to be kind of "hit and > miss" when it comes to performance and reliability. > > nVidia, however, has made a substantial commitment to the open-source > community and Linux in particular. Their chipsets are very well featured > and perform very well. The NV-RAID isn't great, though. Boards with > Silicon Image RAID controllers are quite awesome, though. MSI makes a > board that uses the nForce4 and has SI-RAID. The only kicker is that > most drivers are considered Beta for PCI-E chipsets and hardware... > Especially if they run x86-64. > > Since you want to run an AMD64, I recommend Gentoo. I don't know about > Ubuntu, but if you get the AMD64 disks from Gentoo and compile most apps > yourself, you're guaranteed to compile your binaries to take advantage > of the extra 64-bit extensions. > > If that sounds like a lot of work, you might consider a Sempron instead. > It's basically the Barton core and the new 90nm versions should be spec > for socket 939. It doesn't do 64-bit. If you want to step away from > PCI-E as well, you can get an nForce3 chipset instead which still runs > very well and uses AGP and PCI. > > You also mentioned drives. The new Seagate 7200.8 supports something > called Native Command Queuing. What this does is re-arrange the order in > which operations are performed so that the heads don't have to move > around as much. It makes for a much faster data transfer rate and > quieter operation, but it kills seek times. In ATA you can't beat the > WDC Raptor for seek times. Second to that the new Maxtor drives with > 16MB of cache have very good performance, hold a lot, cost less and run > quiet(er). I don't know what Linux's take on NCQ is, though, but it > shouldn't matter since it's handled in the BIOS. > > Again for Video, I suggest nVidia. The open source driver for Linux > gives excellent performance and if you compile it yourself to take > advantage of your systems specific architecture it will run faster than > a Windows Box. ATi also provides linux drivers and perform well, but > there's just something about matching your chipset to your video card. > > RAM is universally compatible and is not OS-Specific. The lower the > latency the faster. Latency is the number of clock cycles of the CPU > required to perform an operation on the memory. It's normally listed > like w-x-y-z. Each number corresponds to a specific operation. The first > one is pre-fetch. I'm not sure on the others, but lower is better... and > more expensive. > > CD/DVD writers are also standard. The more cache it has, the less chance > of making a coaster and the better performance on short operations. Even > though a drive says it's 150X or whatever, there's still the time it > takes to get up to speed to account for. The more expensive drives tend > to spin up faster and thus reduce seek times. Pioneer drives have been > very reliable for me. As burners, Plextor drives have had unsurpassed > performance. > > > -----Original Message----- > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of > Jeff Shippen > Sent: Thursday, April 21, 2005 3:09 PM > To: [email protected] > Subject: [RLUG] opensource chipsets > > I did a little search online, and I got the impression that VIA is an > Open Source chipset, that is all I could come across. All I'm asking is > for maximum linux compatability, which hardware manufacturers &/or > chipsets should I look for, and which should I avoid? > > And thanks Gary, I will give Ubantu a try Jeff Shippen > > Gary L. Allen wrote: > > > Jeff Shippen wrote: > > > >> Mark & all, > >> I will be buying a new, super computer, custom of course. I want as > >> much computability with Linux as possible, as it will be my main > >> Linux box. I'm planning on buying most my parts on newegg.com I do > >> not know which manufacturers provide O.S. drivers, could you please > help me out. > >> I will be purchasing the following: > >> motherboard (64 bit AMD) > >> ram > >> processor (AMD 64, socket 939) > >> cd/dvd burner > >> video card > >> hard drive (Seagate was my plan) > >> I currently use Mandrake 10 (now known as Mandriva) and will also be > >> trying Ubuntu &/or Gentoo <------ just an FYI. > > > > > > Hi Jeff, > > > > I use Ubuntu and, IMO, it just plain rocks. Not too big, works great > > with my hardware, and was easily as expandable as I wanted it to be > > after install. They have some really good support information on the > > site for newbies like myself. Great stuff- I highly recommend it. > > > > Best regards, > > -Gary > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > RLUG mailing list > [email protected] > http://lists.rlug.org/mailman/listinfo/rlug > _______________________________________________ RLUG mailing list [email protected] http://lists.rlug.org/mailman/listinfo/rlug
