motherboard decision help

[Randy Kelsoe]

Christopher Bottaro wrote:

> On Mar 14, 2004, at 1:41 AM, Randy Kelsoe wrote:
>
>> I am using the GigaByte GA-7N400 Pro2 MB, which uses the Nvidia 
>> nforce2 chipset. I'm not using any of the Nvidia drivers. This mobo 
>> uses the RealTek 8169 onboard gigabit lan, and not the nforce2 lan. I 
>> tried using the Nvidia drivers for the onboard sound, and they had 
>> problems. Anaconda selected the intel8x0 driver for the onboard 
>> video, and that works much better than the Nvidia driver. This mobo 
>> has worked well with RH9 (but needed a later kernel), and has worked 
>> well with FC1 right out of the box. It's almost twice the price of 
>> the GA-7VT600-L, but it has SATA, RAID, and Dual Channel memory. I'm 
>> not using the RAID, but SATA works (though not at full speed yet), 
>> and dual channel memory is about 50% faster than single channel mode. 
>> There is also a cheaper model that does not have the RAID and SATA, 
>> and has a 100base T NIC.
>
>
> excuse my naivety, but is dual channel memory and hardware raid OS 
> transparent?
>
> i'm looking to build a new computer also.  i can't decide if its going 
> to be a windows box (for games) or a linux system.  if i can afford 
> it, i want SATA, RAID 0, and dual channel memory.  if the hardware 
> RAID is transparent to the OS, i'd rather do that.
>
> a couple of questions.
>
> 1)  how do i know if dual channel memory is working?  is it OS 
> transparent, or do i need to install drivers?

It's done in hardware and is OS transparent, so there are no drivers to 
install. With the GigaByte MB, there is a BIOS message that appears 
after POST.

>
> 2)  "but SATA works (though not at full speed yet)", how do you know 
> what speed its working at?

 From my SATA drive:

# hdparm -t /dev/hde
 
/dev/hde:
 Timing buffered disk reads:  126 MB in  3.02 seconds =  41.72 MB/sec

and from my PATA, Western Digital ATA100 drive:

# hdparm -t /dev/hda
 
/dev/hda:
 Timing buffered disk reads:  140 MB in  3.00 seconds =  46.67 MB/sec

There is a libata driver that (IIRC), will be included in the 2.6 kernel 
that should speed things up a lot. Last I saw, the Si3112 SATA 
controller was still in alpha.

>
> 3)  how do you know if you got the RAID setup properly?

I'm not using the RAID with mine, since it is not true hardware raid.

>
> btw, i heard nforce2 has issues with linux:
> http://atlas.et.tudelft.nl/verwei90/nforce2/
> opinions?

Interesting.... I notice they don't mention the GigaByte GA 7N400 Pro 2. 
I have seen about four unexplained hangs, with nothing in the logs. 
Reading the article, it mentions heavy disk usage or IO being a problem. 
I have not seen this. I have done quite a lot of heavy disk IO, and have 
never seen a hang during disk IO. I first saw the hang twice in a row 
when I upgraded my kernel to 2.4.22--1.2135.nptl, or some kernel close 
to it. I went back to my previous kernel and everything was fine. Since 
then, I have seen the hang twice, and both times I was accessing the 
network. They also mentioned turning off "CPU bus disconnect" in BIOS  
and I don't see anything like that in my BIOS configuration. I also 
noticed that the first two working configurations posted are running 
their cpu's overclocked, which is something I don't do.

I did not expect this mobo to work very well with linux, since the 
chipset is so new. I decided to give it a try and I was pleasantly 
surprised.  My  SATA drive is slower than my PATA drive, but I expect 
this to change soon when libata gets more mature. 3D acceleration is not 
as good as what I saw with RH9, but I don't use this box for games, so 
that's not a big deal.