[Fwd: Gigabyte CPU Board and compatibility issues]
-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Gigabyte CPU Board and compatibility issues
Date: Sun, 29 Aug 2004 01:27:51 -0600
From: Ted Hilts
On Sunday 29 Aug 2004 08:31, Ted Hilts wrote:
-------- Original Message -------- Subject: Gigabyte CPU Board and compatibility issues Date: Sun, 29 Aug 2004 01:27:51 -0600 From: Ted Hilts
Organization: help-for-you To: suse-linux-e@suse.com This is a bit lengthy so please bear with me. It will make sense as you read it all.
I am looking at building a heavy duty file server with plug in hard drives to accommodate large backups and other storage concerns. Before I invest in hardware for this purpose I would like to establish which CPU board hardware is most acceptable to Linux. I am also considering the 64bit option of Linux.
In this regard has anyone had success or problems with the Gigabyte line of CPU boards. In the past I have used AMD Athlon CPUs on two computers and have had problems on both where the screen goes blank and I am unable to determine if the computer is alive or has lost control of it's keyboard, mouse, and video output. On one computer the problem was positively identified as a heat problem with either the CPU or supporting chip set. A large fan producing a high speed cooling effect on all parts of the CPU board eliminated the problem. On the second computer I have not had time to make such a determination. But both problems have left me with a distrust of AMD cpu boards for Linux even though I would prefer to use AMD rather than an Intel Pentium series. I have never experienced a problem with the Linux machines running with a Pentium series processor.
I am running a faitle well clocked AMD cpu here on a cheap Asrock MoBo and it seems stable had not problems so far apart from Video card fan dying , Make shure oyu get the airflow correct is important in at the fron out at the back with the front intake as low as possible to pickup the coolest air at floor level (will need dust filters)
Because of this confusion on my part I would like some advice regarding the CPU board manufacturer.
The only time a had anything to do with a Gigabyte MoBo it was a real DOG trying to get it to behave was almost impossible and that was with windBlows not Linux it was fine under Linux .
Most of these modern CPU boards have many functions on board so if one of these functions fail the entire board becomes useless. Generally speaking, I tend to NOT use these additional on board functions and provide a separate board for sound, graphics and monitor, LAN interface, etc. and use only the CPU related functions on the CPU board. I think this gives me a little more control and more flexibility in terms of my hardware options. It also reduces the chance of board failure. If anyone disagrees I would like to hear their side of the issue.
On board sound chips real pain in the proverbial on board video dont touch it the rest the bulk of seems to be fairly easy going these days althou once again if you read the list you will find loads of horror stories about this Mobo/chip combo that chip dont work ect most onboard Lan chips seem to be ok i am using an SiS900 at the moment with no trouble at all i also had an intel onboard on the last MoBo (intel board ) that went bang it will be repaired only a couple of caps down
Apparently there can be incompatibilties between board functions and the CPU board function. For example a particular graphics board may under certain circumstances cause a system crash. I've actually had this happen on an XP machine. An even more weird phenomena is when one memory board can cause a system problem and another memory board, same kind of memory but different manufacturer will work. Yet both memory boards will pass the system memory check. It turns out there are exotic memory test tools that expose these incompatibilities and depending upon the size of the memory can take days to perform the testing. And, according to one knowledgeable person I know, he is positive that certain hard drives perform better on Linux than other brands. Apparently, this has something to do with the hard drive control circuitry. A hard drive failure can cause the black out I was talking about earlier.
So, all this is about compatibility and it would be helpful to hear from those of you regarding your hardware configurations and what combinations do not seem to work well. So far I have found no documentation on an integrated hardware set up -- just lists of devices known to be compatible to Linux but may not be compatible with each other when used with Linux as the OS..
I am beginning to think that one has to build a Linux computer by first settling on the board and CPU and then incrementally testing and adding other board functions until the entire system has proved itself stable. It also seems that a lot of devices like hard drives and other functions have not been properly tested on Linux by the manufacturer and have only been tested on MS systems.
Most modern hard drives are pretty poor in the quality stakes i find < This machine is on 24/7 and i get thru one to two hard drives a year (i have tried all makes btw) and the problem seems to be getting worse if you follow the list as i have done for a while now there are a lot of problems that boil down to faulty Hdd's
This is actually easier and less trouble in the long run than buying a computer and then trying to make Linux work on that computer and encountering problems with the sound, video, LAN device, and other devices. And it is this latter method that I have always followed to my shame.
Any suggestions and further discussion are welcome.
Thanks_TED
-- Cheers Pete Linux user No: 256242 Machine No: 139931 G6NJR Pete also MSA registered "Quinton 11" A Linux Only area Happy bug hunting M$ clan PGN
On Sunday 29 August 2004 09:31, Ted Hilts wrote:
In this regard has anyone had success or problems with the Gigabyte line of CPU boards. I have used Gigabyte boards where ever I had the choice since Pentium-II days, and I have had not a single problem. I'm currently running two PC based on Gigabyte bards, one an AthonXP 2400+ (Thoroughbred, with the AMD supplied heatsink+fan) on a GA-7ZXE rev 2.1 board. It's on 24/7, and aside from being my desktop, it acts as a gateway, firewall, squid, smb+nfs fileserver, mailserver with amavis+spamassassin+clam/bdc/antivir, apache for squirrelmail, egroupware, phpmyadmin (oh, yeah, it runs a couple of dbs too). Runs seti too and I'm almost constantly encoding video on it. Like I said, no issues at all.
The other is a GA-6OXE (I think) with P-III 1ghz Coppermine. This machine does roundabout the same as the Athlon, but for fewer people, and minus the movie encoding. I has a bunch more hard drives connected to an Adaptec SCSI controller. The only issue with this board as far as I'm concerned, is that the onboard sound (intel chipset) is horribly inferior to that of VIA on the Athlon board. Either ways both have been equipped with SB Live!s so that's not really an issue. Both these PCs use Alpica (fairly cheap-0) PC133 RAM. The older VIA based boards had some latency issues (P-II and early P-III days) but that's a thing of the past. The only thing you have to take care of, especially if you plan to stick a bunch of hard discs in there, is to have sufficient cooling. This means that in addition to your CPU fan, you have ample case fans, and that they actually create proper airflow - now use just blowing the wind around in the case. You also have to make sure you power supply can handle the strain. Pay special attention to the output on the 12V rail (as this is where both the AthlonXP and P4 draw most of their juice from, as well as your hard drives) - it should be nothing less than 13amps for any new PC, more for a machine with many hard discs. This is true for both Intel and AMD - current top end Intel CPUs has a higher thermal dissipation than the AMDs. As for the problems you've had before, this isn't related to the CPU, but cooling. Although the P4 handles overheating much more gracefully, there's no reason to choose one over the other for heat reasons if you take proper precautions.
Yet both memory boards will pass the system memory check. That test is about as thorough a memory diagnostic as CHKDSK was for filesystems in the good old DOS days... Rather use memtest off your SUSE CDs.
Just more AMD/Gigabyte and one Intel/Gigabyte success stories to put you at ease. 1. In an aparment building I lived, I happened to have had a lot of PC crazy neigbours. We put up a firewall/proxy/mail/file/game server on a Gigabyte BX-2000 (something like that) board, 384MB RAM, and a P-II 233 CPU that was overclocked to 300mhz to keep up. When the game server part fell away, someone stuck setiathome on it. That machine had 90+ days uptime between general power failures in the area. 2. My mother has a Gigabyte GZ-7IXE4 board (AMD Irongate chipset) with Duron 750mhz. She lives in a very dusty area, where anything that turns or moves requires cleaning or replacement every couple of months. Someone fit a new heatsing/fan for her and put it on backwards. The heatsink only touched the CPU die on the one edge. That machine ran like that for 3 months before I saw it - it had a CPU temperature of 90-100 degrees celcius, and ran stable, although a little slower than usual. No harm done to either board or CPU, she's still using without any issues. -- Kind regards Hans du Plooy Newington Consulting Services hansdp at newingtoncs dot co dot za
participants (3)
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Hans du Plooy
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peter Nikolic
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Ted Hilts