terry

I am currently researching motherboards in preparation to an upgrade to my
desktop system in a month or so. Tigerdirect has some low prices on Mach
Speed Viper motherboards. I would like to get opinions from linux users
(Gentoo in particular as that is what I use) If you feel the Mach Speed
motherboards are of poor quality, what would you recommend? What about
Asus, Gigabyte or Abit?
Also, if I go with an AMD 64 processor, will I be restricted as to what
ebuilds are available? If no 64 bit package of an application is available,
will a 32 bit package work with a 64 bit processor, but at a slower rate? I
am leaning toward a Sempron in order to get the best bang for the buck.
This computer will not be used for gaming, just internet, email and Gentoo
upgrades, with occasional spread sheet work and I connect to the internet
through DirecWay satallite. (Hughesnet now)

Thanks, Terry

terry

I should have added, I currently have a 10 year old Gateway computer with a
600 MHZ Athlon K7 and 256 mb of memory, so just about anything WILL be an upgrade.

c

AMD is a good choice for getting the most bang for your buck. You might want
to research the different socket configurations available for the Sempron
processor. Some of them are going to be more upgradeable in the future, and
would be worth spending a few more dollars on.

I'm not real familiar with Mach Speed, but I see that they offer an upgrade
to a lifetime warranty on their boards, so take that for what it is worth.
Personally, I have been using quite a few AS Rock motherboards for budget
systems, and they have been incredibly reliable for me. Supposedly they are
a sister company of Asus from what I have heard. there are really only a few
brands that I shun. PC Chips is the biggest one, and most of the other "bad
companies" are simply relabeling their boards. You really can't go wrong
with companies like Abit, Asus, A Open, Gigabyte, MSI, Tyan, etc. Another
company to consider for an AMD system is Iwill. They have some of the best
AMD boards around. My recommendations are to look for the boards that have
all the features you want, then compare prices from there.

Some places to read reviews are:
http://motherboards.org/
http://www.tomshardware.com/

Some other places to shop:
http://www.newegg.com/
http://www.zipzoomfly.com/
http://www.pricewatch.com/

HTH
Chris

ties

Terry, 10/01/06 00:21:
<snip>

<snap>

You will have the choice of running a 32 bit system, or a 64 bit
system. Not all programs are available in 64 bit versions but you can
solve this by running them in a 32 bit chroot environment. The
performance gain hasn't been worth the hassle for me, so that's about
all I can tell you.

--
Ties
http://tknet.nl/
http://tknet.nl/w/

ties

Ties, 10/01/06 16:50:

Well, I could've given you this link in my previous post...
http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/gentoo-amd64-faq.xml#emul32

--
Ties
http://tknet.nl/
http://tknet.nl/w/

ken scharf

There are two ways to mix 32 and 64 bit applications on a 64 bit system.
The chroot jail is one, but it almost duplicates installing the system
twice. A second way is to have two directory chains for library files
so you have BOTH the 32 and 64 bit versions of the necessary libraries
available on the system. Gentoo does this with the multilib (standard)
profile. You can actually install BOTH the 64 and 32 bit versions of
the same application (IE: I have BOTH versions of Mozilla on my system
each with it's own launcher in KDE.) The multilib method is better
IMHO since it can allow for having a mix of applications open
at the same time.

As for AMD vs Intel, while I happen to like AMD, currently the speed
crown is in the Intel camp with their Core Duo 2 cpus. But unless you
are a hard core Gamer you will probably just be looking for the best
bang for the buck. In this case either vendor wins depending on what
deals you can find.

Asus tech makes good MB but they have had bios problems in the past as
far as Linux support went. (I never had this problem, but it has been
reported). I used to use Tyan, but they seem to mostly support Intel
chips for the desktop and AMD for the server. (No cheap AMD MD's).

As for where to buy, check out Newegg.com, computergeeks.com,
tigerdirect.com. Also look on pricewatch.com for leads.

j.o. aho

Wow, you had an Athlon before AMD had made one? At most your computer is 7
years, 3 months and 8 days old. But as you have a 600Mhz, I think yous is less
(just couldn't resist :P ).

j.o. aho

If you are using a nVidia graphics card, the IA64 driver is a qutie old
1.0-5336, while for the AMD64 you have the current 1.0-8774, in case you use
ATi drivers, you have only x86 and AMD64 supported. So in the closed source
driver world, AMD will give you a better option.


I like the Phoenix BIOS ASUS usually uses, a lot nicer to use than what you
find on say MSI machines. Of course it could have been nice to see a
OpenFirmware instead of BIOS on an x86 32/64 bit machine (There is a derivate
of OF called SmartFirmware that works on x86 machines too).


//Aho

terry

Well, the truth is I bought this machine used for $100. I don't really know
how old it is. On boot up, I see something about 1997 in reference to the
bios, so I assumed it was from around that year.

model name : AMD-K7(tm) Processor

KDE takes several days to compile.

Terry

ken scharf

OUCH! Well even on my athlon64 3400+ with 1gb ram
it took almost a full day to compile. We'll try it
again when I upgrade to the X2 4200+ (or maybe the 4600+).

Wonder if GCC will use both cores?