# AMD64 Motherboard Compatibility

## chance2105

I'm looking at building a new AMD64 system.  Speed is important, but more important is free driver support.

In the way of socket 939 motherobards, I see mostly nVidia and ATI chipsets.  I see a few VIA chipset-based motherboards out there.  I'm thinking like this:  nVidia = good luck with drivers, ATI = better luck with drivers, VIA = probably works 100% out-of-the-box.

I imagine things like P/SATA Controllers and Ethernet controllers are pretty much supported.  The real beef comes with the AGP/PCI-E (or whatever you call those new whipper-snapper thingamabobs) controllers.  I want DRI to be fully supported with free drivers.  The video card will probably be an AGP Radeo 9250 or something of this ilk, just to make sure it works with the free drivers without fuss.

Are these assumptions correct?  If I use something like the Asus A8V motherboard, I'm guessing I'll be pretty safe ..

Am I ruling out hardware that I could otherwise trust in a fully-free-driver kind of way?

----------

## Keruskerfuerst

I have a Nvidia based motherboard (nForce3 250GB).

It is a MSI K8Neo Platinum.

Everything works fine:

AGP

PATA

SATA

USB

serial bus

parallel port

LAN

I really recommend buying a motherbaord from Asus or MSI.

----------

## Phenax

MSI K9N working perfectly here (nForce 570, socket AM2)

----------

## intgr

I've personally got an ASUS A8N5X (nForce4) running with AMD64, and while I wouldn't recommend this particular motherboard to anyone, all the chipset hardware does work with free drivers - forcedeth for Ethernet, nv_sata for SATA, snd-intel8x0 (aka ac97) for sound and the thankfully standard drivers for OHCI/EHCI USB controllers, PATA, PCIe and serial.

The only non-free driver I have in my kernel is fglrx (ATI Radeon). While the open-source radeon driver does work with PCIe Radeon x550 (tested), I prefer having OpenGL support.

The particular motherboard itself has problems with USB HID devices plugged in simultaneously with other devices, and also manages to screw up under Windows. I haven't flashed my BIOS for quite a while, but the upgrades I did try months ago didn't fix anything.

----------

## richard77

I'm also looking for a new system, and I've discovered that if you want to have only open source driver the most "powerful" card is the 9200 (actually, the 9250 is a bit slower), so you are limited to AGP system. From your post, I understand that you already know this. 

I would assume (forgive me if i am wrong) that you choose a ADM64 939 platform because they cost less and there are more motherboards with AGP (I don'tknow if exist AM2+AGP motherboards). On the other hand, AM2 would give you Pacifica wth full virtualization support (multiple instances of Gentoo!), but I don't know 

I don't know what processor do you plan to buy, but I would suggest to wait some weeks, if you can, because AMD64 processors prices are expected to drop dramatically due to introduction of Core 2 Duo (the reviews I read showed that a 300$ E6600 is on the same level of a 1000$ FX-62, and the E6300 costs 190$, with the performance of a 4400X2). 

I haven't check but maybe another option would be a  Core 2 Duo with an intel chipset with integrated graphics.

In either case (AMD64 or Intel) I wuold wait for the price drop.

Regards,

federico

----------

## Drone1

I've got the following AMD64 setup running MythTV that is stable as a *$^&ing rock.

- FoxConn 6150K8MA-8EKRS Motherboard (Geforce 6150/430 chipset, 939 socket, 4-SATAII, Gig-Eth,8-ch Audio)

- Athlon 64 3000+ Venice (1.8Ghz)

- 1GB RAM (2 - PC3200 Gskill 512MB matched sticks)

- 320GB SATAII 7200rpm WD Caviar

- Asus EN 7300GS 128MB PCI-X 

- Hauppauge PVR-150 TV-Tuner

I set this up prior to the beginning of the World Cup in early June. Was new to Myth and short of getting THAT config all correct, EVERYTHING in the system is supported. Uptime is probably at 5+ weeks at this point, and I don't touch it. IT JUST WORKS!!!!! No Errors, except for that MySql issue I'm still working on, but that's not hardware related. Total cost of this setup was around $550 on Newegg ..... The beauty of this system, is I have plenty of room to add/upgrade hardware. I'm intent on bumping the ram up to 2GB, upping the cpu to 64 X2 dual-core when prices bottom out (I keep an eye out), and drop in 3 more 320GB SATAII's.  

**** This mobo, and chipset quite frankly, is quite something in terms of I/O connectors (take a look at the specs online). For a HTPC system, its on the money IMO. The ONLY miss is this one doesn't have the onboard DVI out, though the chipset supports it. My mistake on that one.

What are you planning to do with it? Personal/Home PC? HTPC? Gaming? Server?

----------

## energyman76b

You forget:

VIA = probably embarrasing PCI errors.

Btw, my board (see sig) is 100% supported, cheap and you can upgrade it with a socket board to be am2 compatible.

----------

## richard77

@Drone1 the request was:

 *Quote:*   

> Speed is important, but more important is free driver support. 

  (bold is mine)

I think that he means free as in speech, not as in beer   :Very Happy: 

I am in a similar situation, and I've done some research: probably the better solution for my needs and budget would be a Core 2 Duo E6300 with a motherboard with integrated intel graphics (open driver available, don't know the quality, but the performance should be not worse of a ati9200) (about 200 for the cpu and 100 for the board). The alternative would be an A64X2, but is quite difficult to find motherboards with an AGP slot.

My "B" plan is to buy some used components from gamers that will jump on the most powerful conroes (E6600/E6700/E6800)

I agree with you that the most important issue is graphics.

I've heard that some nforce4 based mb suffers from hardware problems due to some design fault in the chipset (corruption of data with massive sata transfer), but that ifnormation needs to be verified.

I have a ATI9200 and the open driver is satifactory, but I've never tried xgl or other fancy stuff. OpenGL work with xorg 7.1.

In any case, I'll wait after the summer (end of september) to have some data and when the prices well be lower.

It also depends on what you need: if you want to play last closed source and expensive games, I think that you have to buy an nvidia and rely their (actually not so bad) closed driver.

Best regards,

Federico

EDIT: Was "free as in thougth", poor translation from italian expression.

----------

## Drone1

richard77

 *Quote:*   

> 
> 
> I think he means free as in speech, not as in beer 
> 
> 

 

Thats a blurred line to be nitpicking about, doncha think?

As with intgr's post, my mobo uses pretty much the same modules for the chipset, as its an nvidia.... and its ALL working, all chipset I/O. With the current hardware available in the market, as long as your stick close to the tops on each *bus* on the board and component, speed won't be an issue.

chance2105's original post stated 

 *Quote:*   

>  I want DRI to be fully supported with free drivers

 

which is gonna limit his video card / mobo compatability list by alot.

That being said, chance2105 if you haven't looked here yet, take a gander. Might clear up some questions.

DRI is your pivot point here and that all things must follow from that apparently. Since thats the case, on the above link, look at the bottom 'nvidia' link at the page, which will take you to remarks stating the DRI on nvidia needs to be ported. 

If DRI is such the requirement as you state, and I can only conclude your doing some type of development, perhaps you could take on the DRI - nvidia challenge .... (no offense implied). I know nvidia hardware would be better utilized by such...

----------

## opentaka

I'm using Abit AV8(which is old?) and it's very stable. 

I personally don't like nforce since they include unwanted stuff like firewalls etc... 

Take a look at http://gentoo-wiki.com/Abit_uguru(microguru)_AV8 which i've wrote long time ago  :Smile: 

----------

## intgr

 *opentaka wrote:*   

> I personally don't like nforce since they include unwanted stuff like firewalls etc...

 

It's got nothing to do with hardware, they just ship a firewall application with the Windows software bundle and market it as a feature. Totally useless, I agree, but I can't see how that would affect anyone's opinion of the chipset.

----------

## opentaka

 *intgr wrote:*   

>  *opentaka wrote:*   I personally don't like nforce since they include unwanted stuff like firewalls etc... 
> 
> It's got nothing to do with hardware, they just ship a firewall application with the Windows software bundle and market it as a feature. Totally useless, I agree, but I can't see how that would affect anyone's opinion of the chipset.

 

oh really, I thought that was a hardware firewall or something  :Smile: 

----------

## pbardet

As for the Asus A8V, I would not recommend it. I got the UAYZ version, and it crapped out like crazy. No lan support out of the box, which is kind of hard when you want to install gentoo and I was never able to install the version found on the net. It didn't want to accept my spare DLink PCI network card, but finally settled on an old 10Mbps no name one. I also got errors during gentoo install. The mobo is now back to the supplier. I'm thinking about changing for an ASRock 939, or in the worst case (have to buy a new PCI-E video card, instead of using my new AGP one), I would move to an Asus A8N-E. This is the mobo we've got at work, with Dual Core Athlon 64, and it's stable as a rock.

If you decide to go with this A8V, let me know if you experience issues. It looks like only 2 people have had different issues with those.

----------

## chance2105

 *Quote:*   

> I think he means free as in speech, not as in beer 

 

This is exactly the intention of my original post.  Free-as-in-speech is the goal.

I've pretty much settled on the ASRock 939Dual-SATA2 board.  It requires newer kernels, but that's ok.

Something that had me confused when doing this research:  when the kernel configuration mentions ALI, it's the same thing that's advertised as ULI chipsets (on newegg and others).  So for the most part it seems, ULi boards work.

Also, it looks like several of the MSI boards are good choices.

I'm sure there are others, but at least now, it doesn't look like the AMD64 motherboards options are as hostile to open-source drivers as it initially seemed.

Aside:  good project maybe, linuxmotherboards.org?  Think linuxprinting.org -- this could be really useful.

----------

## Icer

You might want to take a look at MSI K8NGM2-FID. It's a Nforce 6150 board. Checkout the info on anadtech forums. There's a thread under the motherboards subforum. I tried to link it but the link didnt work for me so I removed it. 

I have the MB mentioned and it works very well.

----------

## olger901

My notebook has a VIA chipset and works without a problem on linux.

My dad has a PC with an Asus K8N motherboard (nForce 3) chipset. I installed gentoo on it once and it worked with minor to no problems.

My old pc had an Asus A7N8X Motherboard (nForce 2 chipset) installed Gentoo on it various times and haven't had much problems at all.

My new pc has an Asus A8N-E Motherboard (nForce 4 chipset) but haven't installed linux on it yet, runs windows only (mainly due to the fact that alot of games don't work on linux unfortunately)

----------

## chance2105

 *Icer wrote:*   

> You might want to take a look at MSI K8NGM2-FID.

 

This board has no AGP slots, so it leaves my second goal -- somewhat speedier free drivers for graphics cards -- high and dry.  I suppose if worse comes to worse, a PCI graphics card would work;  however there are AGP alternatives.

AFAIK, even the new experimental Radeon r300 graphics drivers support only AGP cards.

----------

## Icer

 *chance2105 wrote:*   

>  *Icer wrote:*   You might want to take a look at MSI K8NGM2-FID. 
> 
> This board has no AGP slots, so it leaves my second goal -- somewhat speedier free drivers for graphics cards -- high and dry.  I suppose if worse comes to worse, a PCI graphics card would work;  however there are AGP alternatives.
> 
> AFAIK, even the new experimental Radeon r300 graphics drivers support only AGP cards.

 

Why do you require AGP slot? Besides the board has integrated graphics controller. I'm perfectly happy with it. If I'd need to upgrade there's the PCI-E slot. And I'm not planning to upgrade anytime soon.

Ah the free drivers. Well I use the Nvidia closed source drivers. No problems or speed problems whatsoever. Well if you are determined to have completely free drivers try nv drivers. Never tried them I think. However I hear they're getting better and better.

I also think our needs differ. I dont need fancy graphics. I dont play much games with this pc while I think you do because you require good graphics card. Not that I'm dissing this integrated GPU at all. It's very good for it's price.

----------

## chance2105

Requiring free drivers gives several benefits.  First, being easy install and maintenance of the software.  Second, stability -- the source is available and easily built along with the kernel and/or software packages (X).  Third, and really the most important part, are the drivers are free-as-in-speech.

Why the third point is important:  this has everything to do with having control of my computer.  If "free" drivers included anything that can be downloaded from the 'net, then Microsoft Windows would be a viable alternative -- there are cracks available that get around WGA and things of this nature.

But you say this is "piracy"!  Possibly.  And it is totally irrelevant to me.  The cost of having binary-only software installed on my computer is much greater than the upfront cost of purchasing Windows.  Binary software is a black-hole.  I, nor anyone else, is going to take the time to verify Windows does what I want it to do (in fact, it is much more readily said Windows does all kinds of things I wouldn't want an operating system to do).

This is exactly why I require a completely free software environment.  Verifiability of the software is totally possible, if not easy.  Downloading something, say, the nVidia drivers for their cards, completely misses the mark.

If you plan on joining this conversation, please STOP suggesting hardware that has no fully-free drivers and software available.  I do not doubt nVidia makes great hardware, but there is NO free driver support to fully support even the oldest of their cards.

Chance

----------

## razze

I have an Asus A8V-mobo (see sig for more detailed specs), and I have not had any troubles with it. I have not tried onboard sound, so I can't say anything about that one, but the rest of the lot works: SataII , onboard lan, usb (digicam, mp3-player, cordless desktop etc), cool'n'quiet - and all with in-kernel drivers. So I am happy with this board and would definately recommend it to other people. The only downside is that it only has 2 onboard sata slots.

----------

## ikshaar

 *Phenax wrote:*   

> MSI K9N working perfectly here (nForce 570, socket AM2)

 

Any chance you can tell us which model exactly (SLI, Platinum, DIamond ?) and about network support for the dual Gigabit LAN ? Especially support for the network chipset Vitesse VSC8601... I read report of incompatibility.

----------

## olger901

 *ikshaar wrote:*   

>  *Phenax wrote:*   MSI K9N working perfectly here (nForce 570, socket AM2) 
> 
> Any chance you can tell us which model exactly (SLI, Platinum, DIamond ?) and about network support for the dual Gigabit LAN ? Especially support for the network chipset Vitesse VSC8601... I read report of incompatibility.

 

After a bit of searching I learned the following regarding MSI boards; The Vitesse VSC8601 is just another name for the nForce MCP55 Ethernet driver.

Try it yourself:

1. Go to a MSI website

2. Go to the driver page for a nForce 5 - AMD motherboard. There  driver you ll find there is the NVIDIA nForce package which includes the nForce MCP55 Ethernet driver (inside the http://www.msi.com.tw/program/support/driver/dvr/spt_dvr_detail.php?UID=730&kind=1 package)

3. This means that the Vitesse VSC8601 is just another name for the nForce MCP55 NIC, which is supported in recent forcedeth driver versions, so according to my information all should work well (haven't tried it though).

----------

## RageOfOrder

My hardware works very well, except the SATA controller on the 2.6.17-r4 kernel doesn't work properly. I had to use a previous kernel (Only other one I have tried is 2.6.15-r1, and it works 100%)

I use an MSI K8T Neo2-FIR MS-6702e motherboard (VIA Chipset)

Athlon 64 3000+ Socket 939

2x SCSI hard drives

AGP Radeon 9600 SE video card

everything works perfectly. There is support for it all in the kernel.

I definately recommend an MSI motherboard, but they don't work so well with Radeon cards on windows. If you ever want to use windows, don't expect 3d rendering to work well (or at all), so no games. Otherwise, I love MSI, I've never had one break.

----------

## Icer

 *chance2105 wrote:*   

> Requiring free drivers gives several benefits.  First, being easy install and maintenance of the software.  Second, stability -- the source is available and easily built along with the kernel and/or software packages (X).  Third, and really the most important part, are the drivers are free-as-in-speech.
> 
> Why the third point is important:  this has everything to do with having control of my computer.  If "free" drivers included anything that can be downloaded from the 'net, then Microsoft Windows would be a viable alternative -- there are cracks available that get around WGA and things of this nature.
> 
> But you say this is "piracy"!  Possibly.  And it is totally irrelevant to me.  The cost of having binary-only software installed on my computer is much greater than the upfront cost of purchasing Windows.  Binary software is a black-hole.  I, nor anyone else, is going to take the time to verify Windows does what I want it to do (in fact, it is much more readily said Windows does all kinds of things I wouldn't want an operating system to do).
> ...

 

That's your opinion. But consider this:

 *Quote:*   

> "Anybody who tells me I can't use a program because it's not open source, go suck on rms. I'm not interested. 99% of that I run tends to be open source, but that's _my_ choice, dammit." (October 26, 2004) -Linus Torvalds

 

And that's my opinion too. I'm willingly running the 'binary blackhole'.   :Laughing:   Referring to nvidia drivers here. It works best for me. In fact I'm quite satisfied with the drivers. Yes there are some issues(like xorg 7.1 ABI, and nvidia are working on it) but they wont prevent me using this computer.

Where did you get the 'piracy idea'? Nvidia drivers dont cost a cent. Did you perhaps think I use windows, lol? Well I dont.   :Smile: 

Having control over your software is a good idea, I agree.   :Cool:  We pretty much got it now right? Losing control over one, 1, package although important isnt going to make me or people in general to switch to other HW. Why because it works! I admit I didnt take your remark: *Quote:*   

> make sure it works with the free drivers without fuss.

  seriously or perhaps I just didnt notice it in the first place.

Considering your last statement: *Quote:*   

> Am I ruling out hardware that I could otherwise trust in a fully-free-driver kind of way?

  Well I'd say you are. Finally free as in speech SW as you put it is your choice and I'm fine with it, just dont try to force it on others, ok.

As for nVidia is not providing drivers for older cards. Well thats tough, have you heard of market economy? However the older HW could work with nv drivers, though I have no experience about it.

Have a nice day.  :Smile: 

----------

## geniux

MSI K9N SLI Platinum (S-AM2 nForce 570) running nicely here. Sound (snd_hda_intel), onboard LAN (forcedeth) and sensors (w83627ehf) up and running, haven't had a single problem with it

----------

## tgh

I'm using an Asus A8V Deluxe for almost a year now with no issues as a server board.  (Documented in my techblog last November.)

Currently building an Asus M2N32-SLI Deluxe motherboard for a server project.  That's the nForce 590 chipset, which is new enough to make support a bit rough.  Still sanding the rough corners off of the install...

I can't speak to DRI support, or any sort of graphics card support as I don't use Gentoo for a desktop OS.

----------

## Nille

I currently own a Asus A8N-E (s939,nf4 ultra). Very stable config, currently running WindowsXP.  :Embarassed: 

I'm looking to buy another A8N-E to upgrade my current P3 1GHz Gentoo box. For testing purposes I already installed Gentoo on my current A8N-E, everything works. No problem there.

The main reason for upgrading (apart from the A64 power) is to lay out a Gigabit network. Hence i was wondering how the onboard Gigabit LAN with the forcedeth driver performs, is it good enough to act as a fileserver? I'm looking for transfer speeds of around 25MB/sec. (my current ATA disks easily do 40MB/sec, so that's no problem, switching to S-ATA RAID10 array later)

----------

## 96140

 *geniux wrote:*   

> MSI K9N SLI Platinum (S-AM2 nForce 570) running nicely here. Sound (snd_hda_intel), onboard LAN (forcedeth) and sensors (w83627ehf) up and running, haven't had a single problem with it

 

I didn't know the integrated audio was Intel-based. I thought Azalia had nothing to do with Intel. And it worked right out of the box for you? I've heard there have been problems with Intel hi-def audio chips in Linux.

It's good to know all this works, as I'll be buying the non-SLI Ultra edition of this board soon.  :Smile: 

----------

## geniux

 *nightmorph wrote:*   

>  *geniux wrote:*   MSI K9N SLI Platinum (S-AM2 nForce 570) running nicely here. Sound (snd_hda_intel), onboard LAN (forcedeth) and sensors (w83627ehf) up and running, haven't had a single problem with it 
> 
> I didn't know the integrated audio was Intel-based. I thought Azalia had nothing to do with Intel. And it worked right out of the box for you? I've heard there have been problems with Intel hi-def audio chips in Linux.
> 
> It's good to know all this works, as I'll be buying the non-SLI Ultra edition of this board soon. 

 

It worked right away, maybe I were lucky. 

The integrated audio is Realtek ALC-883 which have no Linux support afaik, so I did lspci and got:

```

00:06.1 Audio device: nVidia Corporation MCP55 High Definition Audio (rev a2)
```

I then searched for MCP55 and found out that the Intels snd_intel_hda should work, which it did  :Smile: 

----------

## 96140

Interesting. I've seen reports that both the Intel driver you selected and another one for nForce, intel8x0, should work. There's nothing in particular listed on the ALSA chip info page for the intel hda chip to distinguish it from the regular intel8x0 device, but maybe the first one specifically is the only one that can really do high definition audio. Yet I've seen both audio drivers work on the same motherboard with the same sound chip, so who knows?

----------

## geniux

 *nightmorph wrote:*   

> Interesting. I've seen reports that both the Intel driver you selected and another one for nForce, intel8x0, should work. There's nothing in particular listed on the ALSA chip info page for the intel hda chip to distinguish it from the regular intel8x0 device, but maybe the first one specifically is the only one that can really do high definition audio. Yet I've seen both audio drivers work on the same motherboard with the same sound chip, so who knows?

 

The intel8x0 didn't work for me, tested it first of the two.

The only thing I can see as annoying for some users is that you can't use the masterlevel for changing the volume you'll have to use PCM instead since the Master aren't there, this is not a problem for me though. Anyway I'm very satisfied with this mainboard

----------

