# new mobo and ram

## thejadeer

I dont know if this is the correct forum to be posting this in but this forum seems best.

I have had only one successfully gentoo install and i have had over 40 unsuccessfull installes on a specific computer, it works fine on other computers that i own. I have an asus motherboard with an athlon xp on the computer it wont install on correctly. I also have 512 mb of some generic ram company. My problem is that nothing will ever compile correctly during the install, i always get errors that nobody else ever seems to get. Even on the system i managed to install i still received errors allmost constantly. What i am getting at is i think that i need a new motherboar and/or new ram and i have two questions:

1. what is the best athlon xp motherboard for gentoo compatablity that is reasonably cheap (i dont need stuff like audio and video):

2. do i need new ram and if so what kind would be best:

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## fourhead

Linux generally utilizes your hardware much more than Windows for example, so it's not a bad idea to spend a few $ more to get good quality hardware. You should really buy some better RAM, for example Infinion, Samsung or Kingston. Also, from my experience Nforce mainboards are much better for Linux than VIA mainboards (I had only trouble with these) so I really suggest you to get a Nforce2 mainboard. Which manufacturer you choose doesn't really matter in my opinion, it's the same chipset anyway, and performance difference is not noticable in general. It's just up to the extra features you need or don't need like RAID, S-ATA, video, audio etc.

It's also very important that your RAM type fits for your CPU type. When you buy a CPU with 266 MHz FSB you should also buy RAM with 266 MHz.

Tom

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## NeddySeagoon

thejadeer,

I would go along with the nforce2 suggestion, although I have linux (not always gentoo) running on a fairly diverse range of hardware.

Intermittent problems are often caused by overheating and/or overclocking.  Check your cooling system and examine the CPU heatsink for clogging with dust/fluf. Clean carefully with a stiff brush.

Canned air and hoovers can cause static damage and mechanical damage to fan bearings.

I would generalise elektrohirns' advice on memory. Buy at least as fast as the FSB of the processor you have. Underclocking RAM is OK but if you get a CPU upgrade, it would be a shame to have tou get new RAM. Don't buy less than PC3200 RAM. That suits a 400MHz FSB, which is as fast at Athlon-XPs will ever get.

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## ewan.paton

you can get dual athlon mp board for £79 these days, keep the cpu and with the use of a pencil{1} then buy some nice ecc ram{2} and when yo feel like it add a 2nd cpu

all that advice is pretty futile though as i doubt its hardware as linux is pretty fault tolerant so unless youve overclocked the board it may be your config, check the cflags etc and possibly run 

{1} its a l2 bridge mod if i recall

{2} which if you know what you are doing is cheper than normal, i got 512megs of ibm server sticks for £35 6 months ago

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## NeddySeagoon

ewan.paton,

How do you mean, linux is fault tolerant?

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## fourhead

Well when he says that he has Gentoo running sucessfully on other machines, I suppose the config should be OK. This dual thing is also a nice idea, but honestly, I'd rather buy an Athlon64 then.

Tom

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## ewan.paton

 *NeddySeagoon wrote:*   

> ewan.paton,
> 
> How do you mean, linux is fault tolerant?

 

im speaking purely from personal experiance but ive a dell laptop with numerus hardware faults such a hardisk which randomly disconects etc and under linux its ok while windows was a reck after 24 hours

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## thejadeer

yes, my configs on the other computers are comprable to the configs that i have tested on the athlon xp, and i have tested many different configurations. I successfully have gentoo running on an ibm thinkpad r40 and an older gateway box. 

So your saying that i could modify an athlon xp to fit onto a dual board so that i could later upgrade?

Thank you for all of the help.

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## NeddySeagoon

thejadeer,

You can just plug a single XP into a dual board and it will work.

You only need to fiddle with the bridges when you want to add a second CPU.

The drawback with dual athlons is the motherboard chip set FSB maxes out at 266MHz, so its old technology really.

Before dismissing it out of hand, that may be adequate to keep two CPUs fed with what you want to do. Only you know that.

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## thejadeer

I dont mean to start a holy war here but i have a question on motherboard brands:

I have decided to go with the nforce2 ultra chipset because i beleive this will be the best for linux compatablity.

Within the range of the nforce2 ulta chipset, which motherboard brand do you think is most reliable, i am just lookin for a solid board i dont need great onboard audio or anthing like that, just a solid board?

I would like your opinions on motherboard brands.

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## nunne

linux is very fault tollerent when it comes to CPU and RAM errors (that can be the fault of overheating, overclocking or just dodgy hardware)... windows is also very fault tollerent when it comes to this.. but most linux users does one thing that is NOT hardware tollerent and will create errors if you have CPU/RAM errors or overclocked it too much.. that is compiling programs! when compiling you are using 100% of CPU power, one little misstake by the CPU will terminate the compile.

so linux is very hardware tollerent.. but compiling program is not..

and when you are emerging a program, installing gentoo linux you are compiling quite alot of programs  :Wink: 

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## NeddySeagoon

thejadeer,

There is not much to choose between nForce2 based boards.

Winnow them down by choosing those that have only the features you want.

e.g. On board Video or Not ?

On board Sound (SoundStorm does Not Work under Linux) you get basic sound.

On Board LAN(s)

SATA

Firewire and so on.

There is something to be said in favour of onboard extras with the nForce chipset. It provides 3 PCI buses to keep the peripheral bandwidth up. The PCI expansion slots are on one PCI bus, other onboard things are on others.

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## nunne

yeah. I have a nforce2 board and it works excellent under linux! the only annoying thing is that you can't get hardware mixing.. which sucks! but an creative audigy doesn't cost much these days.. and then you will get really excellent sound and hardware mixing.

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## NeddySeagoon

nunne,

nvsound (the binary sound driver from nvida) does do hardware mixing but its 

a) OSS 

b) broken

The details are in another thread.

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## nunne

yeah I know.. and do they even work with 2.6 kernel? nvidia only rocks on graphics drivers  :Wink: 

and oss is not the way to go, alsa rules...

I have to use software mixing with dmix to get a good result.. and software mixing.. sucks :/

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