# compatible athlon motherboard chipsets??

## dan1e1

Hi all,

I suffer from the sickness of having to always be on the 

"bleeding edge" of technology, so naturally I'm constantly upgrading

the HW in my PC.  I tend to stick with AMD processors, so I'll

be purchasing an new Athlon motherboard soon.

It will either be Nvidia nForce2 based, or VIA KT400 based.  Will

Gentoo install and recognize one (or both) of these chipsets???

Thanks for the advice,

-dan

dkuster@eclipse.net

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## roTor

Not sure about the KT400 chipset, but I've got an Abit KX7-333 and it works just fine. Even mananged to get lm_sensors to load.

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## rommel

the newer via chipsets are not yet supported though via says they are working on it...i think i would go with a kt333 or even a kt266a since the performance differences seem o be rather small

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## dan1e1

Hmm,  are you saying _VIA_ is working on adding linux support

for the KT400??  I thought that would be the distro makers and/or kernel

developers job    :Very Happy: 

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## taskara

I would prob go kt333 because kt400 support not complete yet, and NVIDIA keep their drivers closed source, which has caused a number of problems with the original nforce..

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## alshain

 *taskara wrote:*   

> I would prob go kt333 because kt400 support not complete yet, and NVIDIA keep their drivers closed source, which has caused a number of problems with the original nforce..

 

I'd agree to avoid the nforce motherboards, but I think that kt400 support will be in 2.4.20, which will hopefully be released soon.  IDE support can be enabled with a small patch (which just basically adds the new chip IDs) and I'm not sure about USB or AGP support and whether it works with 2.4.19, but addinng support for it is similarly simple.

              Andrew

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## taskara

how would you go installing gentoo tho if the 1.4rc1 cd doesn't recognise your ide devices ?

and do you have a link to the patch?

thanks!

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## alshain

 *taskara wrote:*   

> how would you go installing gentoo tho if the 1.4rc1 cd doesn't recognise your ide devices ?
> 
> and do you have a link to the patch?
> 
> thanks!

 

Well, I think the drives would be there but without DMA support, so things would be slow and grindy.

You can get the patch here:

http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=linux-kernel&m=103216765003831&w=2

It's actually a replacement via82cxxx.c file, but it's not exactly large so copying it into /usr/src/linux/drivers/ide would probably be a lot easier that patching it. There was some discussion about patching the agpgart drivers too for full support but needless to say that's not that difficult either - I even considered trying it myself! If you need it to work NOW! instead of waiting for 2.4.20 then you could try the latest 2.5 kernel which has all this  included already.

    Andrew (going to buy a kt400 board no matter the pain)  :Very Happy: 

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## taskara

sounds like a plan.

I'm thinking of buying either the

asus A7V333 (with raid and audio)

or

asus A7V8X (with raid and audio)

I don't know which one to buy.

the A7V8X has 2 serial raid ports, but only 1 parallel ide port. I have no serial hard drives, and I want to use raid. So I assume I can't use raid 0 unless I put two hard drives on one cable.. which kinda defeats the purpose.

is there much performance difference between the kt400 and kt333 ide chipsets ?

so.. I'm confused... going to by a board in an hour, and don't know which one!

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## pjp

So far, noone (that I've read about) has been able to perform appreciably better with kt400 over kt333.

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## taskara

I think kt333 is the way to go, esp when I can't get serial hard drives yet..

maybe I should get an x-box and try to get linux on it.. ?

it's basically a pc at a quarter the cost 

??

anyone know what you can do in an x-box exactly ?

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## alshain

 *taskara wrote:*   

> 
> 
> is there much performance difference between the kt400 and kt333 ide chipsets ?
> 
> so.. I'm confused... going to by a board in an hour, and don't know which one!

 

Well, I'm planning on getting the Asus A7V8X too, but not for a month or so to give 2.4.20 a chance to come out. Then I can justify it by calling it a Christmas present to me.   :Smile: 

Performance-wise I don't think there's much between them, and DDR333 memory seems to be significantly faster than DDR400 (may change with BIOS updates). The main advantages of the kt400 are wow-factor (very important to me!), support for a 333Mhz front side bus, AGP 8X and in-built USB 2.0. I think the A7V8X has firewire too.

Are you sure it only has one parallel IDE port? Photographs show two parallel IDE and one parallel RAID. See here:

http://www.ocworkbench.com/2002/asus/a7v8x/a7v8xp1.htm

Also the manual clearly labels the blue and black IDE ports as primary and secondary IDE.

By the way, if you want to patch agp, add the chip id from /proc/pci to /usr/src/linux/drivers/char/agp/agpgart_be.c and let me know if that works. 

 :Very Happy: 

    Andrew

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## taskara

it has the two standard via ide ports (primary and secondary)

but the promise raid controller only has one parallel connector, the other two are serial.

which means I can't use raid unless I have two serial hard drives, something I can't get here until late november / early december.

either that or I can buy one parallel hard drive, and use it on it's own .. but what's the point of that, especially when I would have to later on go and buy two serial hard drives...

maybe it's better to get the a7v333 which has parallel raid, hardware sound, firewire and good linux support right now.

I actually want to use linux software raid, so maybe i"ll buy a seperate ultra 133 pci controller

ARRRGH... it's all too much..

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## alshain

 *taskara wrote:*   

> ARRRGH... it's all too much..

 

I've had a month of this already and have now reached a state of 'sod-it' nirvana.   :Very Happy: 

            Andrew

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## taskara

*sigh*

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## dan1e1

Actually, a number of reviews I've read claim the KT400

boards perform better than the KT333 boards when using

DDR333 memory....

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## alshain

 *dan1e1 wrote:*   

> Actually, a number of reviews I've read claim the KT400
> 
> boards perform better than the KT333 boards when using
> 
> DDR333 memory....

 

It seems like every benchmark I see gives a different result! Presumably these boards have been rushed to market so that the manufacturers can be seen to be supporting the latest technology. Hence they may not be as optimised as they could be and each BIOS revision squeezes more performance out and everybody is reviewing a different revision.

Andrew

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## pjp

 *taskara wrote:*   

> going to by a board in an hour, and don't know which one!

 Been more than an hour... which board did you get?

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## taskara

I didn't get any.. I just couldn't decide...

 *Quote:*   

> Presumably these boards have been rushed to market so that the manufacturers can be seen to be supporting the latest technology.

 

I agree, and that is soooo stupid! Why? because the new technology includes agp8x, which hardly any cards support (and with which the ati cards have trouble!) serial ata - but there are no serial ata harddrives yet, and ddr 400 - which has not even been certified as a speed, nor has AMD released 166 fsb cpus yet... so the kt400 is a bit of a farse.

Via is cancelling the kt333 and re-releasing the kt266, and a new kt400a chipset by Q2 next year... but that's just too long to wait  :Smile: 

serial hard drives will be here mid-late november.

I never thought I'd say this, but.. maybe I should go P4 2.53 Ghz .... man, what am I saying..... AMD have just stuffed us around lately.. releasing CPU's officially months and months ago, and yet we still (well here at least) can only get the 2200+. It's crazy town I tell you!

By the time AMD get their 2800+ out here, the P4 will be at 3.6Ghz.. 

I think AMD have focused too much on the upcoming hammer release, and not looked after the customers who support then right NOW.. which is us.. sniff sniff...

so to cut a long story short... either I'll wait til serial hard drives arrive, and go a7v8x - OR - forget about raid, and get the a7v8x with parallel WD hard drive - OR - go parallel raid with the a7v333 - OR - I'll switch to the dark side for now, and buy a p4 2.53 Ghz - OR - make a little project and put gentoo on an x-box...

decisions, decisions...  :Smile: 

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## pjp

I personally won't upgrade until I can buy a Hammer or dualHammer setup (depending on benefit).  Said setup will also be s-ATA.  In the meantime, I'm running a slot Athlon.  Just not worth upgrading now IMO.

 *Quote:*   

> I never thought I'd say this, but.. maybe I should go P4 2.53 Ghz ... AMD have just stuffed us around lately.. releasing CPU's officially months and months ago, and yet we still (well here at least) can only get the 2200+.

 Quite a disappointment, yes.  Don't forget Intel's track record here though.  They are no better in this respect.  If you decide to go with Intel, thats fine, just don't discard AMD because of this.  If AMD produced stuff the way Intel has, they'd be out of business.

 *Quote:*   

> I think AMD have focused too much on the upcoming hammer release,

 Not nearly enough IMO since the launch has been delayed (better a delay than an Intel fiasco though).

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## taskara

two excellent points  :Smile: 

I love my AMD.. don't think I could really ever not buy one.. just in these hard, confusing times, sometimes one loses focus on reality  :Smile: 

maybe I'll wait for hammer too.. but I might do an in-between upgrade, cause some friend will want to buy it from me later down the track  :Smile: 

x-box project is looking like fun  :Very Happy: 

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## pjp

 *taskara wrote:*   

> x-box project is looking like fun 

 Don't wait too long if that is something you really want to do.

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## taskara

hehe that's true  :Smile: 

good ol' Australia.. the law is on OUR side here !  :Very Happy: 

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