# Need motherboard advise (Core 2 due)

## batistuta

I'd like to build a new system and would need some advice with a motherboard.

Most important, all motherboard components must be 100% supported by linux. My requirements are:

- quiet (passive cooling or quiet fan)

- core 2 duo (775 socket)

- integrated sound with spdif COAXIAL output (no optical please), easy to configure with ALSA and preferably HW mixing

- WLAN+LAN

- good BIOS configuration utilities

- PCI express

- I'm thinking of RAIDING in SW, so no HW Raid is necessary

I'm not sure about integrated graphics. How well do intel graphics chipsets work? I've been using nvidia so far and have been happy. I think it would be cool to not need to buy a video card, but it must support tv-out for watching movies.

Price is not an issue per see, but I'm looking for a good price/value (rather than cheapest or bleading edge)

PS: I'm considering core 2 duo because for what I've read it is superior both in terms of consumption and performance. But someone corect me if I'm wrong

Thanks a lot!

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## PaulBredbury

Forget about integrated sound & graphics - they're rubbish compared to external cards.

For audio - Soundblaster Audigy 4. The X-fi does not have Linux drivers.

For graphics - Nvidia 8800, either GTS or GTX.

Ignore any motherboard that includes Jmicron chips, e.g. the Asus P5W (which I unfortunately chose). I'd recommend a fully SATA mobo, ignoring ATA completely, because trying to mix ATA and SATA confuses the kernel. I wish I'd chosen an Intel mobo.

Edit: Changed from Audigy 2 to Audigy 4, after trying one.Last edited by PaulBredbury on Sat Sep 15, 2007 6:44 pm; edited 1 time in total

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## Monkeh

 *PaulBredbury wrote:*   

> For audio - Soundblaster Audigy 2.

 

I'd recommend an envy24 based card myself. I use an M-Audio Audiophile 2496. It sounds nicer than my 2 ZS, and is less noisy.

You'd need decent drivers for such a card though (I'd recommend these for an Audigy too of course): http://www.opensound.com/

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## gerard27

I also am the unhappy owner of an Asus P5W mobo.

I quite agree with Paul.These boards suck!

Gerard.

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## Sachankara

 *PaulBredbury wrote:*   

> Forget about integrated sound & graphics - they're rubbish compared to external cards.

 In what way are they rubbish? Intel's integrated audio sounds just as fine as any SoundBlaster card, and Intel's i9xx graphics accelerators have open drivers which work just fine with all the new AIGLX/RANDR/etc stuff.

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## Monkeh

 *Sachankara wrote:*   

>  *PaulBredbury wrote:*   Forget about integrated sound & graphics - they're rubbish compared to external cards. In what way are they rubbish? Intel's integrated audio sounds just as fine as any SoundBlaster card

 

My 2 ZS sounds better than any HDA device (and don't get me started on the old AC97 crap). And the Audigy cards are nothing special.

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## Sachankara

Well, you're of course free to think as you like, just as I am. But personally, I think too many suffers from the so called "audiophile syndrome". People have a way to convince themselves that they can hear the difference between two or more different types of equipment with the same speakers/head phones; when in fact they'd fail misserably in an actual blind test.

But, as I wrote, I'm free to have my opinion - as are you.  :Smile: 

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## Hamman

 *PaulBredbury wrote:*   

> 
> 
> For graphics - Nvidia 8800, either GTS or GTX.
> 
> 

 

If you're into gaming it's a good choice, but otherwise it's just a waste of money. Get a cheap Nvidia card in that case.

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## batistuta

thank you guys for all the comments. The audio is not my main concern because I have an external PCM decoder (an Onkyo amp). The only important part of the audio is that it is supported by the kernel and that it has a coaxial spdif out. I don't feel like doing any sort of ALSA configuration (no dmix, etc), I want it to work out-of-the box like the good-old Sound Blaster 5.1 Live digital (or I might just get another one of these cheap cards).

With integrated graphics, my only concern is that I can for example configure the TV out without problems. I want to be able to run beryl and Google earth without my computer going postal. This works very nice with nvidia, but not sure about Intel. ATI sucks big time so that's a no no.

Now the most important part is the motherbaord itself. I'm bothering you guys because that mobo offers is incredibly. It is so large that I don't even know where to start. So I'm looking for a good price/value. Something with a good chipset, SATA, integrated LAN+WLAN, and quiet. And thanks a lot for the tip of choosing SATA exclusively and staying away from jmicron, I wouldn't have never thought that it could confuse the kernel.

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## Sachankara

 *batistuta wrote:*   

> I wouldn't have never thought that it could confuse the kernel.

 It's never been a problem for me. The only thing not liking mixed storage devices is the bios - as always. :/ The kernel doesn't have a problem with it. You just have to decide whether you should use the old PATA+SATA stuff or the newer libata.

If harddisk "SMART" monitoring is important to you, get PATA devices. The Linux kernel doesn't expose all the necessary SCSI stuff for SMART at the moment, so you'll have to settle without hardware monitoring for SATA.

Although, I'd still go for SATA. Much more comfortable to use.  :Smile: 

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## PaulBredbury

 *Sachankara wrote:*   

> audiophile syndrome

 

No, it's a situation of having ears and decent speakers, and remembering what previous soundcard/speaker combinations sound like. I can easily tell the difference between a Soundblaster card and the "oh-so-wonderful" Realtek ALC882M built-in soundcard on my expensive Asus P5W DH motherboard (which needs OSS in doom3 & quake4, to prevent error "buffer size select failed: Invalid argument", and makes a slight static noise whenever the mouse is moved). The funny thing is, I am biased against Creative, after having suffered their rubbish Windows drivers over the years.

Gaming is what stresses the computer components the most, obviously - no-one needs a Core 2 Duo for a bit of word-processing  :Wink: 

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## Monkeh

 *Sachankara wrote:*   

> If harddisk "SMART" monitoring is important to you, get PATA devices. The Linux kernel doesn't expose all the necessary SCSI stuff for SMART at the moment, so you'll have to settle without hardware monitoring for SATA.

 

Incorrect. SATA drives work perfectly with SMART. As do PATA drives using libata.

 *Quote:*   

> which needs OSS in doom3 & quake4, to prevent error "buffer size select failed: Invalid argument"

 

And just what's wrong with OSS? Try it out, you might be surprised..

 *Quote:*   

> The funny thing is, I am biased against Creative, after having suffered their rubbish Windows drivers over the years.

 

As am I. I'm suffering their Windows drivers right now, and I've suffered the general poor quality of their hardware just as long (the emu10kx cards aren't a bad solution if you're stuck with ALSA and it's inability to do proper software mixing, but really, they're not all that wonderful, and their hardware mixing is limited. They suck at resampling too.).

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## Sachankara

 *Monkeh wrote:*   

>  *Sachankara wrote:*   If harddisk "SMART" monitoring is important to you, get PATA devices. The Linux kernel doesn't expose all the necessary SCSI stuff for SMART at the moment, so you'll have to settle without hardware monitoring for SATA. 
> 
> Incorrect. SATA drives work perfectly with SMART. As do PATA drives using libata.

 Seems that you were partially correct. Some chipsets supported under Linux seems to support it, but not all. I have one that doesn't support SMART at the moment. It'll cause tools like smartd to fail.

For example: 

```
$ smartctl -s on /dev/sda

smartctl version 5.36 [i686-pc-linux-gnu] Copyright (C) 2002-6 Bruce Allen

Home page is http://smartmontools.sourceforge.net/

unable to fetch IEC (SMART) mode page [unsupported field in scsi command]

A mandatory SMART command failed: exiting. To continue, add one or more '-T permissive' options.
```

:/

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## Monkeh

And what chipset are you using for this little test?

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## Sachankara

 *Monkeh wrote:*   

> And what chipset are you using for this little test?

 Quoting directly from lspci: 

```
RAID bus controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VIA VT6420 SATA RAID Controller (rev 80)
```

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## Monkeh

 *Sachankara wrote:*   

>  *Monkeh wrote:*   And what chipset are you using for this little test? Quoting directly from lspci: 
> 
> ```
> RAID bus controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VIA VT6420 SATA RAID Controller (rev 80)
> ```
> ...

 

Well, I lack a VIA SATA controller (fortunately.. I'm allergic to VIA), however, note the ATA in SATA. And then note that smartctl is detecting a SCSI device... Give it -d ata, and it'll work fine. SATA is ATA, not SCSI.

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## Sachankara

 *Monkeh wrote:*   

>  *Sachankara wrote:*    *Monkeh wrote:*   And what chipset are you using for this little test? Quoting directly from lspci: 
> 
> ```
> RAID bus controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VIA VT6420 SATA RAID Controller (rev 80)
> ```
> ...

 I also tried using libata on my laptop IDE device: 

```
IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) IDE Controller (rev 03)
```

It too fails at supporting SMART through libata. I'll try with the switch you mentioned and see if it makes any difference.

Edit: The IDE controller seems to work with the -d ata switch. Thanks.  :Smile: 

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## Monkeh

I use pata_amd, sata_nv, and sata_promise daily, and they all work correctly with SMART.

It's not a driver issue, it's just smartmontools being stupid and assuming /dev/sd means SCSI hardware.

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## peleion2

Don't forget a LinuxBIOS for a truly Linux box:

http://www.linuxbios.org

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## Monkeh

 *peleion2 wrote:*   

> Don't forget a LinuxBIOS for a truly Linux box:
> 
> http://www.linuxbios.org

 

Very few boards are supported. In general it's not worth the effort for users.

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## coolsnowmen

just for the record, I've used smart tools with both intel and sis chipsets now

Edit: referring to sata & smart

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## batistuta

I really don't think that the quality of the sound card should be affected too much when using the spdif output (just a guess). I mean, cheap cards usually have a bad D/A converter, but I won't be using anyway since I'll use the digital out. Then expensive cards have all this fancy multichannel out, which again I won't be using since my amp only supports stereo PCM, Dolby, or DTS.

So based on your inputs, I will stay away from Jmicro and the Asus P5W DH. What about a recommended mobo? Or any website with trusted reviews?

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## Monkeh

It's usually the DAC which lets cheap cards down. You'll probably find SPDIF out on an HDA device to be suitable for you.. just get some real drivers (see above), because dmix is just plain bad.

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## batistuta

Can you guys give me some hints on things to look for and to stay away from?

- Chipset

- Audio controller (don't wanna use dmix)

- Integrated graphics

- WLAN controller

- SATA controller

Any info regarding "this chip is well supported by Linux" or "this chip sucks", or this specific board is not that well supported will help me to narrow down my selection. I mean, mobos range from 40 to 270 euros besides the RAID, which I don't need, I'm not sure what is worth it and what not   :Rolling Eyes: 

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## Akkara

 *Quote:*   

> I really don't think that the quality of the sound card should be affected too much when using the spdif output (just a guess)

 

Unfortunately, one can't be too sure about that.

Quite a few years ago, I had seen a card (unfortunately I don't recall which one it was now) that internally resampled all audio to 48KHz - and - the SPDIF output was this resampled signal.  And to top it off, their resampler sucked.

That is what had started me on a search that ended up with one of those M-Audio audiophile cards.  It is really quite simple: If I send an audio sample of 0x1F25 (to pick a number) out the card, that is the value I expect to see on the SPDIF port, and if recorded on a digital recorder and played back again, that is the value I expect to receive at the input. No resampling, gratuitous gain-adjustments, no nothing.  Anything else defeats the purpose of a digital interconnect.

Unfortunately, dmix these days also seems to like to resample to 48K.  And its resampler isn't that great either (try generating a 17KHz tone in something like rezound and playing it - artifacts galore).  At least there's ways around that (like using Jack).

Of course, if the main goal of the audio for is some games and listening to low-to-medium bitrate compressed music, none of this really matters.

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## batistuta

So guys, let's worry about the audio card later and let me first get the mobo  :Very Happy: 

I've read some good reviews about the MSI P965 Platinum

Unfortunately, this card uses the JMicron controller that Paul was encouraging me to avoid. Could you guys please tell me, what type of problems I could expect with the JMicron controller? Was this a problem with old kernels, or is it still an issue? Thanks

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## AgentMat

 *batistuta wrote:*   

> So guys, let's worry about the audio card later and let me first get the mobo 
> 
> I've read some good reviews about the MSI P965 Platinum
> 
> Unfortunately, this card uses the JMicron controller that Paul was encouraging me to avoid. Could you guys please tell me, what type of problems I could expect with the JMicron controller? Was this a problem with old kernels, or is it still an issue? Thanks

 

you should stay away from the "old" P965 chipset, since it doesn't support the new intel processors with 1333 fsb

I have got a P35 DQ6 board from gigabyte and I'm really happy with it. My SATA drives are on the ICH9R controller and my cdrom drive on the jmicron controller. I'm using only the new drivers from libata (AHCI, ICH chipset, Jmicron chipset) and it works like a charm. The only problem : you need the "small gentoo" liveCD from kerneloftruth if you want to boot from a cdrom reader connected to the jmicron controller. not a big deal.

(It worked without a glitch with gentoo-sources-2.6.21-r3 and I'm now using ragnarok-sources-2.6.22-rc6)

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## PaulBredbury

 *AgentMat wrote:*   

> cdrom drive on the jmicron controller

 

Does hdparm show that DMA is enabled on the CD drive?

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## Monkeh

 *batistuta wrote:*   

> - Audio controller (don't wanna use dmix)

 

Practically anything. Hardware mixing isn't needed to avoid dmix, decent drivers are. See http://www.opensound.com.

 *Quote:*   

> Quite a few years ago, I had seen a card (unfortunately I don't recall which one it was now) that internally resampled all audio to 48KHz - and - the SPDIF output was this resampled signal. And to top it off, their resampler sucked. 

 

That'd be anything based on the emu10k1 chip (or emu10k2). Read: Soundblaster Live!, Audigy.

 *Quote:*   

> That is what had started me on a search that ended up with one of those M-Audio audiophile cards.

 

What model do you have? I have a 2496, it's really rather nice (especially when used with OSS, their mixer and resampler is pretty good).

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## AgentMat

 *PaulBredbury wrote:*   

>  *AgentMat wrote:*   cdrom drive on the jmicron controller 
> 
> Does hdparm show that DMA is enabled on the CD drive?

 

I haven't checked but I 've seen no performance loss comparing to windows xp. However I thought that DMA was activated by default when using libata drivers (I DON'T even have IDE support compiled in my kernel), wasn'it ?

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## batistuta

 *AgentMat wrote:*   

> you should stay away from the "old" P965 chipset, since it doesn't support the new intel processors with 1333 fsb

 

Mmhhh... this is a very good point that I haven't noticed. The problem is that these new boards with the P35 cost almost twice as much as the ones based on the P965. And 1333 DDR3 RAM is incredibly expensive (at least here in Europe 389 euros for 2G).

For what I've read, DDR3 is not worth the price difference so I'm planning to stick to DDR2 for the time being. You could claim that I can get a P35 chipset and buy DDR2 now, and upgrade to DDR3 in a year when price gets cut, but I hope to buy 2G for now and stay happy.

Ok, fair enough. My fault: I haven't said what I wanna do with my computer...

- watch movies

- Lots of compilation   :Very Happy: 

- Ocassionally play games (2 hours/week)

- 6-10 megapixel photo editing and processing

- Wanna use Beryl without system crying

- Run Windows Vista inside Virtual Box or VMWare without the system crawling (there are some Win apps that I need). This brings a good question: what is better for virtualization, AMD or intel?

I'm replacing my 6 year old Athlon XP 1.7, which will move as a home server (music, movies, VPN, backup, etc). I will replace Gentoo on my Athlon-XP with Arch and install Gentoo on my new system.

My point is that I'm looking for the best price/value rather than top bleeding edge. And that's the whole point: it is easy to find on internet the bleeding edge products. But it is quite hard to find the best price/performance products. And yes, I have considered AMD. However, I don't think the price difference (20-30 bucks) is a big factor. However, I've read that due to the sync between the CPU and mem controller, AMD CPUs are not always able to clock the memory to 800, which means that only a few AMD processors can run at 800, while the other ones will round-off the multiplier and run the memory at a slower speed   :Rolling Eyes: 

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## Akkara

 *Quote:*   

> due to the sync between the CPU and mem controller, AMD CPUs are not always able to clock the memory to 800, which means that only a few AMD processors can run at 800, while the other ones will round-off the multiplier and run the memory at a slower speed

 

From experience on hardware ~5 years ago: when I ran memory synchronous at a somewhat slower rate I got better performance than asynchronous at a faster rate.

I haven't (re)done this study recently to know whether and how much it applies to current hardware.  But not being able to maximize RAM rate might not be as big as it appears (and perhaps you might be able to run at lower RAS/CAS latencies as a result of the slower speed).

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## dswissmiss

Batistuta:

Go with the new P35 motherboards (only 20-30 USD difference if you go with vanilla boards eg. Gigabyte P35-DSR3), and stick with DDR-800 Ram if you plan to OC a bit, or just go with DDR-667.

Btw, this advice comes from a pc building forum I've been visiting for the last 2 weeks for my own build, so I can't get too technical as to why DDR-677 is recommended right now.

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## batistuta

dswissmiss,

What are the benefits of going for a P35 board? I've read a recent Core-2 duo mainboard article on the German Magazine C't (in my opinion a very respectable magazine). Their basic conclussion is that it is not really worth going to a P35 board unless you need RAM 1333, which is not even that fast yet. My German is not that great and I might have not got the message correctly, but that's what I've understood   :Very Happy: 

But of course, if you have arguments supporting the choice of a P35 board, I'd love to hear that before I buy!

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## TuxeyM

The new ASUS P5K are said to be the end of all MOBOS. The bomb.

I would personally get a p5n32-sli...

I have a p5n-e SLI and it allowed me to clock my Core 2 Duo E6600 to 3.5 ghz.

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## dswissmiss

My German isn't that great anymore either   :Wink: 

Most online magazines here like tomshardware say that if you have a P965 you won't benefit much from switching to a p35 and that you should wait for the x38 this winter. The main advantage for the p35 is future proofing though, as it will support the next generation 45nm penryn chipsets.

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## TuxeyM

X38 is gonna rock.

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## Paapaa

 *dswissmiss wrote:*   

> The main advantage for the p35 is future proofing though, as it will support the next generation 45nm penryn chipsets.

 

Many P965 boards support Penryn with a new BIOS:

http://event.asus.com/mb/45nm/

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