# amd64, Socket AM2, SATA; compatibility

## zeroth

I'm going to be building a new PC with a 64-bit processor and possibly an AM2 socket CPU.

1.) I'd like to make sure Gentoo will run perfectly fine on AMD64 Socket AM2

2.) should I even bother goign AM2 when there are faster processors for socket 939/940? I'd like to be upgradable. I've heard rumor that new AM2 processors will be available Jun 6 2006.

2.) I'm worried that my emulators (PlayStation, N64, Dosbox) will have problems with newer hardware

3.) Should use my currently-owned Antec TruePower 550, or sell it and buy the Antec TruePower 2.0 550?

What I'm sure of so far

thermal paste $5.99 Arctic Silver 5 Thermal Compound - OEM (1 cc)

video: $274.99 eVGA Geforce 7900GT 256-P2-N563-AX Video Card - Retail

hd: $129.99 Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 ST3320620AS (Perpendicular Recording Technology) 320GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive - OEM

case: $54.99 Rosewill TU-153 Black Computer Case With Side Panel Window - Retail

dvdrom: $21.99 ASUS Black ATAPI/E-IDE DVD-ROM Drive with DVD-RAM Read support DVD-E616A2 BK (ordered)

floppy: $6.99  ALPS Black 1.44MB 3.5" Internal Floppy Drive (ordered)

keyboard: $7.99 inland Black Wired Spill resistant (ordered)

Mouse: $7.99 Logitech MX310 2 tone Mouse (ordered)

Sound Card: Creative Labs Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS Platinum (already own)

Speakers: 5.1 (already own)

Option: socket AM2 and DDR2

(latest review shows its performance increases very little.)

mobo: $84.99 MSI K9N Neo-F ATX AMD Motherboard - Retail

processor $309.00 AMD Athlon 64 3800+ 2000MHz HT Socket AM2 Processor - Retail

memory: $115.99 OCZ Platinum 1GB 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM System Memory - Retail

Option: socket 939 and DDR

mobo: $73.99 MACH SPEED VIPER-939GT4-STD-G ATX AMD Motherboard - Retail

processor $336.00 AMD Athlon 64 4000+ 2000MHz HT Socket 939 Processor - Retail

memory: $92.50 Kingston HyperX 1GB (2 x 512MB) 184-Pin DDR SDRAM Dual Channel Kit System Memory - Retail

Partitions

8gb - /

50mb - /boot

50gb - /home	

8gb - /mnt/win/2k (fat32)

40gb - /mnt/win/backup (fat32)

120gb - /mnt/win/data (fat32)

7gb - /tmp

80gb - /usr

5gb - /var

1gb - swap

Please Advise.Last edited by zeroth on Tue May 30, 2006 6:14 pm; edited 2 times in total

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## leosgb

AMD64 gentoo will work fine independet of the kind of socket you choose. You should check if it has good game support though cause I use it to run a home server and I host some computing stuff there like scilab. Also check the forums to see if the mobo you chose has good support. I had a lot of problems with my ASUS board because of lack of drivers and problems in the BIOS. So maybe you should look for:

1) game support on AMD64.

2) support for your mobo options.

The rest seems to be fine. You shouldnt have any problems with your hardware but the choice of a good mobo can save you a lot of time.

Good luck.

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## zeroth

 *leosgb wrote:*   

> AMD64 gentoo will work fine independet of the kind of socket you choose. You should check if it has good game support though cause I use it to run a home server and I host some computing stuff there like scilab. Also check the forums to see if the mobo you chose has good support. I had a lot of problems with my ASUS board because of lack of drivers and problems in the BIOS. So maybe you should look for:
> 
> 1) game support on AMD64.
> 
> 2) support for your mobo options.
> ...

 

After reading your post, my main concern is now about my motherboard. I have carefully selected my motherboard (both the AM2 and 939) so that it contains everything I need, and as little as possible of the stuff I don't.

I'll do some research. Thank you.

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## leosgb

Yeah, that is the way to go. I have an A8N-VM CSM and I had to update my BIOS (poorly documented) so it would support my SATA drive. I had to install a PATA drive in order to do it because I didnt have a floppy. Check that the boards have all you need and then, if you have time, check if they are used by others. I still have problems with my server when I issue a shutdown command I have to walk to it and press the power off button due to a broken table (DST) that I gave up on trying to fix since it stays on for several days in a row.

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## zeroth

 *leosgb wrote:*   

> Yeah, that is the way to go. I have an A8N-VM CSM and I had to update my BIOS (poorly documented) so it would support my SATA drive. I had to install a PATA drive in order to do it because I didnt have a floppy. Check that the boards have all you need and then, if you have time, check if they are used by others. I still have problems with my server when I issue a shutdown command I have to walk to it and press the power off button due to a broken table (DST) that I gave up on trying to fix since it stays on for several days in a row.

 

My current PC will occasionally refuse to power-off on shutdown, but it only ever happens after an emerge -DNatuv world.

I'm not quite sure how to figure out if my mobo chipsets are supported by linux. 

btw, would it be a better idea to use my currently selected AM2 mobo's onboard 8 channel aurio rather than my SB Audigy 2 ZS Platinum? I only have 5.1 speakers, so I'm not sure how to hook up 5.1 speakers to an 8.1 system. I suppose my Audigy is a 7.1 channel, so it must not be too dificult. what if my system THINKS its 7.1 and its only 5.1? that could cause some issues...

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## leosgb

Look for posts here and at linuxquestions, linuxforums and many other places of people complaining about the mobo's you liked. See if there were any issues so at least you know what you will bump into.

Regarding the audio part I have no idea how to set it up. I just use my humble laptop built in speakers hehehe

You could just go and google for "your mother board name + linux" and see what comes up. That is what I did when I couldnt install linux on my server at first  :Smile: 

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## zeroth

the board (MSI K9N Neo-F) is brand new. I might just have to take a risk.

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## palmer

Did you get the AM2?

I am assuming you bought a nForce5xx chipset (570 or 590)

Does it work well (SATA and onboard sound would be my worries)?

-palmem

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## 96140

Just FYI, but while sata_nv works perfectly -- the kernel natively supports SATA on nVidia chipsets -- there is no support for NCQ on your SATAI or SATAII drives in Linux. See linux-ata.org for some answers. Turns out that the handful of supported SATA chips with NCQ are all used in discrete PCI-X (only 1 or two PCI solutions) cards, not as chips on a motherboard. There's no support for NCQ on anything else in Linux.

So your hard disk and motherboard may support NCQ (especially if they support SATAII), but you almost certainly won't be able to use NCQ, at least not if you're on an nVidia motherboard, or almost any consumer-oriented board.

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## Enverex

Are you sure about that?

```
ata1: SATA max UDMA/133 cmd 0x9F0 ctl 0xBF2 bmdma 0xD400 irq 225

ata2: SATA max UDMA/133 cmd 0x970 ctl 0xB72 bmdma 0xD408 irq 225

scsi0 : sata_nv

ata1: SATA link up 1.5 Gbps (SStatus 113 SControl 300)

ata1.00: ATA-7, max UDMA/133, 488397168 sectors: LBA48 NCQ (depth 0/32)

ata1.00: ata1: dev 0 multi count 1

ata1.00: configured for UDMA/133

scsi1 : sata_nv

ata2: SATA link up 1.5 Gbps (SStatus 113 SControl 300)

ata2.00: ATA-7, max UDMA/133, 488397168 sectors: LBA48 NCQ (depth 0/32)

ata2.00: ata2: dev 0 multi count 1

ata2.00: configured for UDMA/133

  Vendor: ATA       Model: HDT722525DLA380   Rev: V44O

  Type:   Direct-Access                      ANSI SCSI revision: 05

  Vendor: ATA       Model: HDT722525DLA380   Rev: V44O

  Type:   Direct-Access                      ANSI SCSI revision: 05
```

It lists it, but I don't know if it uses it.

Anyway, that Barracuda drive is nice. I bought it as storage in my Emu PC thinking it was going to be slow (old spare parts PC and I bought the IDE version) and it clocks in at a nice 76MB/s which is amazing considering I was expecting poor performance.

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