[Gllug] Motherboard recommendation

[Peter Grandi]

>>> On Mon, 18 Jul 2005 19:20:58 +0100, Andrew Farnsworth
>>> <farnsaw at stonedoor.com> said:

farnsaw> [ ... AMD64 for Linux ...] some chipsets have better
farnsaw> support than other, but I don't really know which ones
farnsaw> are which so suggestions would be appreciated.

Depends for what, how much, etc.; for example currently there is
not much reason to buy an AMD64 system at all, if all one wants
is best value, rather than best performance (except for some
specific apps).

I think that currently the best value is a nice Athlon 32 on a
VIA KT880 motherboard (like the Asus A7V880 or the Abit KW7)
which usually costs less than £35, with perhaps an Athlon Barton
3000+, for another £65, for a total of £100 (inc. VAT) which is
less than the roughly equivalent AMD64 CPU.

The low price of such a nice motherboard and the CPU means you
can afford more memory or faster discs or a better 3D graphics
card for the same budget, which probably will give much better
overall performance, depending on what you use it for.

For an equivalent AMD64 one could get a socket 939 Venice 3000+,
which costs less than £100, and one has to figure out whether to
get a PCI or PCI-E motherboard, and if PCI-E, whether one wants
SLI or not. Prices for typical motherboards (and I still like
those based on the VIA KT890 chipset) are around £70 to £100...

Given that what's on the motherboard changes frequently, it is
hard to say which specific one is most Linux compatible. For
example, the newer it is, the likelier it is not supported by
ALSA yet.

-- 
Gllug mailing list  -  Gllug at gllug.org.uk
http://lists.gllug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/gllug