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Date:      Fri, 31 Aug 2001 03:12:50 -0400
From:      Allen Landsidel <all@biosys.net>
To:        freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: FreeBSD and Athlon Processors 
Message-ID:  <5.1.0.14.0.20010831024941.00c3fe18@rfnj.org>
In-Reply-To: <200108310117.SAA26272@mina.soco.agilent.com>
References:  <Your message of "Fri, 31 Aug 2001 13:05:44 %2B1200." <000101c131b9$0f97ec50$0a01a8c0@den2>

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At 18:17 8/30/2001 -0700, Darryl Okahata wrote:


>      Yeah.  As long as you avoid motherboards with the VIA KT133A/KT133
>chipset and the VIA 686B Southbridge, you're probably fine (not all such
>motherboards supposedly have problems, but how do you tell the
>difference?).  For more info, check out:

This is total nonsense.

I have four athlons in my house.  A 600MHz Slot-A (MSI-6167, AMD Irongate 
chipset), an 800MHz Thunderbird (Abit KT7, VIA KT133 chipset), and two 
1200MHz Thunderbirds (Abit KT7 and Abit KT7-RAID, VIA KT133 chipsets).  I 
ordered a 1000MHz Thunderbird just today (Abit KT7E, VIA KT133E chipset) to 
arrive tomorrow and replace the MSI based system.

To date, the MSI board with the AMD chipset has been the only one to ever 
experience problems, and that was due entirely to crappy memory coupled 
with an inadequate power supply.  That system is running right now wearing 
many hats.
   1) Primary DNS server
   2) Apache + PHP4 WWW server
   3) FTP server
   4) Samba server
   5) Postfix email server
   6) PostGreSQL DB server
   7) Local cvsup mirror
   8) ...probably other things I'm forgetting right now...

It's been working flawlessly without a single crash since the day the 
memory and PSU were replaced, and FreeBSD was put on it.

>         http://www.au-ja.de/review-kt133a-1-en.html

This site is one of, if not the only, site I have seen to list such a 
plethora of problems with the VIA chipsets for the Athlon.  In fact, this 
kind of reminds me of that hoax about athlons of high clock speeds being 
unable to properly decode jpg/gif (can't remember which) images.

The unofficial KT133 FAQ:
http://www.icrontic.com/faq/index.php3?theme=4&level=2&document_id_select=3

Go to http://www.amdzone.com and do a search in the archives for 
KT133.  You'll find a mess of articles, most to all praising the KT133.

Some people may feel differently (As may I once the nForce is out and field 
tested) in the future, but for now, I wouldn't even consider any Athlon 
motherboard without a VIA chipset; The exception, of course, being AthlonMP 
boards... but you don't see me hopping on the bandwagon to buy one yet 
either, I'd like to have a choice between several manufacturers and even 
chipsets if possible.


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