Date: Tue, 6 Aug 1996 14:41:32 -0400 (EDT) From: Kenneth Merry <ken@gt.ed.net> To: michaelv@HeadCandy.com (Michael L. VanLoon -- HeadCandy.com) Cc: hardware@freebsd.org Subject: Re: P6 Natoma chipset Message-ID: <199608061841.OAA14299@ulc199.residence.gatech.edu> In-Reply-To: <199608061628.JAA19281@MindBender.HeadCandy.com> from "Michael L. VanLoon -- HeadCandy.com" at "Aug 6, 96 09:28:50 am"
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[ directed to hardware@freebsd.org, hackers@freebsd.org and netbsd-current@netbsd.org trimmed from CC line ] > I'm going to be buying a 200MHz Pentium Pro and motherboard (probably > a dual-CPU) in the next week or two. I know the Orion chipset has > some nasty bugs (like the 4MB/s PCI bus speed). I, too am thinking about getting a dual-P6 board. The problem is finding one that I know will be good... That particular Orion bug only affected the pre-B0 steppings of the chipset. From Rod Grimes: (7/17/96, freebsd-hardware) ===== One more time.... Chip sets belowing stepping B0 have a PCI bus mastering bug that prevents data tranfer rates to reach much beyond 4.4MB/s on the PCI bus. There is a fundemental flaw in the design of the chipset/CPU interface logic as well, that will never be fixed which has a significant impact on CPU/Memory bandwidth. ===== > Has anyone discovered any horrible bugs in the Natoma (440FX) chipset, > or is it working well so far? > > I also remember reading something about someone having quality > problems with SuperMicro motherboards. Any opinions on SuperMicro > versus ASUS, WRT build quality, reliability, support, and speed? Has anyone seen either of the ASUS dual processor boards? According to their web page (http://asustek.asus.com.tw/), the P/I-P65UP5 and the P/E-P6RP7D can handle two processors. The first one has the ability to take either two Pentium or P6 processors, on a card. (the chipset is also on the card.) I haven't seen either board advertised anywhere. The SuperMicro P6DNF looks pretty spiffy, too, but I'd rather have more PCI slots. (One of the ASUS boards has 5, and the other 6 usable PCI slots.) Also, the ASUS boards have NCR SCSI bios, which would be nice to have. Has anyone seen the Pentium Pro chips with the 512K L2 cache? The only place I've seen them advertised is ALR. Anyway, if anyone can shed some light on the SMP motherboard arena, I'd appreciate it. :) Ken -- Kenneth Merry ken@ulc199.residence.gatech.edu Disclaimer: I don't speak for GTRI, GT, or Elvis.
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