Date: Tue, 27 Jan 2004 10:47:24 -0800 From: "Jin Guojun [NCS]" <j_guojun@lbl.gov> To: Patrick Proniewski <patpro@patpro.net>, Bryan Cassidy <b_cassidy@bellsouth.net> Cc: freebsd-hardware@freebsd.org Subject: Re: New parts for new PC (need help - little knowledge of hardware) Message-ID: <4016B23C.BC65EE0C@lbl.gov> References: <20031117200108.66f53bcb.b_cassidy@bellsouth.net> <6007B49C-1967-11D8-9BA9-0030654D97EC@patpro.net>
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Patrick Proniewski wrote:
> On 18 nov. 2003, at 03:01, Bryan Cassidy wrote:
>
> > Next is to choose a mother board. I am
> > wanting a ASUS just because I hear alot of people talking about it on
> > the forums, irc etc and think I would be happy with it.
>
> you will, as long as you do not choose a cheap ASUS (SiS chipset and
> controllers)
> For max performance and better FreeBSD support, choose a motherboard
> with Intel chipset (if you choose to go with a pentium of course, I've
> no experience with AMD)
This is fairly incomplete information.
What performance and what Intel chipset implied here?
Providing helpful information should be positive.
Unclear information with bias does not help.
Intel 875 chipset (P4) may provide 2-time memory bandwidth than Nvidia (AMD).
However, spending the same amount $ on both motherboards and CPUs, this AMD
system may produce twice computation power than this Intel system. This is an
important fact if $ is an issue.
Intel has tried to release new BIOS every other week or a month to fix 875
chipset
booting problem (rev 005 to 015) because different I/O peripheral combination
can
cause its BIOS hang (not funny, I never see such serious problem on system
design).
For example, swap CDrom and IDE drive, or add some I/O controller, or use
different
video card, etc., all can cause system be unable to start from BIOS. We bought a
875
system, but could not use it for almost 6 months till its BIOS rev 015 was out.
What a horrible story.
We did benchmark for some good motherboards. The table it no pretty,
but it may be helpful:
http://dsd.lbl.gov/~jin/performance.pen.ps
-Jin
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