HI, I am getting ready to build a new computer and I have been unable to find any information about AMD's new AM2 architecture in regards to how it will perform with linux. Does anyone now how linux will run on AM2?

Im planning to run slackware 10.2, with a 2.6 Kernel for SATA support. The mother board i'm planning to use is an Asus M2N SLI Deluxe with an AMD Atholon 64 processor.

I couldn't find any AM2 information in the HCL, and was wondering if any one nows how comatible AM2 is with linux or if someone could tell me were to get more information.

Thanks,
Treely

There are differences between the AM2 and 939 processors like DDR2, SSE3, all AM2's are 90nm SOI, and the AM2 processors have 940 pins instead of 939. I just put an AM2 Sempron on a Gigabyte GA-M55plus-S3G motherboard. I'm running 32-bit Fedora Core 5 (not very often though) and 64-bit Gentoo 2006.0. Both use a 2.6 kernel. I don't have a SATA drive. Everything works very well and I've never seen the processor temperature exceed 90F with the stock heat sink and fan.

AM2 isn't any different than socket 939 as far as most software is concerned. Eventually we'll start seeing performance improve as ddr2 RAM gradually gets faster than ddr is. Linux will work on an AM2 just like it does on any x86 proc.

Thank you Arow and zytsef. That's veary nice to now.

The SATA controller on the selected ASUS model is not supported in Linux. ASUS is very Windows dependent. I suggest Abit or Gigabyte.

AMD has put a little curve ball on AM2 processors. You have to select the right processor in order to get DDR2-800 because AMD uses integers to divide the DDR2 clock. I recommend buying ECC memory but DDR2 only comes in 533 MHz for ECC memory.

About clock multiplier issue for DDR2 of AMD AM2 processors - http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets...px?i=2762&p=10

thanks again

Hey buddy,
I got same exact motherboard.
I set up dual boot on it, winxp and sourcemage.
I didn't install x-server on the linux side yet so I am not sure if sound will work or how the pci express video card will act.

One major problem with the nforce5 chipset is that if you dual boot with windows, windows leaves the ethernet driver in a locked state and forcedeth(reverse engineered module that supports nvidia chipset) is not able to take control.
The solution is that everytime you switch from windows to linux you got to unplug the power supply for 30 seconds. Its a pain in the ass but it works fine after that...

Goodluck...

P.S
I really like that motherboard!

Two things:

1 - Lots of AM2 socket motherboards use Nvidia nforce 550 or 570 chipset. Are they well supported in Linux? If not, what are your chipset recommendations for AM2 motherboards?

2 - I heard AMD's AM2 socket processors included some technology called "Presidio", which was sort of DRM or Trusted Computing device. If it's true, is it worth avoiding it and buying an AMD Socket 939 processor instead, which doesn't include this technology?

Thanks very much!

1) Linux acts different than Windows. If the kernel sees that it does not recognize a certain chipset product ID, it will try to use software that is similar to the chipset. The chipset should work with out any problems.

2) Presidio is software security not DRM. DRM protects software developers from doing illegal copying but Presidio is the other way around. Presidio provides software security like SELinux. It also will protect the computer from viruses that have attacked earlier x86 processors from overflows. DRM is in Intel processors like Pentium D. Since some people already used AM2 socket chips in Linux, it seems Linux is not effected.

Thanks, i was wondering why i couldn't get a dhcp lease. pulling the plug for a while did do the trick.