I will have a look through ASUS' site to check out the manual for A8N5-X as well. If i could, i would gladly lend you some DIMM's
to try out. But that's only for the future of "downloading" (in a couple of centuries maybe ). If i find some time maybe i will
even assemble the Prescott and test the 32-bit version of SuSE. I guess that since the 865 chipset is not a new one it would be rather
easy to install...
Could you clarify these options in the kernel during install("noapic", etc)? What's the story?

Hi,

I pulled one of the memory DIMM's (so it had single channel memory) and booted FC4 64 bit. It booted fine. So I'm guessing BIOS version F8 for the K8NSC-939 board corrected the problem I was having.

I have a board with an 865 chipset on it. It has a 2.8 Ghz Celeron with the Prescott core. It's running XP though and is the machine I use to author DVD's since the Linux tools for DVD authoring leave much to be desired. I use Linux for processing the video files though.

To use the "noapic nolapic" options. Press the F3 key before the OS boots. A Boot Options prompt will be displayed on the bottom portion of the screen. Type "noapic nolapic" without the quotes and those options will be passed to the kernel.


Stan

Tks Stan!!

I looked a bit around, but did not find someone to have fiddled with a 64-bit distro on EM64T architecture.
I bought yesterday a A8N5-X, a GeForce6200LQ PCIe (...from Albatron...they dont support Linux upfront, but at least they have pointers in their site to NVidia's Linux drivers) and a 3700+ Athlon64 (one of the new ones with 1Mb L2). I am not sure yet if the mobo BIOS is the latest version (...that supports X2's as well...). I will assmeble it all when i manage to find some time and see how it behaves on BIOS level. Linux testing, around Feb 16 (or when SuSE 10.1RC1 is released...). One thing i
didnt like was the smeary heat transfer parafin on the
CPU's heatsink. I think i'l scrap it off and use a better
one... How is your rig temperature-wise? Normal oper.
temp is how much?

Hi!

Actually we (Sun) support a variety of OS's on our 64 bit boxes -- e.g. RHEL. For details go to sun.com/servers and click on "x64 servers".

Eric Boutilier
opensolaris.org/os/blogs

Gigabyte says the K8NSC-939 supports the X2 but I haven't got one yet. Does Albatron have pretty good prices on CPU's?

I'm not sure what temp the CPU runs at. I have a AMD64 3200+. I'm not overclocking it. The few times I've looked in the BIOS setup, it was 26 or 27 degrees C. Much cooler than the 2.8 Ghz Celeron runs in the 865 chipset board. It's usually around 38 degrees C or so.



Stan

I have an AMD64 3700+ running off Socket 754 and it runs at roughtly 23/28 degrees C. Modern AMDs are very cool running.

I bought my CPU from TigerDirect.com with a heatsink from Mascool. Its very solid and isn't even that loud really.

I have a 3000+ 1.8ghz actual overclocked to 2.4ghz it runs low to mid 30C idle at full load low to mid 40C's on stock cooling with the retail fan/thermal pad you really should not have to worry much about temperatures with these processors. For the EM64T you may want to do a search on the debian-amd64 mailing list I see a few people there asking about/running the 64 bit port on them.

Forget doing EM64T. Intel Pentium 4 processors are still 32-bit. The EM64T extensions just makes the processor run 64-bit instructions with a performance penalty.

Hey, if nothing else, AMD is the new cool thing.

Tks for the input, everybody!!!

Eric, i know Sun makes excellent machines. I started off in Unix in '92 on a pretty nifty SPARCstation (that costed at the time a small fortune... and not out of my pocket). Knowing this i did
not look to find an out-of-the-box system (although a remember with great affection some SGI Indigos that were great!!!). But with the raised pricetag end-user did NOT have to bother about OS. That was SUN's problem...

Stan, my A8N5-X is an ASUS. I bought it for 90 euros. It is more-or-less similar to A8N-E but uses NF4 standard instead of NF4Ultra for the E-type. The sticker on the box states that it supports X2's. If so it must have the latest BIOS...It looks OK. I have not plugged it in yet... I am a bit worried about the chipset cooler (it uses an active fan...) but i guess that on 2GHz FSB it's better than passive cooling. Better than stressing the chipset... What else to say...pros and cons.

Albatron makes nice mobos as well. I don't know about the AMD variants but some 865-based ones i have, are pretty good. Same for an 875P based one that i use as a workhorse for large tasks.

I looked around for EM64T. No thanks!!! Not for LINUX anyway. I guess it won't be long till we see some quad cores AMD and Intels as well...
(don't be surprised if by that time open software doing weather prediction starts to appear... By that time - maybe - each one will try putting out his own weather report We will start arguing if it will rain tomorrow...)

buy this
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813127232
and
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16819103544
and
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814124115

When the total price for these goodies drops to 1/6 from what it is now, i will consider it.... But in any case:
1)The X2 i can already mount on the mobo i bought...
2)I don't really need THAT KIND of video card...

Hi everybody!!!

As promised (after some time I admit...) I am returning with my final judgement on what I've got.
Mobo ASUS A8N5-X (NF4 chipset) Socket 939
with AMD64 3700+,
2x1GB DDR400 Kingston DIMMs,
Albatron nVidia GeForce 6200LQ PCIeX16 and
80GB WD Caviar IDE hard disk.
On the minor things...
Toshiba DVD-ROM
TEAC CD-RW
screen is LG 1730PSUP TFT connected to the DVI output of my VGA
standard keyboard & Microsoft optical trackball connected to PS2 via USB/PS2 adaptor
Internet connection through ADSL router (via ethernet)

Target distro was OpenSUSE 10.1/64bit.

On the plus side
----------------
1. OS installation worked like a breeze!!! I could not believe it!!! No problems at all with hardware recognition.
2. HD formatted with XFS filesystem. Very low boot-up delay. I don't know if the difference from ext2/ext3 is substantial or not
On the other hand if I had opted for ext2/ext3 it would be easier to get a mirror image using Ghost
3. Internet connection and Ethernet work just fine without tweaking.
4. It took a bit to figure out how to set up SAMBA to work with my Win machines, but after that no hickups...
5. System seems extremely stable. Everything works as planned...audio, CD-RW, etc...
6. OpenFOAM set up easily and working

And a single minus
------------------

I was forced to buy the pair of 1GB DIMMs because if I used my 4x512MB DDR400 already on stock, RAM is forced to be underclocked
to DDR333. This is not the mobo's fault. It is a weakness of the chipset (NF4)

According to current market prices, the 3700+ (due to the emergence of the new sAM2 CPUs) has dropped 50%. So it is perfectly feasible to build a nifty computational Linux box with basic parts costing as low as 450euros!!! Adding 200 more one gets a 4400+ X2 for a twin core rig (A very VERY small fraction of CPU power in the form of an SGI workstation costed in 1993 as much as a very VERY expensive Mercedes Benz )