Help me choose a new Athlon 64 Mobo
 

I am going to be ordering the parts in the next week for a shiny new Athlon 64 system. My primary concerns are:
1) Stability
2) Linux hardware support.
3) Support for "Cool & Quiet." (does this feature work under Linux?)

I have heard that the Via K8T800 is the best for use with Linux, and based on features, the Asus K8V SE seems nice (or maybe the Asus K8V without the SE). But I am not sure how nicely it plays with Linux. I have read posts of people having problems, but maybe newer firmware and later distro have fixed these problems? I currently use Mandrake 10.0 and sometimes Knoppix.

My skill level is that I can install an .RPM and change config files (if I can figure out what to change), but I do not know how to re-compile the kernel. So if a re-compile is needed in order to get hardware to work, this is a serious negative against a board. Of course, not being able to get something to work at all is an even bigger negative.

So, what I want to know is: what Athlon 64 mobo do you use, and did you have any problem with the peripherals (SATA, RAID, LAN, and Audio)? Which distros worked and didn't work? My dream is just to install Mandrake and have everything work without any work on my part. Is this possible?

Also, as a somewhat related issue, I need to get a new video card. From a Linux standpoint, should I choose ATI or nVidia? I know that the download version of Mandrake does not ship with the nVidia drivers. So which one is easier to get running?

*** EDIT ***
It would also be nice if any recommended mobos were current models that I can get easily.

One more questions... Is the only way to get the Mandrake 10.0 for Athlon 64 to join the club?

Are there any Asus K8V SE owners or MSI K8T Neo owners who want to tell me their experiences???

Does Mandrake 10 use a recent 2.6 kernel? Even if it does, youll probably have to recompile the kernel with 64-bit CPU enabled. This is not required, however, if you want all the shiny features of the 64-bit, you have to enable that option. (Sorry, but Ive never touched a 64-bit system that wasnt a game console, so I cant help you further.)

I suggest waiting for a few more months. AMD is changing their socket and probably adding dual core in their processors. Soon PCI-X will be introduced that matches performance of AGP 16X. If you do not have games that support 64 bit processors then you will not see much of a difference. Also you have to download 64 bit LINUX distributions to feel the full effects. Also Nvidia has introduced their nforce3 250 but I have not see many manufactures making any motherboards using it.

I'm not going to repeat the motherboard list that I suggest for AMD 64 processors. Do a search in this forum.

Electro:

The new socket IS coming, but it is only for the "ultra-high end" chips from AMD (Opterons and FX). This new socket is only for the chips with dual-RAM channels on board, and I can't afford those.

The current 64-bit socket is "Socket 754." The rumor is that AMD is going to eliminate Socket-A, and make ALL low to mid-range chips Socket 754 (including 32-bit Athlons). Socket 939 and 940 will be reserved for servers. I do expect the Socket 939 mobos and processors to come down in price in a year (perhaps less), but I cannot wait that long to upgrade.

AMD MAY be adding dual-core, but they have not announced plans to do so. Their latest response (a few days ago) is that they CAN do it, but they won't until there is sufficient market demand. This probably means that if AMD decided to do a dual-core chip today, it would be at least 6 months before they would be available, and another 6 months before they became affordable. Plus that would likely require yet another socket, with a round of entirely new mobos, which would raise the cost.

I am not really a gamer. I do not NEED 64 bit right now, but I do not get a chance to upgrade my computer that often -- I am married ;) So if I got a regular Athlon XP right now, then I would likely regret it in a year or two when I feel the itch to run 64 bits. If I was the type of person to upgrade every year, then I would just go for an XP now and go 64 later when there was more software for it.

As far as PCI-X, that means a new chipset, and new hardware drivers will be needed for Linux. So when it comes out, Linux may not even be usable for a while. I would rather have less performance and be able to run Linux now than have an absolute screaming machine under Winblows, but not be able to run Linux at all for a few months.

I would also like to point out that with everything but the kitchen sink on the mobo itself, how many things are usually hanging off of the PCI bus? The system that I am considering building would not even have a single PCI card in it. Even if I upgraded to a new sound card, audio is extremely low bandwidth. Audio worked perfectly even on an ISA bus, and I have not had the bandwidth of my ears upgraded. So, for the average person, PCI-X is a non-issue that can do nothing but cause driver headaches and raise prices in the short term. Your milage may vary if you are not a typical home user, though.

I was not able to find your list elsewhere. I would appreciate a link to the thread. Thank you.

64-bit is more oriented toward server machines, since they need that extra pipeline power to process all the requests. It wouldnt really make much of a difference on a desktop. go for something like an Athlon XP with 3.2Ghz instead :D.

What you say is true, RIGHT NOW. In about a year, a substantial majority of the systems being sold will likely be 64-bits. By buying a socket 754 board, it will be easier to upgrade in the future. I suspect that AMD will stop making Socket A parts in a year or less - which makes upgrading harder since a new mobo is needed. So it is worth the extra $120 or so.

There is no such thing as AMD Athlon 3.2 GHz.

Data processing that involves in massive math calculation. 128-bit memory bandwidth will work better than 64-bit memory bandwidth.

The reason why ISA sound cards work ok is because there was tons of buffering. 10 megabytes per second is not enough for CD quality sound. Audio is very high bandwidth but today's DAC or ADC can not handle it. To hear or record a perfect 44100 KHz at 16 bit stereo the DAC or ADC have to be running at 1 picosecond (about 1000 GHz). Do the math. Not many systems can handle raw sound. There are work arounds like delta sigma circuitry that is used in SACD (Super Audio CD) players.boards.

Having all the bells and whistles embedded in the motherboard is a waste of money. On-board sound eats up processor resources and it is very, very poor quality. Several posts in this forum that I read, people have problems setting up on-board sound because either motherboard or chipset manufactures do not comply to the sound codec and the chip being used is addressed wrong in hardware not by software. I rather get a motherboard with least amount of on-board junk and then use expansion boards.

If you do not have much room on the desk. There is Monarch Computer Systems makes AMD Athlon 64 systems using a little larger than a toaster size case. It uses micro-ATX motherboards so you do not have to find a special motherboard just for the case like Shuttle cases.

I'm sorry I'm not going to give you the link. I'll give you a hint. Type AMD 64 and then search just for my name.

Nope! Audio is 44.1 KHz Since human hearing only goes up to around 20KHz (when you are young, and dropping off as you age), you need to sample at least twice that fast (they Nyquist frequency). So 40 Khz is the minimum. Assuming CD quality (16 bits/sample, stereo), you get 172K per second. If you start to talk multiple channels (surround sound and woofers), and go to 32bits/sec, you are still at a max of 1.009MB/s.

If 10 megabytes per second was not enough for CD audio, then a 1X CD-Rom would deliver at least 10 megabytes per second. I would love to see a 386 running Windows 3.1 handle that!

The reason for such large buffers in ISA cards is that there is more latency. There is a big difference between throughput and latency.

So, to summarize, audio is low bandwidth, and a picosecond is still around 8 orders of magnitude more than you can hear.

So, I did the math! By the way, I have a master's degree in electrical engineering. I work designing digital hardware (but not for the consumer market).

But I do agree with you about crap on the motherboard. But if the on-board audio is good enough, then I will be happy. Even sites like Anandtech and ArsTechnica recommend sticking with on-board audio unless you are an ubergamer.

harrkev - I agree with you that if you've got the chance to upgrade your mobo now, you should do it. Granted 64-bit on the desktop is uncommon now but in a year or two I suspect the landscape will have changed significantly and I think you're making a wise move.

From my point of view a really good source for both components and technical info (I think anyway) is Newegg: www.newegg.com For researching mobos, go to "Search by Category", then "Motherboards - AMD" and then you can use the Advanced Search function on the left to selectively choose Socket 754. The individual listings contain links to the manufacturer as well as full technical specs (in most cases).

That being said, I would direct your attention to a common issue regarding boards that use nVidia chipsets. nVidia drivers are proprietary, and although the tar.gz's are freely available on nVidia's website, if you plan to use the onboard LAN, sound, etc, you may need to spend some time configuring them before they work as expected. Based on your original comments, this may be something you would prefer to avoid. (You may want to search here on LQ for threads using "nforce driver" as the search criteria to get some perspective on other's experiences.) On the other hand if you plan to use separate PCI cards for the NIC, Sound, etc, then this would be a non-issue.

I'm using an Athlon 2500+ on a Shuttle mini-ATX with the nVidia drivers, and as I indicated it took a little work to get the nforce drivers installed correctly, but in the end it all worked out. (Those mini Shuttle boxes only have 2 PCI slots, so I had the incentive to figure things out.) If I had to do it again though, I would probably have made a different choice, simply because I'd really rather just have my machine work as is, without having to devote hours of effort to get everything up and running. As for your question about videocards, geez, that's a whole different thread. My best recommendation to you on that would be to check the HCL here at LQ.

In any event good luck with your decision -- J.W.

Yesterday I purchaced a athlon 64 3000+ and a k8v se mb. My main gripe is that the ati fglrx kernel module for my radaeon 9200 does not compile when my kernel is compiled with 64bit optimisations.

On the ati site it says that they will support 64bit cpus sometime.

You should have gotten a nVidia video card. I think nVidia has 64 bit modules (drivers).

ATI will not support Linux because they have only Windows and MAC programmers that they scrapped off from the job bin. ATI will probably be about 10 years behind nVidia when ATI really gets serious in Linux. ATI is just lucky to get high scores because their engineers are very good when designing a GPU or VPU.

The new ati driver works with the 64bit 2.6.8 kernel :)

But my system is still not complete.
I'm having problems getting the pata raid controler working. I dont need raid, just want to plug in another two pata hard drives.

I'm also stuck finding out how to make the line out and mic change so that I have surround sound. Aparently the cd has a windows app that lets you change their use.

My Abit KV8 runs Fedora Core 2/3T2 64 quite well; LAN and audio are detected w/o any additional drivers (unlike windows...). I'm using a PATA hard drive, haven't tried messing with SATA/RAID yet, and probably won't for awhile. Only thing I did was while running windows was to update the BIOS

Using an Athlon 64 3000+ and 1GB of RAM, Linux is running great!