New desktop: athlon 64+ABIT KN9 ULTRA or C2D+intel G965/Q965 chipset
 

Hello! This is my first post.

I would like to get a new desktop, now I'm running Ubuntu but I also think to try others distros like Debian, Gentoo, Fedora, free BSD.
For the moment I have two main settings:

The first one is with athlon 64 cpu:
CPU: AMD ATHLON 64 3500+ FSB-2000MHZ SOCKET AM2
MOTHERBOARD: KN9 ULTRA ( this mobo had a very good review at phoronix website, so I'm quite sure will be compatible and have optimal performances under linux)
CABINET ATX MIDI TOWER PC146 450W 20+4 PIN USB 2.0 GRIGIO AIRTUBE - VH
HARD DISK SATA2 160 GB MAXTOR 7.200RPM 8MB CACHE 6V160E0
DDR2 U-DIMM 1.0GB PC2-5300 667MHZ CORSAIR VS1GB667D2
SVGA PCI-E NVIDIA SPARKLE SLI SP-PX76SDH-U2 GEF-GF7600GS 256MB DDR2 TVOUTHDTV +DVI OPGL+D

The second one is with intel core 2 duo:
CPU: INTEL CORE 2 DUO E6300 or E6400
Motherboard with intel chipset G965 or Q965 with integrated Graphic Media Accelerator (X3000 for G965 and less powerful 3000 for Q965).
Until now I found ASUS P5B-VM, GIGABYTE GA-965G-DS4 or some intel motherboards.

Now I'm thinking to buy the second choice, the main reason is that I prefer to run the intel 3D open source drivers. These drivers have been tested on phoronix website with the Q965 chipset and they seems work good for my purpose: I don't like gaming but i want to try the 3D desktops.

I put the knoppix live cd in my laptop at work (intel core duo processor T2300 and 945GM express chipset) and beryl seems work very good (on knoppix website they report that “the most successful candidates with DRI and transparency in our tests were "older" ATI® cards (i.e. Radeon Mobility) and Intel® onboard graphics chipsets. With these cards, many features of beryl worked flawlessly and stable.” ).

My questions are:
- Would somebody like to give me some considerations about the hardware I'm going to buy?
- Does somebody had the asus or gigabyte motherboards I mentioned or could somebody suggest me another motherboard with the G965 or Q965 chipset from intel or other manufacturers (the most importand for me is not price or but linux compatibility)?
- Can somebody suggest a link with recent review or comment about the intel open source drivers?

I made some more searches. I report the results hoping they will be useful for somebody else:

The most part of mobo with G965 chipset are uATX form (including P5B-VM), while the gigabyte
GA-965G-DS4 is ATX form. I found also two intel mobo ATX form with G965 chipset, DG965RY and DG965RY, but it seems to me that GA-965G-DS4 has more features at about the same price.

The intel open source drivers should be supported by xorg starting from 7.2 release:
http://xorg.freedesktop.org/wiki/ChangesForX11R72

There is also a project to build open source 3D drivers for nvida graphic cards:
http://nouveau.freedesktop.org/wiki/
For a preview of these drivers, again phoronix:
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?pag...item=634&num=1
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?pag...item=614&num=1

So, if what I've understood is correct, the possibility to run open source drivers on both the two systems I'm considering to buy will be a matter of time. Now I can not decide if buy core 2 duo or athlon64.

Is somebody running the GA-965G-DS4 and can tell me this board works without problems under Linux? I've already made some searches and I didn't found any particular problem.

Lorenzo

lorenz,
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