Motherboard+CPU - Advise Needed

[julia131]

Hello,
I am going to purchase a Motherboard and CPU for my HP system.
I need a motherboard with integrated Video and NIC ( I do not care
about the sound). I will be installing Redhat/Suse Linux on this
system. Could you recommend a motherboard+cpu. This is going to be
my test machine so I do not need a powerful/fast system. Is there a
good web site for online purchase. Thanks for your comments/inputs.

Julia

 

[Tony Hill]

Hello,
I am going to purchase a Motherboard and CPU for my HP system.
I need a motherboard with integrated Video and NIC ( I do not care
about the sound). I will be installing Redhat/Suse Linux on this
system. Could you recommend a motherboard+cpu. This is going to be
my test machine so I do not need a powerful/fast system. Is there a
good web site for online purchase. Thanks for your comments/inputs.

Personally with those requirements I would recommend an nVidia nForce2
IGP based motherboard and a fairly low-cost AMD AthlonXP CPU (or even
an AMD Duron chip if you can find one). Something like the MSI
K7N2GM-L:

http://www.msi.com.tw/program/products/mainboard/mbd/pro_mbd_detail.php?UID=437

I see that Newegg sells that board for $85. Add in an AthlonXP 2500+
Retail Box chip for $80 (or you could even go as cheap as an AthlonXP
2000+ Retail Box for $57), a couple sticks of DDR400 memory and you're
off to the races.

You could put together a similar system using some Intel components as
well, starting with a board using the Intel i865G chipset. Again, to
quote some Newegg prices, they carry an MSI 865GM2-LS motherboard,
that would fit you're bill very nicely, for $87. Couple it with an
Intel Celeron 2.2GHz Retail Box chip for $64 and you have a system
almost as cheap as the AMD system above (though significantly slower).


As for a store, as you may have noticed I've been using www.newegg.com
for prices. I don't really know if they are a good place personally,
though others here seem happy with them. I'm up in Canada and
therefore usually buy from a Canadian store (www.ncix.com) for the
significantly cheaper shipping costs.

 

[Stephen SM WONG]

I would like to tender my 2 cents, as I've just gone thru
very similar experience to make an "always on" linux machine
at home.

I started with an Asus A7N8X-VM board + Athlon XP 2600+.
Price of the main board is around USD100+ and CPU is around
USD90 here (Hong Kong). CPU performance is very good, as
the 128kB+512kB cache on the Athlon (Barton) core is very
effective. But the Asus board gave me a lot of headache,
and the main board had been RMA once. The board is very
picky on RAM used, if DDR400 RAM is used, the onboard VGA
(from NForce2-IGP chip) has to be disabled, and there is no
way in the BIOS that one can "downgrade" a DDR400 to be used
as a DDR333 RAM. Only SPD is supported on the Asus board.
In order to install linux (I've tried RH9.0 / Fedora Core 1
/ Fedora Core 2 Test 3), the onboard LAN (also from NForce2
chip) can't be detected, due to no GPL driver available,
though NVidia does have a driver. My quick-n-dirty way to
"bootstrap" the board is to insert a NVidia GeForce FX5200
AGP card and another 3Com 3C905 LAN card into the computer
and disable the onboard VGA/LAN! I've run
llcbench/cachebench on the setup, and RAM bandwidth is like
980MB/s

I think, maybe the Asus is very conservative, so, I go out
and buy another NForce2 based mainboard, which is a
Leadtek/Winfast K8NCR18DLM at USD59. The Winfast board uses
NForce2-400 chipset, so, similar LAN, but without onboard
VGA. Only when after I bought the board and find out, the
board doesn't support Dual-channel DDR RAM! But the board
does allow tunning of RAM speed parameter. One interesting
finding is that the llcbench/cachebench performance is
actually better with DDR333 setting (on a pair of DDR400
RAM) compare with running at DDR400. Net wisdom suggests
that sync operation (FSB@333 / RAM@333) will give a better
performance compare with async operation. To my surprise,
dual-channel operation on the Asus board only gives a < 10%
performance edge (980MB/s vs 910MB/s) compare with the
non-dual-channel Winfast board.

I've also searched the market for "dirt-cheap" CPU price,
and found that there are 1.6GHz and 1.8GHz Duron, which they
are not marked by performance figure but true working speed.
An Athlon XP 2200+ actually runs at 1.8GHz and an Athlon
XP 2000+ runs at 1.6GHz. However, the on-chip cache on
Duron is a mere 128kB+64kB (L1+L2) versus 128kB+256kB on
XP2000+/2200+. Price of a Duron 1.8GHz is around USD42
here, but the cheapest "tray" version of Athlon XP2000+ is
at USD46! All price is without HSF, so, I buy a USD5
aluminum HSF together with another Athlon XP2000+. On
benchmark the Athlon XP2600+ is much faster than Athlon
XP2000+, but on my everyday use, I can't tell the speed
difference!

Well, towards the end part of my story. I'm not comfortable
with the additional AGP card, LAN card solution, and this or
that tweaking to optimize the linux kernel for AMD/NForce2
combination. So, I bought after computer, which compose of
an Intel 865GLC mainboard and a Celeron 2.4G CPU, price here
is around USD92 for board and 70 for CPU (HSF included), the
Intel board comes with Intel 10/100Mbps LAN / on-board VGA.
After a 30-mins assembly of various parts, and installed a
new copy of Fedora Core 1, ALL features on this setup are
recognized and configured properly. And the
llcbench/cachebench figure for RAM is 1700MB/s! It's around
double compare with AMD/NForce2. All 3 setups are rock
solid which runs at 100% CPU load (with SETI@home) 24x7 for
weeks.

In summary:
1. Asus A7N8X-VM + Athlon XP 2600+, price USD190, RAM
perf 980MB/s
2. Winfast K8NCRDLM + Athlon XP 2000+, price USD105,
RAM perf 910MB/s
3. Intel 865GLCL + Cerelon 2.4G, price USD162,
RAM perf 1700MB/s

All run very reliably, but the Intel combination is better
supported in terms of driver installation. All quoted price
is my buy-in price within 2 weeks.

Hope you'll be able to make your wise choice.

Stephen Wong @ Hong Kong.

 

[jamotto]

Hello,
I am going to purchase a Motherboard and CPU for my HP system.
I need a motherboard with integrated Video and NIC ( I do not care
about the sound). I will be installing Redhat/Suse Linux on this
system. Could you recommend a motherboard+cpu. This is going to be
my test machine so I do not need a powerful/fast system. Is there a
good web site for online purchase. Thanks for your comments/inputs.

Julia

www.newegg.com
www.monarchcomputer.com
www.zipzoomfly.com

at www.newegg.com this motherboard has done a good job for me.

http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=13-139-133&depa=0

 

[General Schvantzkoph]

Personally with those requirements I would recommend an nVidia nForce2
IGP based motherboard and a fairly low-cost AMD AthlonXP CPU (or even
an AMD Duron chip if you can find one). Something like the MSI
K7N2GM-L:

http://www.msi.com.tw/program/products/mainboard/mbd/pro_mbd_detail.php?UID=437

I see that Newegg sells that board for $85. Add in an AthlonXP 2500+
Retail Box chip for $80 (or you could even go as cheap as an AthlonXP
2000+ Retail Box for $57), a couple sticks of DDR400 memory and you're
off to the races.

For just a little more you hcan get an Athlon 64 system

Here are the Newegg prices
CHAINTECH "VNF3-250" nForce3 250 Chipset Motherboard for AMD Socket 754
CPU $95

AMD Athlon 64 2800+, 512KB L2 Cache, 64-bit Processor - Retail $187

 

[Tony Hill]

I would like to tender my 2 cents, as I've just gone thru
very similar experience to make an "always on" linux machine
at home.

I started with an Asus A7N8X-VM board + Athlon XP 2600+.
Price of the main board is around USD100+ and CPU is around
USD90 here (Hong Kong). CPU performance is very good, as
the 128kB+512kB cache on the Athlon (Barton) core is very
effective. But the Asus board gave me a lot of headache,
and the main board had been RMA once. The board is very
picky on RAM used, if DDR400 RAM is used, the onboard VGA
(from NForce2-IGP chip) has to be disabled, and there is no
way in the BIOS that one can "downgrade" a DDR400 to be used
as a DDR333 RAM. Only SPD is supported on the Asus board.

Really? That's just plain and utter stupidity on Asus' part! Someone
at Asus definitely deserves to be smacked upside the head for that
****-up!

In order to install linux (I've tried RH9.0 / Fedora Core 1
/ Fedora Core 2 Test 3), the onboard LAN (also from NForce2
chip) can't be detected, due to no GPL driver available,
though NVidia does have a driver. My quick-n-dirty way to
"bootstrap" the board is to insert a NVidia GeForce FX5200
AGP card and another 3Com 3C905 LAN card into the computer
and disable the onboard VGA/LAN! I've run
llcbench/cachebench on the setup, and RAM bandwidth is like
980MB/s

Part of the reason why I was recommending the MSI board was that it
did not use the built-in nVidia NIC. I've also run into issues with
installing Linux with the nVidia's NIC (fine NIC, just no drivers and
SuSE at least is sufficiently brain-dead that they don't allow any
third-party drivers in their installation... even Microsoft managed
that years ago!). MSI instead chose a RealTek NIC. Not exactly the
highest quality controller, but it will do the trick and it's has
pretty good Linux support.

I've also searched the market for "dirt-cheap" CPU price,
and found that there are 1.6GHz and 1.8GHz Duron, which they
are not marked by performance figure but true working speed.
An Athlon XP 2200+ actually runs at 1.8GHz and an Athlon
XP 2000+ runs at 1.6GHz. However, the on-chip cache on
Duron is a mere 128kB+64kB (L1+L2) versus 128kB+256kB on
XP2000+/2200+. Price of a Duron 1.8GHz is around USD42
here, but the cheapest "tray" version of Athlon XP2000+ is
at USD46!

That sounds about right, the AthlonXP 2000+ will typically be faster
than a Duron 1.8GHz. The very small cache of the Duron does hurt it's
performance.

Well, towards the end part of my story. I'm not comfortable
with the additional AGP card, LAN card solution, and this or
that tweaking to optimize the linux kernel for AMD/NForce2
combination. So, I bought after computer, which compose of
an Intel 865GLC mainboard and a Celeron 2.4G CPU, price here
is around USD92 for board and 70 for CPU (HSF included), the
Intel board comes with Intel 10/100Mbps LAN / on-board VGA.
After a 30-mins assembly of various parts, and installed a
new copy of Fedora Core 1, ALL features on this setup are
recognized and configured properly. And the
llcbench/cachebench figure for RAM is 1700MB/s! It's around
double compare with AMD/NForce2.

This is also to be expected. Memory speed actually has very little to
do with how a system reports its "memory bandwidth", it's almost all
related to the processor bus. The Celeron has a 400MT/s processor bus
while your AthlonXP will have a 266 or 333MT/s bus. They still seem a
bit slow, but integrated video does tend to skew results a bit.

 

[baskitcaise]

Tony Hill adjusted his tin foil beanie and asbestos underwear to write:

Part of the reason why I was recommending the MSI board was that it
did not use the built-in nVidia NIC. I've also run into issues with
installing Linux with the nVidia's NIC (fine NIC, just no drivers and
SuSE at least is sufficiently brain-dead that they don't allow any
third-party drivers in their installation... even Microsoft managed
that years ago!). MSI instead chose a RealTek NIC. Not exactly the
highest quality controller, but it will do the trick and it's has
pretty good Linux support.

Psst Tony,

The Nvidia nforce nic is now handled in the 2.6 kernel and functions
straight from the box on Suse 9.1 allowing to do the latest updates
while still in the install process :-þ

 

[RusH]

as a DDR333 RAM. Only SPD is supported on the Asus board.

sounds like one of those first 'picky' motherboards

To my surprise,
dual-channel operation on the Asus board only gives a < 10%
performance edge (980MB/s vs 910MB/s) compare with the
non-dual-channel Winfast board.

I'm affraid everyone and their dog knows that.

I've also searched the market for "dirt-cheap" CPU price,
and found that there are 1.6GHz and 1.8GHz Duron, which they
are not marked by performance figure but true working speed.
An Athlon XP 2200+ actually runs at 1.8GHz and an Athlon
XP 2000+ runs at 1.6GHz. However, the on-chip cache on
Duron is a mere 128kB+64kB (L1+L2) versus 128kB+256kB on
XP2000+/2200+. Price of a Duron 1.8GHz is around USD42
here, but the cheapest "tray" version of Athlon XP2000+ is
at USD46!

And Duron CPUs ARE normal Bartons with blocked cache with can be
unlocked (old pencil trick) giving full 512kB cache.

an Intel 865GLC mainboard and a Celeron 2.4G CPU, price here

oh my, what a waste of money

llcbench/cachebench figure for RAM is 1700MB/s!

and those Bogomips !!! guess why do they call them 'bogo'.

In summary:
1. Asus A7N8X-VM + Athlon XP 2600+, price USD190, RAM
perf 980MB/s
2. Winfast K8NCRDLM + Athlon XP 2000+, price USD105,
RAM perf 910MB/s
3. Intel 865GLCL + Cerelon 2.4G, price USD162,
RAM perf 1700MB/s

And all you needed was a SiS socket A motherboard with everything
working out of the box.


Pozdrawiam.