[svlug] motherboard recommendations

[Jeff Frost]

On Tue, 21 Mar 2006, Lord Sauron wrote:

> PCIe is totally overkill.  I'm getting some great mileage out of a ECS
> nForce 3-A socket 754 with a Athlon64 3k+ I picked up a Frys.  I then
> threw in a nice shiny new hard drive and a overkill graphics card
> ('cause I'm nuts like that) and had a really nice system for under
> $1k.

Yes, I've done this in the past, but this is for a database playground test 
system and I'd like to hang onto it for more than a year, not just a browse 
the internet and run pine workstation which is what the original system it's 
replacing was spec'd for.

  >
>> latest Socket 939 boards on the market these days? I'd like to find something
>> that doesn't have terrible SATA disk performance. I'm planning to install
>
> I'm not aware of any problems with nFoce3's SATA150... at least, it
> works fine for me.

What sort of numbers do you get from lmdd of an 8gig file (you are running 
x86_64 right?).  I ask because some nforce boards are known for not so good 
SATA performance, thus my surveying for real world results.

> Just wondering, but what on earth would you be using the mind-numbing
> power of a PCIe card for?  The only reason I see to have that kind of
> power is high-end stuff like real time rendering of scary things.  AGP
> will give you great performance for much less money.

RAID controller for the second PCI-e slot.  AGP is fine, but the AGP cards are 
going away.

> Right now nVidia is making some really good chipsets.  Look for their
> nForce line in your next purchase - it's really impressive.  I know
> they're not the _best_ (TM), but they're really good for the price.

I'm running nforce2 on my current board and when I first got it, had to 
compile a patched kernel to get it up and running at the time.  I'd prefer not 
to require doing that again.  So far, it's been good, though I'm still using 
PATA drives with it.