[NTLUG:Discuss] motherboard comparisons

[Dan Carlson]

If you intend to load up your PCI bus with a lot of devices and run a lot
of IDE disk drives with high utilization, then avoid the Via 82686B south
bridge part if you can, as it can cause data corruption and system crashes.
For that matter, unless you are overly attached to Via, avoid Via north
bridges too, if you can.  This can be difficult, as Via chipsets are very
widely used, and some motherboard vendors that use a non-Via north bridge
still use the 686B south bridge.

See http://www.viahardware.com/686bfaq.shtm for a discussion of the issues
with the 686B and possible workarounds.  This site is Windows-specific, but
the problem exists under Linux too.  In my case, every few days to few
weeks I would start getting lost interrupts on the 686B IDE channels on my
Epox 8K7A+ board, and the system would crash shortly thereafter.  I kept
hoping kernel updates might eventually fix the problem, but through 2.4.18
they did not have any effect.

I was (apparently) able to work around the problem by getting an updated
BIOS that provides a PCI Latency setting.  After increasing the latency the
problem appears to no longer occur, but I won't fully believe it until the
system has been up for a month or two.  The clue to try increasing PCI
latency was provided by the info on the above web site.  This has the
effect of giving the devices on the PCI bus longer access to the bus before
having to give it up when doing a master transfer.  Apparently the problem
with the 686B occurs if it has to give up the bus "too soon", and by
lengthening the latency this becomes much less likely to happen.

As much as I hate to admit it, this issue has been so frustrating and time
consuming for me that in future upgrades of my server system I intend to
stick with Intel CPUs and Intel chipsets, and I will happily pay the extra
cost.  I'll continue to support AMD on the client side.

Dan Carlson

----- Original Message -----
From: "saluki" <tx.saluki at verizon.net>
To: "discuss" <discuss at ntlug.org>
Sent: Thursday, April 18, 2002 10:42 AM
Subject: [NTLUG:Discuss] motherboard comparisons


> Are there any good websites to check for motherboards ?  I'm starting to
> build a linux box from scratch and I can't find a good site that gives
> reviews of motherboards ?  I"m on Tom's hardware now and while there is
> a ton of good info there, but its going to take a while to sort through
> it.  Should I start with which processor I want and work to the mother
> board ?
>
> I'm wanting a 1.2-1.6GigHz+ AMD processor, DDR ram - 512meg min (up to
> 1Gb if possible..)
>
> any suggestions ?
>
>
>
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