[nflug] Linux mobo question

[David W. Aquilina]

Almost all the built in SATA/IDE RAID you find will be fakeraid - the controller has only barely enough smarts to boot, and then it's entirely done in software. I'd highly recomend using Software RAID and the on board controllers as just normal disk controllers - that's how they'll show up anyways. I have a presentation posted on the use of software RAID and LVM at http://www.trilug.org/~dwa/md-lvm-presentatoin/. Not as useful without me narrating, but you'll at least see the sequence of commands and such. 

If you're looking at AMDs, both AMD's and nVidia's chipsets seem to work well. I've seen several systems with both come through work when we certify systems and they work well. I also personally own an Opteron system with an AMD chipset and it just works. An nForce3-based board (and Sempron64 processor) is also on it's way to me now, those have also been reported to just work. I don't have any experience nor have I heard anything about ALi or VIA's chipset. 

If you're looking at Intel's chips, their ICH series of chipsets seem to also just work. 

Both AMD64s and EM64Ts are able to run 32-bit code natively. There's not much reason to use a 64-bit OS on those chips though unless you have specialized needs - such as more than 4G of RAM, or you do 64-bit maths intensively. If you don't fall into a specialized need category, you're just doubling the size of what needs to be kept in cache, resulting in a higher likelyhood of a cache miss, which is very expensive. gk, their ICH series of chipsets seem to also just work. 

Both AMD64s and EM64Ts are able to run 32-bit code natively. There's not much reason to use a 64-bit OS on those chips though unless you have specialized needs - such as more than 4G of RAM, or you do 64-bit maths intensively. If you don't fall into a specialized need category, you're just doubling the size of what needs to be kept in cache, resulting in a higher likelyhood of a cache miss, which is very expensive. gk, their ICH series of chipsets seem to also just work. 

Both AMD64s and EM64Ts are able to run 32-bit code natively. There's not much reason to use a 64-bit OS on those chips though unless you have specialized needs - such as more than 4G of RAM, or you do 64-bit maths intensively. If you don't fall into a specialized need category, you're just doubling the size of what needs to be kept in cache, resulting in a higher likelyhood of a cache miss, which is very expensive. gk, their ICH series of chipsets seem to also just work. 

Both AMD64s and EM64Ts are able to run 32-bit code natively. There's not much reason to use a 64-bit OS on those chips though unless you have specialized needs - such as more than 4G of RAM, or you do 64-bit maths intensively. If you don't fall into a specialized need category, you're just doubling the size of what needs to be kept in cache, resulting in a higher likelihood of a cache miss, which is very expensive in terms of CPU time. 

Speaking of cache, pay attention to how much cache the processor you go with havs. AMD64 chips seem to have 64K+64K of L1 cache and anywhere from 128k to 1M of L2 cache. More is better (and more expensive). 

Hope that helps. 

-- 
David W. Aquilina
david at starkindler.us
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