How's the nforce4 support in Linux?

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Hi,

I'm currently contemplating going for an Athlon 64 system. However, I'll primarily be using a Linux-based OS (Gentoo, namely), so I need to know how well the chipsets are supported currently.

I'd really like to go Via - but the crummy KT890 / VT8237 combo sucks - mainly due to the lack of SATA II with NCQ. I share the sentiments of the person in a post in the AnandTech forums (http://tinyurl.com/6d9bx) who says:

"The feature set on the K8T890 sucks. It was supposed to use the VT8251 southbridge, bringing SATA-II/NCQ, HD Audio, etc. Unfortunately, this southbridge has since dissappeared off the face of the earth, and all the current K8T890 boards use the old VT8237. nForce4, on the other hand, has SATA-II/NCQ, hardware firewall, nice software overclocking/monitoring tools (ntune), gigabit lan, etc. On top of that, performance and overclocking is pretty damn good. I was at one point looking forward to the K8T890, but considering how much of a joke the whole product line has been (lacking features, months of delays with no explanation, lack of any variety of retail boards), I have to say I'd avoid it like the plague."

NForce4 Ultra is brilliant - in many ways. Except it requires binary drivers, which I really don't want to use. And apparently, the hardware firewall seems to restrict bandwidth a bit. And even when its off, external chips that end up being faster (http://tinyurl.com/4zssp)

So, I'm wondering, are my assumptions correct? Do I have to use binary drivers to make absolutely full use of the Nforce4 chipset? Or is there sufficient support for me to make use of the features on it without using binary drivers?

Sorry for asking something that may have been asked before, but I've tried searching several times through the mailing list and on a search engine, but have had little luck.

Thanks,
	Asfand Yar

p.s. Here's something for the search engines to latch on to, so this post and any repies are easier to find: via nvidia nforce4 nforce 4 kt890 kt 890 vt8237 comparison feature set supported compatibility binary drivers
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