Christopher Bottaro wrote:
On Mar 14, 2004, at 1:41 AM, Randy Kelsoe wrote:
I am using the GigaByte GA-7N400 Pro2 MB, which uses the Nvidia nforce2 chipset. I'm not using any of the Nvidia drivers. This mobo uses the RealTek 8169 onboard gigabit lan, and not the nforce2 lan. I tried using the Nvidia drivers for the onboard sound, and they had problems. Anaconda selected the intel8x0 driver for the onboard video, and that works much better than the Nvidia driver. This mobo has worked well with RH9 (but needed a later kernel), and has worked well with FC1 right out of the box. It's almost twice the price of the GA-7VT600-L, but it has SATA, RAID, and Dual Channel memory. I'm not using the RAID, but SATA works (though not at full speed yet), and dual channel memory is about 50% faster than single channel mode. There is also a cheaper model that does not have the RAID and SATA, and has a 100base T NIC.
excuse my naivety, but is dual channel memory and hardware raid OS transparent?
i'm looking to build a new computer also. i can't decide if its going to be a windows box (for games) or a linux system. if i can afford it, i want SATA, RAID 0, and dual channel memory. if the hardware RAID is transparent to the OS, i'd rather do that.
a couple of questions.
1) how do i know if dual channel memory is working? is it OS transparent, or do i need to install drivers?
It's done in hardware and is OS transparent, so there are no drivers to install. With the GigaByte MB, there is a BIOS message that appears after POST.
2) "but SATA works (though not at full speed yet)", how do you know what speed its working at?
From my SATA drive:
# hdparm -t /dev/hde
/dev/hde: Timing buffered disk reads: 126 MB in 3.02 seconds = 41.72 MB/sec
and from my PATA, Western Digital ATA100 drive:
# hdparm -t /dev/hda
/dev/hda: Timing buffered disk reads: 140 MB in 3.00 seconds = 46.67 MB/sec
There is a libata driver that (IIRC), will be included in the 2.6 kernel that should speed things up a lot. Last I saw, the Si3112 SATA controller was still in alpha.
3) how do you know if you got the RAID setup properly?
I'm not using the RAID with mine, since it is not true hardware raid.
btw, i heard nforce2 has issues with linux: http://atlas.et.tudelft.nl/verwei90/nforce2/ opinions?
Interesting.... I notice they don't mention the GigaByte GA 7N400 Pro 2. I have seen about four unexplained hangs, with nothing in the logs. Reading the article, it mentions heavy disk usage or IO being a problem. I have not seen this. I have done quite a lot of heavy disk IO, and have never seen a hang during disk IO. I first saw the hang twice in a row when I upgraded my kernel to 2.4.22--1.2135.nptl, or some kernel close to it. I went back to my previous kernel and everything was fine. Since then, I have seen the hang twice, and both times I was accessing the network. They also mentioned turning off "CPU bus disconnect" in BIOS and I don't see anything like that in my BIOS configuration. I also noticed that the first two working configurations posted are running their cpu's overclocked, which is something I don't do.
I did not expect this mobo to work very well with linux, since the chipset is so new. I decided to give it a try and I was pleasantly surprised. My SATA drive is slower than my PATA drive, but I expect this to change soon when libata gets more mature. 3D acceleration is not as good as what I saw with RH9, but I don't use this box for games, so that's not a big deal.
