Re: Hardware recommendations required

Responding to J.O. Aho:

Mike wrote:
Currently running Nvidia setup with an Athlon64/Opteron CPU, most
things are already on the MOBO, sound, eth0, etc. plus a GeForce 7300
graphics card to upgrade from the built-in GeForce 4400 graphics chip.

I'm slowly collecting reasons I don't like this (Nvidia) gear,
including the Nvidia graphics driver SNAFU where the Nvidia site don't
keep their closed source drivers up to date

They aren't that slow, at most the are one minor version behind and you
seldom you need to have the latest kernel at once, you can wait a couple
of extra days before you start to use 2.6.27.


This isn't a matter of days though. Currently I'm wondering if Nvidia are
planning to not upgrade again so people buy new hardware. Its been a
couple of months now, not days, that the Nvidia drivers wouldn't compile
against the current kernel, and I'v noticed others are also suffering the
same problems with simililar hardware from Nvidia. Basically, I'm not
happy with being dangled on the end of a closed source setup when an open
source driver would have been built to be stable against a range of
kernels. This is drifting into a M$ style scenario, and I want out.



leaving me with a semi-barfed rendering system, and a few glitches
configuring the extra NIC I dropped in to enable LAN forwarding.

If you are using this machine as a NAT/Server, then you should ask
yourself why do you spend CPU resources on graphics, uninstall X11.

The very same reason I bought this hardware in the first place, to use my
computer AND allow forwarding for the home LAN through it, AND have a LAN
FTP/etc. setup for other boxes in the house. Not so much a local ISP,
just an average home use of a pretty standard Linux setup.



While this setup might be OK for the average Windblows/Vasta home user,
its proving to be glitched and unpredictable running Linux on it.
(Tests on other boxes don't throw up any of the glitches, so we can
assume its the Nvidia box/hardware at fault here).

I have been using Intel/VIA/nVidia/ATi/Sun/Marvel chipsets and I can't
say any of my nVidia based x86 machines has been any more unstable than
any of the other machines. Either you are using a nVidia driver written
a couple of years ago or you haven't disabled the motherboards nvidia
graphics device in the BIOS, it's not compatible with the newer drivers
and will cause random errors.

Everything worked fine until a couple of updates ago. Latest kernel,
latest Nvidia driver. SNAFU. As I mentioned, I'm seeing others having the
same problems with Nvidia gear.



So, as this box is now tagged for semi-retirement (already!) I need to
assemble some decent/recent hardware to run Linux (Slackware/Zenwalk)
on.

Asus Crosshair II is a good board, rock solid with 2.6.22+ kernels, if
you change the SATA to use AHCI (otherwise you need to run 2.6.25).

As it's a SLI motherboard, any nVidia PCIe will do that supports SLI (in
case you want to use it as a desktop/game, otherwise the onboard
graphics is more than enough in a server environment).

Its going to do both. If a modern egg-frying computer with 2GiB of memory
and a modern HDD can't run a game and cover network forwarding/serving at
the same time, there is something wrong with it IMO. (I've an old AMD-500
I can do that with, albeit a tad slow with the modern big-house browsers!)


Also, if anyone has any experience with today's "improved" PSUs, a hint
or two in that direction would be welcome too.

Compared with PSU from the late 80s, todays promise more than they
deliver, pick one that at least says it manages 30% more than you need.

Worth knowing that. Ta.



I'm thinking about moving away from a generic MOBO and back to one
where everything is done with slot-in cards, sound, graphics, NICs,
etc.

Even server motherboards has a good deal built in, but you will have the
same problem if you mix the wrong driver for the wrong hardware.

Just "standard stuff" would do me ok. Its the perculiarities of this
generic Nvidia stuff I'm not happy with.

Ta for the tips.

--
*===( http://principiadiscordia.com/
*===( http://www.badphorm.co.uk/
*===( http://www.zenwalk.org/
.

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