On Sun, 09 Apr 2006 09:50:47 -0700, Loki Davison <loki.davison@xxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
Is there a reason for going with an SLI board? I've got one nvidia
pci-e and it's okay for my needs. Would the Asus A8N-E or A8N5X be
okay? Or even the A8N-SLI (not deluxe or premium)? The premium is a
whole lot more expensive.
No particular reason why going for a SLI board (other than the fact you'll
have more available PCI-Express lanes in the future), but the biggest
difference is the passive cooling system on the Premium board. The
northbridge fans on the A8N-E are horribly noisy and have a good history
of having a short lifetime. Definitely get a board with passive cooling.
Your ears (and mics) will thank you.
What kernel is okay with the ati chipset? I'm running 2.6.12 with
daily hard lockups. Memory checks out fine in memtest and i've tried
it with a few graphics cards so i'm assuming it's the board.
You'll probably need something in the 2.6.15 to 2.6.16 area. Yep, they're
super new and most distros don't include one this new (yet). The 2x clock
tick problem was solved around 2.6.15 and was a fault in the linux APIC
implementation and not the chipset itself. I've had mixed results with the
RS480 chipset (ATI w/ integrated video), but the RD480 and RD580 have been
great (particularly with the SIS southbridge that supports AHCI for SATA).
later,
Steve
