Tom Brinkman wrote: > > On Thursday 16 May 2002 01:27 am, James wrote: > > The question I'd have on this thread is: For none high end > > applications is it worth it to be on the edge? 1.0 of anything is > > usually not good. I also think about things like nics (I've fried a > > few) etc. Whereas a Linksys or Netgear can be bought for 15 bucks > > in the US it scares me to think that I could lose a mobo cause my > > nic went down. For personal use and for High reliability, I really > > like to stay one step behind the curve. Wait till the bug fix > > version comes out. (very important if you are buying closed source > > software!) Am I alone in this attitude? > > I'm with you. It's not just motherboard revisions, bios updates > either. Chipsets and cpu steppings (production runs) get fixes > usually within the first several months. A good example is the VIA > kt133a. The ide bug surfaced during the first two steppings. Later > it was discovered that many motherboard designs exacerbated the > problem. By step 4 of the kt133a the problem had all but disappeared > (as long as you didn't use an Abit kt7* ;> Later it became apparent > some high bandwith pci cards (specially the SB Live!) were largely > part of the problem. So if you jumped on bandwagon when the KT7 > first appeared, installed an SB Live!, you were pretty much SOL, > 'cept for bios upgrades, and upping the Vcore to 1.82v, and dropping > the HDD mode to <= udma2. Dirty work arounds. Much the same > scenario with cpu steppings. > > I also think staying away from the cuttin edge, first releases of > boards and chipsets is very important for open source too. EG, the > people who rushed out to by ATI 8500's and still don't have support > for them yet. There's also work arounds for chipset/cpu errata that > take a while. EG, I have a kt133a board, shortly after I built the > system, months after kt133a boards were out, dmesg began to include > the line "Applying VIA southbridge workaround." Tho since my board > (Soyo, AMD appr'vd) is the second (and final) revision, it's not an > Abit, I don't have an SB Live, and both the chipset and the Tbird are > 4th stepping, I doubt I need that kernel parameter ;) > > Then there's also performance regardless of OS. It's reported > that DDR333 has negligible improvement over 266. In some tests it's > actually slower. I attribute this to 266 havin matured, while 333 is > still brand new and wet behind the ears. Not neccesarilly the ram's > fault, but the motherboard's implementation of it. Y'allsMMV ;) > -- > Tom Brinkman Corpus Christi, Texas
Just to chime in with total agreement with both James and Tom. You can bleed a bit with cutting edge *software*, and if things get too bad, there will soon be patches or you can go back a build version for some stability. If you start bleeding with cutting edge *hardware*, there just might not be any Band-Aids to stop the bleeding. On the other hand, it must be said that pioneers, like the LX_MAN, are the reason why the hardware bugs are found in the first place, enabling the later development of a fix for said bugs. The people, such as Tom, James, and I, then have the opportunity to get the later hardware revisions... Keep on truckin, LX Dr John, The Night Tripper -- J. Craig Woods UNIX/NT Network/System Administration http://www.trismegistus.net "Character is built upon the debris of despair" --Emerson
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