On 08/10/06, Stuart Henderson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
On 2006/10/07 18:08, Brian wrote:
> > There are more options than just those. macppc and sparc64 are amongst
> > the faster arch's too (and if you don't need out-and-out speed there are
> > more to choose from). Motherboard chipsets also make a *HUGE* difference,
> > of course.
>
> I am looking at upgrading my motherboard and processor. It looks like NVIDIA
> is still not open source friendly. I saw some blobs on their site for FreeBSD
> with very restrictive licenses.
>
> I am seeing some VIA, SIS, and ATI motherboards that support AM2 sockets as
> alternatives to NVIDIA. I am looking at upgrading to a dual core amd64 X2
> processor. Will this work with bsd.mp?
Depends on the motherboard/chipset/bios. Also results may vary depending on
which OpenBSD arch you use (e.g. I tried an AMD 8111/8131 based 2U server,
running i386 MP kernel it hangs occasionally but has been rock-solid under
amd64).
> And what chipset vendor is the most open with documentation?
For the processors using hypertransport (I was going to say AMD processors,
but it's used on some PowerPC boxes too) the most open chipset vendor is
probably AMD themselves, but they aren't exactly used on desktop motherboards
(or even much on server boards these days). Just by searching for the part
numbers (e.g. 8111) you quickly find datasheets and information on revisions;
any vendor should be making that type of information openly available.
http://www.amd.com/us-en/Processors/TechnicalResources/0,,30_182_739_9004,00.html
As you see from my example, open docs don't guarantee that everything
works, but they make the job of making it work at all a lot easier (and
I'm happy enough to have this particular box running the 64-bit kernel).
> I am leaning towards ATI. I want to support the open vendors with my cash.
afaik, they're not particularly open. It may change with the AMD merger,
who knows... I have a small pile of motherboards from when I was upgrading
my desktop box that didn't really work well enough (I was trying to avoid
nvidia of course), in the end I decided to buy whatever I could locally
so that I'd return it if there was a problem. All I could find was nvidia,
which I wasn't terribly happy about buying, but it worked, size of pile
stopped increasing... don't get me wrong, this is not advice to buy from
nvidia, it's advice to buy from somewhere where you can easily return
the board for a refund if you don't like it :-)
How about VIA chipsets, any opinion about boards having those? Say,
Asus M2V (Via K8T890) ?
(and, I don't know about the AM2 socket/retention mechanism, but if it's
anything like S939 be damn careful removing the CPU if you do have to move
it between boards...bye bye one 146, thanks for the glue-like thermal
compound AMD..!)
--
viq
