[OpenIndiana-discuss] General question about motherboards

[Lou Picciano]

Harry, 


As the discussion has apparently opened up to Intel chips, let me weigh in. I claim no comprehensive knowledge of the state of the art, but did quite a bit of research at the point of making some purchase decisions, now 2+ yrs ago. 


I've been running - with great success, Oi on a GigaByte GA-DQ6-X38T. Newer versions of these boards, in the midrange, are relatively inexpensive, give you three channels of memory, and should be more than serviceable. CPU is an Intel Q6600. Love it. 


Major attraction of the GB boards is that everything's tweakable. I've gotten settings working such that the CPU is running at 3.4 GHz, and memory at 1600. Has been really reliable, and still runs relatively cool. 


On the CPU side, I liked reports of it's being over-clockable, and it's lived up to its reputation. In addition, it has the SSE3 features we were looking for re virtualization. It's a bit more power-hungry than newer generations... 


Caveats: 
- Some have reported problems with the RealTek Gigabit ethernet ports under Oi; I haven't seen any. 
- Radeon 3D driver support for Oi (may or may not apply to you): I've been told 'no time soon'. I can simply change cards if this ever matters; are you looking at mobos with on-board Radeon? 


this motherboard is only a two-channel memory, but newer models have three. 


Have fun! Lou 

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Harry Putnam" <reader at newsguy.com> 
To: openindiana-discuss at openindiana.org 
Sent: Tuesday, December 21, 2010 1:00:34 PM 
Subject: [OpenIndiana-discuss] General question about motherboards 

A few words from experienced people would be helpful on motherboard 
choice. 

I've been running osol on this hardware: 

cpu: AMD Athlon 64, 2200 MHz (11 x 200) 3400+ 
motherboard: AOpen AK86-L (5 PCI, 1 AGP, 3 DDR DIMM 
hard drives: 2 IDE 500GB, 2 sata 500GB, 2 sata 750GB 

The motherboard has given up the ghost. 

I want to replace it, but at the same time do some kind of light 
upgrade. 

I'd like to find a replacement motherboard that will take more ram. 
The one above is maxed at 3GB. 

I doubt it would work to use 2gb sticks in a new similar board but I'm 
not sure if that is the case. 

I haven't really noticed a crying need for more cpu since my usage is 
light compared to many here.... just a home zfs lan server. Mostly 
for backup of video editing projects and the C drive of several 
windows machines. 

But always a good idea to increase cpu during an upgrade. Maybe moving 
into multiple core territory as well 

Probably will necessitate a new powersupply as well. The current one 
is 400 watts. Probably too weak and maybe doesn't have the newer 
connections that might be needed. 

I'm not looking for the latest and greatest, but thinking there is 
some milder upgrade board that has plenty of sata ports and will take 
at least 6 GB ram 

I'm sorry to report being so lazy but the idea of trying to sort 
through the thousands of googled hits it's ... well its daunting. It 
would seem to require a considerably greater knowledge of specs and 
such than have. 

I hoped to hear from someone who actually has experience with 
something that fills the bill. 

I'm thinking older motherboards but newer than the one above. 

Can anyone here vouch for something that fits the bill? 


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