Which is better under linux, ATI or NVIDIA chipset motherboards?

[saqer]

I am sorry if this is the wrong section. Mods please move to appropriate section.

After being a happy Tyan motherboard (nvidia chipset) user for around ten years, it decided finally to retire. It just quit working yesterday with no feedback on screen except the CF Hex postcode. CF means Check for CMOS read/write. A friend suggested that the bios might needs to be flashed again into the motherboard. But let's put that aside and give me an advice.

When I looked for motherboards I got overwhelmed of the varieties which require an dedicated study to figure out the difference. I hope that with my requirements, one from this community can help me out.

1- Lots of memory. I do lots of large matrix diagonalizing. 24GB support will be decent. I looked into Tyan's options, the max support is 16GB for single core MBs.
2- I will use an AMD processor.
3- Supporting 6 core is decent option.
4- Is there any motherboard with wireless networking built in?
5- Bluetooth is appreciated.
6- I Do not care about gaming. No SLI is preferred.

does ati chipset run into same trouble/lack of support like their graphics cards?

I appreciate your input.

[pete_1967]

I've been using boards with nVidia chipset for years without any issues. What I am wondering, where did you get an idea that single socket Tyan boards can only support 16Gb max though? From AMD boards, UP 4100 (C32 / Lisbon) series all support up to 64Gb RAM and 4 and 6-core Opteron.

What comes to integrated wireless, I got MSI board that has it, but you hit typical consumer board RAM limit of 8Gb max (this is for AMD 9850/ 9950 so it's not the newest) but quick look around current top-end consumer boards puts that limit to 16Gb now - still well short what you wish to have. Remember also that very few consumer boards support registered RAM.

If you don't fancy Tyan anymore, I'd look into Gigabyte's boards which are, from my personal experience and opinion, excellent quality and reliable and pack a lot for the money. Personally, I'd stay with Tyan though.

[sonoran]

On the nvidia/amd chipset question - I recently installed a mobo with AMD 770/SB710 chipset and both my GNU/Linux distros (Arch and Fedora) run fine with it. I just plugged the sata cable into the new motherboard and all four existing installations adapted themselves to the new board during boot.

Nice work, kernel devs.

[leigh123linux]

I have had no issues with my 880 chipset


.

[Fenrin]

AM3+ motherboards will be released in mid June btw. If you consider to use a AMD Bulldozer CPU or Llano APU somewhen, it makes probably sense, to buy a AM3+ motherboard.

AM3+ boards have also features which AM3 boards don't have (6 features are described here).

[pete_1967]

Interestingly, I haven't managed to find a consumer board for AMD that supports over 16Gb RAM, but there are plenty of Intel boards that do:
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/256046
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/258708
...
Well, pretty much all top priced on this one: http://www.ebuyer.com/search?sort=pr...imit=10&page=1
Intel boards:
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/244518
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/257951
Biostar:
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/254972
etc.

[saqer]

Thank you every one. From your replies and a little more research, I confirm AMD mean no tri-channel memory and that is why no 24gb (6 memory slot) support. This raised another question: How are AM3 processors dealing with these triChannel RAMs? Do these rams have backward compatibility of some sort?

Since no consumer AMD desktop that support more than 16gb, I will proably stick with the current tyan offerings or try to fix my MB until the alleged Bulldozer rolls out.
As for the Bulldozer, is it going to be triChannel compatible?

[StephenH]

However, before you give up on AMD, read this:

http://news.softpedia.com/news/AMD-B...r-178170.shtml

Quad-channel trumps tri-channel and the new models will come in up to a 20 core model (not on the page cited, but linked from that page).

[Fenrin]

some AM3+ motherboards support up to 32 GB memory. Examples: AsRock 880G Pro3, AsRock 880GMH/U3S3, most or all new AM3+ MSI motherboards with 4 memory slots.
I didn't find any AM3+ Asus or Gigabyte motherboard models which support more than 16 GB RAM though.

[saqer]

Thank you guys for the advice. I left town for ten days and just got back. Sorry for not following up.

Fenrin:
some AM3+ motherboards support up to 32 GB memory. Examples: AsRock 880G Pro3, AsRock 880GMH/U3S3, most or all new AM3+ MSI motherboards with 4 memory slots.
I didn't find any AM3+ Asus or Gigabyte motherboard models which support more than 16 GB RAM though

The examples above have ati radeon graphic cards. I do not have good experience with them under linux. My laptop is tm2t with radeon 5400 i guess and I hate it. xrandr is just clueless about it. I am afraid I run into the problem where I can not control my graphics through xrandr.

My original question was about how well AMD chipsets do under linux compared to the nvidia and intel in terms of compatibility? I am about to pull the trigger for another tyan motherboard.

[Fenrin]

AM3+ motherboards will be released in mid June btw. If you consider to use a AMD Bulldozer CPU or Llano APU somewhen

now I know that Llano APU's will only work on motherboards with FM1 socket, so I wasn't completely right above. These FM1 boards are not available or listed yet. But if you are convinced that you don't want a ATI/AMD card, you probably don't consider buying it.

There are also some AM3+ motherboards available without IGP card (I use this site to compare motherboards). Every AM3+ mainboard with IGP card has a AMD/ATI card.

I have a IGP HD Radeon 3200 and it works pretty fine. The command xrandr usually works with free Radeon driver or proprietary drivers, but I use this command very rarely. And with the newest IGP Radeon cards it's maybe a bit different.

[saqer]

Originally Posted by Fenrin

I have a IGP HD Radeon 3200 and it works pretty fine. The command xrandr usually works with free Radeon driver or proprietary drivers, but I use this command very rarely. And with the newest IGP Radeon cards it's maybe a bit different.

I upgraded to FC15 and I get black screen unless I force vesa drivers for my graphics. I added acpi=off to kernel at boot and viola I got into FC15 desktop and even modeset worked with that. I miss some functionality (wireless button, brightness buttons do not work anymore). Now I can also use xrandr to recognize my monitor and able to control it.

xrandr is important for the fact my laptop is convertible to tablet. When in tablet mode I need to rotate the screen on the fly. Xrandr (and screen rotate gui) is best for that (AFAIK). I need to set a script where when rotating the screen, the wacom screen rotates too otherwise it will be funny cursor movements.

So back to the topic: Every AMD motherboard, has ATI graphics on board. Fine and hope that bios allow me to disable it and use nvidia card (which I have and love using with noveau).

Thank you for the help and info.

[StephenH]

Originally Posted by saqer

So back to the topic: Every AMD motherboard, has ATI graphics on board. Fine and hope that bios allow me to disable it and use nvidia card (which I have and love using with noveau).

You should be okay. The past two Asus motherboards I have purchased, one with Nvidia and one with ATI graphics, both had the option of which one to initial first, onboard, PCIE, or PCI. If the proper options are set, it should have no problem using the Nvidia card and not the ATI onboard graphics. The one with the ATI graphics is on the way to my daughter for our grandson, so I don't have the book on hand for reference. It was an Asus M4A785-M motherboard. The one I have here with Nvidia is an M4N78 Pro.