x86-64 box

[Lennart Sorensen]

On Fri, Jun 10, 2005 at 02:10:56AM -0400, Walter Dnes wrote:
>   From what I've seen on the Gentoo list so far, AMD64 is one of the
> more unstable ports of Gentoo.  Another problem is that many, if not
> most, AMD64 systems seem to ship with nVidia motherboards.  nVidia
> refuses to release its specs and insists on you using their proprietary
> drivers.  When you build a new kernel, you have to include the nVidia
> binary modules... otherwise the built-in graphics, built-in sound, and
> built-in NIC stop functioning.  And there are some instances where you
> simply *CANNOT* get the binary drivers to run on newer kernels.  Sure,
> you can go out and buy a separate video card, a separate audio card, and
> a separate NIC.  And you end up with an AMD system that costs more than
> a comparable Intel system.

Actually many boards ship with VIA chipsets and run very well.

As for nvidia not releasing specs, well it seems people have managed to
make them work anyhow, at least my nforce2 and nforce3 chipset machines
run perfectly fine.  You don't get to use the DSP on the nforce2, but I
can live with plain working sound.  For machines where I want proper
sound I have an emu10kx chip.

The only binary driver I have ever used from nvidia is for their video
chips, which also work fine in 2D mode with xfree86 open source drivers
in general.

The boards I have used so far for amd64 are via and nforce3 based, and I
have seen people report great results with nforce4 boards too.
Basically the ALSA drivers work great for the i8xx compatible ac97
implementation, and the ide and sata seems to work fine (no NCQ yet, but
most drives don't support it either yet)

Lennart Sorensen
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