From owner-freebsd-amd64@FreeBSD.ORG Fri Dec 24 02:03:04 2004 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-amd64@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id ED84A16A4CE for ; Fri, 24 Dec 2004 02:03:04 +0000 (GMT) Received: from postman.riken.go.jp (postman.riken.go.jp [134.160.33.2]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 8492743D45 for ; Fri, 24 Dec 2004 02:03:03 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from sty@iki.fi) Received: (qmail 36907 invoked by uid 85); 24 Dec 2004 02:02:58 -0000 Received: from sty@iki.fi by postman-smtp1.riken.go.jp by uid 82 with qmail-scanner-1.12 (sweep: 2.10/3.60. . Clear:. Processed in 1.754778 secs); 24 Dec 2004 02:02:58 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO ?172.16.112.232?) (134.160.173.1) by postman.riken.go.jp with AES256-SHA encrypted SMTP; 24 Dec 2004 02:02:57 -0000 Message-ID: <41CB78D0.4060101@iki.fi> Date: Fri, 24 Dec 2004 11:02:56 +0900 From: =?ISO-8859-1?Q?Tommi_L=E4tti?= User-Agent: Mozilla Thunderbird 1.0 (Windows/20041206) X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Brian Myers References: <5B1511FA-5540-11D9-AF1F-000A95B96642@charter.net> In-Reply-To: <5B1511FA-5540-11D9-AF1F-000A95B96642@charter.net> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit cc: freebsd-amd64@freebsd.org Subject: Re: New board for a newbie X-BeenThere: freebsd-amd64@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1 Precedence: list List-Id: Porting FreeBSD to the AMD64 platform List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Fri, 24 Dec 2004 02:03:05 -0000 Brian Myers wrote: > 2) I've seen much conversation on which boards, memory, and SATA > controllers were supported by FreeBSD. So much so that I have no idea > what the current state of things is. So, if you were building a new dual > Opteron from scratch, what would you get? For cost reasons, I'm going > with 1.8 ghz processors and probably only 2GB of ram. I'll have two RAID > 1 SATA hard drives, but should I use an onboard controller, or purchase > a separate controller? Note that I may at some point upgrade to 4 RAID > 0+1 disks. What about video cards? I don't need much so, are the onboard > ones useable or not? Also, I, of course, would like the onboard LAN > controller to be supported. Well, I just went from dual p3 to dual opteron. The machine is in housing facility and has been rock solid since it's installation 2 months ago. For MB I used Tyan K8S Pro. Not the cheapest one around but I require stability and Tyan uses good components. Memory is 4x512M ECC Reg from Kingston. The memory modules were listed on AMD website (the same series was listed...). I also got 2x37G Barracudas (SATA) and used the boards SATA controller to attach them. I then used gmirror to build raid-1 out of them. Booting from that array works just nicely. As the machine is in housing, I really don't care about video controller, the integrated one serves just nicely as the console video. All three of the on-board NIC's are usable. Don't know about gigabit performance since I didn't need one. -- br, Sty