Date: Fri, 31 Aug 2001 20:33:36 -0400 (EDT) From: "Albert D. Cahalan" <acahalan@cs.uml.edu> To: erik@math.smsu.edu Cc: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Subject: Re: FreeBSD and Athlon Processors Message-ID: <200109010033.f810XaT08748@saturn.cs.uml.edu>
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Erik Greenwald writes: > [Erik Greenwald too] >> I'm using both of those (iwill kk266) with a thunderbird 850, and >> haven't had problems in fbsd. Linux flakes out a bit when I tell >> it I have a k7 processor, so I told it I have a k6 and it works fine. > > sorry, this thread was supposed to stay in -stable, Well, since it didn't, I might as well explain the problem here too. There are at least two major problems with VIA chips: Any fast PCI device (often IDE) can cause data corruption. VIA initially blamed this on a specific sound card that would push the bus pretty hard, then offered a Windows hack that would disable some performance features. After some trouble finding a contact at VIA, Linux got the same hack. If you don't have this hack... well maybe you just got lucky or did not notice that your data is getting trashed. (with FreeBSD's small user base, a data corruption problem like this one might go unnoticed for a while) If the CPU pushes the memory bus too hard, stuff goes wrong. This was first noticed with some Athlon-specific assembly code in the Linux kernel. The problem has also been seen by Windows users running Photoshop. Sometimes the problem goes away if you upgrade to a very large power supply. AMD has been having some trouble running their new core on VIA motherboards; maybe the new core hits the same problem on unoptimized code. So problems will be less common with an OS that doesn't push the hardware very hard, but do you really want to trust this junky product? Maybe next year you will upgrade to a new gcc that generates code that is fast enough to trigger a problem, or you will install a gigabit network card that is aggressive with the PCI bus. Don't upgrade that CPU next year either. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message
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