From owner-freebsd-smp Sun Nov 12 2:59: 3 2000 Delivered-To: freebsd-smp@freebsd.org Received: from peorth.iteration.net (peorth.iteration.net [208.190.180.178]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 8EB3037B479 for ; Sun, 12 Nov 2000 02:58:59 -0800 (PST) Received: by peorth.iteration.net (Postfix, from userid 1001) id 283865730B; Sun, 12 Nov 2000 04:58:58 -0600 (CST) Date: Sun, 12 Nov 2000 04:58:58 -0600 From: "Michael C . Wu" To: Chris Dillon Cc: Jeremiah Gowdy , KT Sin , freebsd-smp@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: via chipset and SMP Message-ID: <20001112045858.A7123@peorth.iteration.net> Reply-To: "Michael C . Wu" Mail-Followup-To: "Michael C . Wu" , Chris Dillon , Jeremiah Gowdy , KT Sin , freebsd-smp@FreeBSD.ORG References: <006301c04ab3$b70121c0$aa240018@cx443070b> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline User-Agent: Mutt/1.2.5i In-Reply-To: ; from cdillon@wolves.k12.mo.us on Fri, Nov 10, 2000 at 01:28:47PM -0600 X-PGP-Fingerprint: 5025 F691 F943 8128 48A8 5025 77CE 29C5 8FA1 2E20 X-PGP-Key-ID: 0x8FA12E20 Sender: owner-freebsd-smp@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.org On Fri, Nov 10, 2000 at 01:28:47PM -0600, Chris Dillon scribbled: | On Thu, 9 Nov 2000, Jeremiah Gowdy wrote: | > > > I am thinking of getting a dual coppermine board with VIA chipset. | > > > Has anyone tried running FreeBSD SMP on such boards? Is the VIA's | > > > SMP chipset any good? | | > > Even their non-SMP chipsets are crap. It blew my mind that they had | > > the ability to create an SMP chipset at all, let alone make one that | > > might work. | | > My counter opinion would simply be, I have ran FreeBSD on my Tyan | > Tiger 133A motherboard which uses the Via Apollo Pro 133A chipset | > with Dual Pentium III 450s. They aren't the best performing | > boards out there, however, they are pretty stable in my | > experience, both Athlon and PIII. Add that to the fact that they | > support the latest tech like AGP4X and UDMA100. Their chipsets do | > lack a little performance, but not so much as to make me wish I | > had another board. Dual Pentium IIIs are still Dual Pentium IIIs. VIA chipsets have compatibility problems with many PCI/ISA cards. | Sure, the chipsets do work. Sometimes. Maybe. If you hold your | breath. | recently the 760 to speak of). Even some of our (FreeBSD's) own I think the AMD 760 will be much nicer than VIA. | driver writers have kvetched about how VIA or | insert-other-lowball-chipset-maker-here has not followed this or that | PCI spec or things of that nature. Intel apparently puts quite a bit | more compatibility testing into their chipsets, and follows | specifications closely (usually). I'm not sure if VIA, SiS, or ALi's | inability to create decent chipsets is because of a lack of access to | important standards information, lack of engineering ability, or for From what I understand by talking to VIA/D-Link/Realtek developers that I went to school with in Taiwan, their development (and especially testing/verification) models are not the envy of the world. Sometimes, it's the management pushing deadlines too hard, and sometimes it's just that they lack the years of design experience/technology of companies like AMD/Motorola/IBM/Intel. Or it is the pointy-haired bosses, and maybe a combination of the above. | other reasons (like, they're low-end, low-price chipsets, and you get | what you pay for). D-Link's company idea is to go for low-end, low-price. See Bill Paul's if_rl.c comments. :) -- +------------------------------------------------------------------+ | keichii@peorth.iteration.net | keichii@bsdconspiracy.net | | http://peorth.iteration.net/~keichii | Yes, BSD is a conspiracy. | +------------------------------------------------------------------+ To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-smp" in the body of the message