Date: Wed, 10 Feb 2010 08:35:44 -0800 (PST) From: Matthew Dillon <dillon@apollo.backplane.com> To: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org Subject: Re: hardware for home use large storage Message-ID: <201002101635.o1AGZi8m022983@apollo.backplane.com> References: <4B6F9A8D.4050907@langille.org> <4B718EBB.6080709@acm.poly.edu> <4B723609.8010802@langille.org> <201002101127.53444.pieter@service2media.com> <20100210105516.GA65506@icarus.home.lan>
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:Correction -- more than likely on a consumer motherboard you *will not*
:be able to put a non-VGA card into the PCIe x16 slot. I have numerous
:Asus and Gigabyte motherboards which only accept graphics cards in their
:PCIe x16 slots; this """feature""" is documented in user manuals. I
:don't know how/why these companies chose to do this, but whatever.
:
:I would strongly advocate that the OP (who has stated he's focusing on
:stability and reliability over speed) purchase a server motherboard that
:has a PCIe x8 slot on it and/or server chassis (usually best to buy both
:of these things from the same vendor) and be done with it.
:
:--
:| Jeremy Chadwick jdc@parodius.com |
It is possible this is related to the way Intel on-board graphics
work in recent chipsets. e.g. i915 or i925 chipsets. The
on-motherboard video uses a 16-lane internal PCI-e connection which
is SHARED with the 16-lane PCI-e slot. If you plug something into
the slot (e.g. a graphics card), it disables the on-motherboard
video. I'm not sure if the BIOS can still boot if you plug something
other than a video card into these MBs and no video at all is available.
Presumably it should be able to, you just wouldn't have any video at
all.
Insofar as I know AMD-based MBs with on-board video don't have this
issue, though it should also be noted that AMD-based MBs tend to be
about 6-8 months behind Intel ones in terms of features.
-Matt
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