Date: Wed, 9 Aug 2000 21:51:41 -0600 (MDT) From: Kevin Van Maren <vanmaren@fast.cs.utah.edu> To: bellefso@execpc.com, freebsd-smp@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: RE: Dual-Athlon vs Dual-PIII ... opinions? Message-ID: <200008100351.VAA08430@fast.cs.utah.edu>
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I had high hopes for the i840. It's too bad Intel screwed it up. The board looks nice. The "HE" (high end) offers more features than the "LE (low end) chipset (if you really need 5 PCI busses). One problem with the board is that the 66MHz slots are keyed for 5V signalling -- which is prohibited by the PCI spec. The Intel L440GX+ board uses level shifters or something for it's 5V-keyed slots: it runs them at 3.3V at 66MHz, 5V at 33MHz (determined experimentally -- Intel wouldn't tell me what was going on). 66MHz cards that don't support 5V signaling (at 33MHz) won't work, since they won't fit (and making them fit will fry them if you ever put a 33MHz card in the other slot). At least the Supermicro ServerWorks boards are keyed correctly. The Asus board requires registered DIMMs (and probably ECC). It is nice to see that they put the SCSI on the 64-bit PCI bus. It does look like it will retail for $850 or so. Just the thing to plug a couple gigabit ethernet cards into, and maybe a nice RAID controller. Note that if you get the Ultra2 controller, apparently the 66MHz PCI only runs at 33MHz -- sounds like you want to get the dual Ultra160 controller, and no 7th PCI slot, to get 66MHz operation. Now if I could only find a nice mid-tower that supports SCA drives... Kevin To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-smp" in the body of the message
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