Date: Thu, 5 May 2005 09:19:54 -0700 From: "David O'Brien" <obrien@FreeBSD.org> To: "Toll, Eric" <etoll@vipstructures.com> Cc: freebsd-amd64@FreeBSD.org Subject: Re: Hello 64 World - My proposed 3Ware system Message-ID: <20050505161954.GB1799@dragon.NUXI.org> In-Reply-To: <9BC86C67C3AF7646B9C5382020457A9456E8CF@VIP10-WIN2K> References: <9BC86C67C3AF7646B9C5382020457A9456E8CF@VIP10-WIN2K>
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On Thu, May 05, 2005 at 09:52:33AM -0400, Toll, Eric wrote: > I am going to build a new server! (I'm excited) below is my shopping > list, this all started with a desire to have a Raid FreeBSD system. > RAID led me to 3Ware, current offerings from 3Ware were of *only* the > 64 Bit PCI flavor, my current MB didn't have it [Cheep SIS with (1) > Athlon XP2400+ with WD PATA IDE 40GB] So I looked for mainboards that > had a 66Mhz 64bit PCI slot, from 3Ware's hardware compatibility list. > Found a good one I hope with the Gigabyte board. So now I'm thinking > instead of FreeBSD 5.3 or 5.4 to go with the FreeBSD-AMD64 version. > > Comments welcome, anyone see any issues? > > Anyone else have a Gigabyte board with (GA-7A8DW AMD 8111/8131) > Chipset running AMD-64? It is hard to find information about this motherboard at Gigabyte's USA site (since you're mentioning $$). Where have you found to buy it? This motherboard has a 4+0 DIMM configuration, which means you are (1) limited to 4 DIMM's, (2) only get 1/2 the possible memory bandwidth. I'm not saying this is an absolutely terrible thing, but be aware of it. I fear this board won't get good BIOS support - looking at the list of downloadable BIOS updates, I cannot tell what any of them fix. Worse is no confidence Gigabyte will support the new Opteron revision E (90nm) processors, including dual-core ones. I'm not sure why you are looking at an AGP based motherboard for a server. -- -- David (obrien@FreeBSD.org)
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