Date: Fri, 10 Nov 2000 13:28:47 -0600 (CST) From: Chris Dillon <cdillon@wolves.k12.mo.us> To: Jeremiah Gowdy <jgowdy@home.com> Cc: KT Sin <ktsin@acm.org>, freebsd-smp@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: via chipset and SMP Message-ID: <Pine.BSF.4.21.0011101303530.17251-100000@mail.wolves.k12.mo.us> In-Reply-To: <006301c04ab3$b70121c0$aa240018@cx443070b>
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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. Sure, the chipsets do work. Sometimes. Maybe. If you hold your toungue just right. The problem is not usually reliability so much as compatibility. I can't count how many times I've read README files for Windows drivers that point out some particular quirk that X product or driver has with this or that VIA or SiS or ALi chipset. I rarely ever see those types of "quirks" for Intel chipsets (or AMD's yet, for that matter, even though they only have the 750 and just recently the 760 to speak of). Even some of our (FreeBSD's) own 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 other reasons (like, they're low-end, low-price chipsets, and you get what you pay for). -- Chris Dillon - cdillon@wolves.k12.mo.us - cdillon@inter-linc.net FreeBSD: The fastest and most stable server OS on the planet. For IA32 and Alpha architectures. IA64 and PowerPC under development. http://www.freebsd.org To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-smp" in the body of the message
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