motherboard decision help

Chris Jones linux at stow-jones.co.uk
Sun Mar 14 10:28:17 UTC 2004


On Sunday 14 Mar 2004 3:28 am, fred smith wrote:
> Gang:
>
> I'm about to buy a bunch of parts to build a new machine, and am looking
> for suggestions/referrals on the motherboard to use.
>
> I'm interested in an Athlon XP 2600+ (because that seems to be the sweet
> spot, pricewise) and there are a ton of motherboards that can support
> that processor.
>
> One MB that has caught my eye is the Gigabyte GA-7VT600-L, a Via KT600
> chipset board. It also has integrated audio and LAN, using Realtec ALC-655
> audio chipset and Realtec 8101L 10/100 LAN chipset. I'd appreciate it if
> any of you know of how well this board and these chipsets are supported
> in a modern Linux if you'd let me know. This Gigabyte board can be
> purchased today for US$63 from newegg (not a plug, just a fact).
>
> Alternatively, I'd also appreciate suggestions for similarly priced boards
> that are known to work well (I'd like to not go much over about $80). (I'm
> leaning away from an Nvidia chipset board merely because I don't want to
> depend on nvidia for closed-source drivers for the board, though I could
> perhaps be convinced otherwise!) One small caveat is I need two serial
> ports, and some new boards come with only one (I'm using both a serial
> modem and serial UPS).
>
> I'm not certain which LInux I'm ultimately going to end up using either,
> but probably one of Fedora FC1/FC2, or maybe one of the RHEL 3 derivatives,
> Whitebox or Tao.
>
> Feedback will be greatly appreciated, thanks in advance!

I also use an Athlon XP 2600 mounted on a K7N2 Delta MB which has the Nvidia 
chipset. I loaded FC1 onto that with no trouble at all. I did an upgrade to 
an old PII MB to achieve this and can honestly say that I do not regret this 
at all.

-- 
Chris Jones





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