[H-GEN] New Motherboard

[Frank Brand]

David Wood wrote:
> 
> Hi all,
> 
> I am about to buy a (cheap) headless file server for a customer.  The
> machine that I have identified (from Concord) has an IBM 6x86 P200+ cpu
> and an Asus Vx97 motherboard.
> 
> Are there any outstanding issues with this chip/board and RedHat Linux?


The ASUS boards generally have a very good reputation and their use with
the VX chipset and Linux is, AFAIK, very stable. The VX chipset is
probably not as good a choice in some respects as the HX or TX or
possibly the VIA, but hey what the heck. The difference is bugger all in
reality anyway. I'd go for it. See the snip below on the VX chipset.


CUT FROM TOM'S HARDWARE PAGE


The 430 VX chipset was originally designed for low end desktop
computers, leaving the 430 HX for the high-end users. It is inferior to
the 430 HX chipset in almost every area, but it has got one big ace, the
SDRAM support.

No multi CPU support, max. RAM only 128 MB, cacheable only up to 64 MB
and no ECC. The buffers
between CPU, PCI and memory are smaller than in the 430 HX chipset and
the DRAM timings are slower as well. This is the reason, why systems
with the VX chipset are a little bit slower than systems with the HX
chipset, even when you equip the VX systems with SDRAM. One of the
problems of the VX chipset is the slow SDRAM timing of only 7-1-1-1,
although 5-1-1-1 would be technically possible from the SDRAM's point of
view.

The VX chipset is a decent performer in systems, which don't need more
than 64 MB RAM, no dual CPU
support and no ECC. It's still faster than any competitor from different
chipset manufacturers in real life. 



Regards Dave.
-- 
Frank Brand
E-mail: fbrand at mailbox.uq.edu.au
Homepage: http://www.uq.edu.au/~zzfbrand
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