On 08/16 20:01, Greg 'groggy' Lehey wrote:
> My main machine has just fried a southbridge, and I'm looking for a
> replacement.  From what I can see, in the AMD range, the current best
> performer is the nVIDIA nForece2.  In the FreeBSD project, Bill Paul
> has described problems with the onboard NIC, and if I buy one of these
> boards, I'll certainly swell his mailbox of disgruntled nVIDIA
> customers.  But at a more pragmatic level, a 100 Mb/s NIC costs
> nothing, and I have a few spares floating around, so it's not that big
> a deal.
> 
> Looking at what our local suppliers have to offer, the MSI K7N2 Delta
> boards
> (http://www.msi.com.tw/program/products/mainboard/mbd/pro_mbd_detail.php?UID=436)
> look reasonable, both in terms of performance and price.  Does anybody
> have any experience with them?  Are there any other problems with the
> chip set?  I've heard that it has an IOAPIC on it, even for single
> processors.  Is this an issue?  Any other comments?  Based on what
> I've read, I'd probably be putting a Barton 2600XP+ and 0.5 to 1 GB of
> DDR memory into it.

http://blef.org/dmesg.LOTHAR

I don't know anything about the MSI K7N2, but my ASUS A7N8X works
perfectly, aside from the well-known NIC issues.

If you run 1.6.1, you'll need to force dma settings on the controller,
and you'll probably need to add some device ids to get the onboard sound
working.

My experience with this nForce2 board has been excellent overall.