On Mon, 6 Aug 2001, Kent Polk wrote:

[snip]

> About two months ago I loaded some 1.5.x on a Gigabyte GA-7DX which
> has 761 nb and Via sb, but we were using scsi and I only had a few
> hours to play with it. I also wasn't sure if support for the 760
> chipset was actually in the 1.5.1 release. The 7DX was a tiny bit
> slower with 1.3G athlon than an Epox EP-8K7A (with ata-66 drive)
> under most tests we ran, which was a bit of a surprise. I understand
> the GA-7DXR is a basically a different design than the GA-7DX though
> and faster.

Well, I'm not so sure about the southbridge part of the AMD chipset, as I
use SCSI in my machines - I can't comment on IDE performance and
such.  What I've experienced on this machine so far has been quite zippy -
I'm quite pleased with it performance wise and stability wise.  Also,
realize that my last machine on the i386 side was a ppro 200, so most any
Athalon is quite nice.

I believe this m/b uses the VIA southbridge, but, again, I'm not terribly
worried about IDE performance.  Memory timings seem to be a bit zippier
than normal, and is pretty consistent with the benchmarks I've seen out
there for DDR based boards (a slight performance increase in memory
bandwidth).  I imagine that fvdl@wasabisystems.com, with his dual Athalon
board, sees a bit more of an improvement ;-)

> We had a lot of problems with the GA-7DX and 3com 3c905B/3c905C
> nics. We finally dumped the 3coms and went with an intel nic. This
> was with NetBSD and Solaris 8. Both had trouble initializing the
> 3coms, especially the 3c905C. Looked like a timing problem.

I tend towards the epic, fxp and tlp cards myself.

> I'd also be running an adaptek 2940W on this proposed upgrade, so
> I'm not sure how that would work out either. I'm running 1.5.1 on
> a K6 with the 2940w right now.

I happen to have a 2940UW in the machine right now, pending an upgrade to
some type of LVD controller.  I'm pleased so far - there has been nothing
to give me any reason to doubt it yet.  In a few days, I should have the
box loaded up with 1.5.1 doing a nice week-long burn-in, so I'll let you
know how that goes.

> > If you're interrested, I'll let you know how it goes for me.
> 
> Yes, I'd appreciate it. Thanks

-
Jon
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 "The only thing worse than your high school class is a reunion with
  them."