On 13 Feb 2002 04:40:01 -0600, Rick Kelly wrote:
> Jack Morgan said:
> 
>>Why is that? My MSI KT7 Turbo2 VIA KT133A (VT8363A/VT82C686B) is running 
>>well under 1.5.3_ALPHA. I haven't got around to getting the AC97 Audio
>>working but shouldn't be a problem as it was working under Linux. 
> 
> Yup, I have an EPOX 8KTA3.

I have both the Epox 8KTA3 and the Epox 8K7A (amd&ddr):

cpu0: AMD Athlon Model 4 (Thunderbird) (686-class), 1336.46 MHz
total memory = 255 MB
avail memory = 231 MB
pchb0: VIA Technologies product 0x0305 (rev. 0x03)
ppb0 at pci0 dev 1 function 0: VIA Technologies product 0x8305 (rev. 0x00)
pcib0: VIA Technologies VT82C686A (Apollo KX133) PCI-ISA Bridge (rev. 0x40)
pciide0 at pci0 dev 7 function 1: VIA Technologies VT82C686A (Apollo KX133) ATA1

cpu0: AMD Athlon Model 4 (Thunderbird) (686-class), 1396.07 MHz
total memory = 511 MB
avail memory = 468 MB
pchb0: Advanced Micro Devices product 0x700e (rev. 0x13)
ppb0 at pci0 dev 1 function 0: Advanced Micro Devices product 0x700f (rev. 0x00)
pcib0: VIA Technologies VT82C686A (Apollo KX133) PCI-ISA Bridge (rev. 0x40)
pciide0 at pci0 dev 7 function 1: VIA Technologies VT82C686A (Apollo KX133) ATA1

Both are rock solid boxes.

> The AC97 audio works fine.

Same here on both

> The only change I might make is to ditch the EIDE hard drive in favor of
> SCSI.

Both have scsi and ide drives:
adv1 at pci0 dev 13 function 0: AdvanSys ABP-9xxUA SCSI adapter
and
ahc1: aic7880 Wide Channel A, SCSI Id=7, 16/255 SCBs

However, I just added a 20G Seagate ATA-IV drive:

wd0 at pciide0 channel 1 drive 0: <ST320011A>
wd0: drive supports 16-sector pio transfers, lba addressing
wd0: 19092 MB, 16383 cyl, 16 head, 63 sec, 512 bytes/sect x 39102336 sectors
wd0: 32-bit data port
wd0: drive supports PIO mode 4, DMA mode 2, Ultra-DMA mode 5

and bonnie results for the 8K7a with seagate 7200rpm ata100:

    -------Sequential Output-------- ---Sequential Input-- --Random--
    -Per Char- --Block--- -Rewrite-- -Per Char- --Block--- --Seeks---
 MB K/sec %CPU K/sec %CPU K/sec %CPU K/sec %CPU K/sec %CPU  /sec %CPU
100 35701 55.2 40700 18.0  7448 12.9 33759 76.6 38969 12.9 139.6  1.4

which is 5x faster than I can get a 4.5G IBM DDRS-34560D UW-SCSI
with the Adaptek 2940UW to go, so if you don't mind your %CPU going
up a bit, it's a major increase in speed.

BTW, I suspect that the amd/ddr makes a bit of a difference on
writes as here's bonnie on the 8KTA3 with the via nb controller:

    -------Sequential Output-------- ---Sequential Input-- --Random--
    -Per Char- --Block--- -Rewrite-- -Per Char- --Block--- --Seeks---
 MB K/sec %CPU K/sec %CPU K/sec %CPU K/sec %CPU K/sec %CPU  /sec %CPU
100 27137 36.9 26364  8.4  6449  2.7 32129 67.1 37800 11.9 119.0  1.3

I'd say go for the amd/ddr (8K7A), as it's not much more and makes
a bit of a difference.