J
John Wilson
Trying to choose an AMD64 mainboard has, literally, been a virtual
nightmare. All of my previous home built machines have always centered
on Intel CPU's and Intel brand mainboards. For whatever reasons, I've
always been wary of other manufacturers.
At any rate, I think I've stabilized my choice on the ABit KV8 Pro
mainboard. Many of the reviews that I've read seem to value this board
quite well, and from what I've been able to gather from various other
sources, it is well supported in FreeBSD.
In regard to the ALC850 audio, it does appear to be supported via generic
ac97. Grep'ing /usr/src/sys/dev/sound/pcm/ac97.h shows this. Based on
a quick google search, it appears to be one of the better onboard
implementations to boot, which is nice.
The VT6122 GB Ethernet also appears to be supported by the 'vge' driver.
The rest of the board is rather standard stuff.
Based primarily on the review found at HardOCP.com, this board really
shines. Even the onboard audio and NIC produce quite good results in
regard to CPU overhead when compared to other implementations.
All of this is truly wonderful, but my hesitation remains in a few other
key areas. ABit doesn't seem to have the following as say, Asus or MSI.
I do understand that this really means nothing in itself, and based on
the reviews that I've read it does seem like a nice board. However, I've
not been able to find that much information on -personal- experiences with
this board in semi-long term... terms.
This is going to be my first non-Intel build, and I just want to be sure
that I choose good quality components that will stand up to the abuse that
I throw at it. For what it's worth, these are the other components that I
will be building around it:
- Antec PlusView1000AMG
- Antec "True 430" PS
- 2 x 512mb Crucial 184 Pin 512MB DDR PC-3200 8T
....and various other components that aren't worth listing.
Anything anyone else can add, comments, suggestions, would be most
appreciated. : )
Thank you,
John Wilson.
nightmare. All of my previous home built machines have always centered
on Intel CPU's and Intel brand mainboards. For whatever reasons, I've
always been wary of other manufacturers.
At any rate, I think I've stabilized my choice on the ABit KV8 Pro
mainboard. Many of the reviews that I've read seem to value this board
quite well, and from what I've been able to gather from various other
sources, it is well supported in FreeBSD.
In regard to the ALC850 audio, it does appear to be supported via generic
ac97. Grep'ing /usr/src/sys/dev/sound/pcm/ac97.h shows this. Based on
a quick google search, it appears to be one of the better onboard
implementations to boot, which is nice.
The VT6122 GB Ethernet also appears to be supported by the 'vge' driver.
The rest of the board is rather standard stuff.
Based primarily on the review found at HardOCP.com, this board really
shines. Even the onboard audio and NIC produce quite good results in
regard to CPU overhead when compared to other implementations.
All of this is truly wonderful, but my hesitation remains in a few other
key areas. ABit doesn't seem to have the following as say, Asus or MSI.
I do understand that this really means nothing in itself, and based on
the reviews that I've read it does seem like a nice board. However, I've
not been able to find that much information on -personal- experiences with
this board in semi-long term... terms.
This is going to be my first non-Intel build, and I just want to be sure
that I choose good quality components that will stand up to the abuse that
I throw at it. For what it's worth, these are the other components that I
will be building around it:
- Antec PlusView1000AMG
- Antec "True 430" PS
- 2 x 512mb Crucial 184 Pin 512MB DDR PC-3200 8T
....and various other components that aren't worth listing.
Anything anyone else can add, comments, suggestions, would be most
appreciated. : )
Thank you,
John Wilson.