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suspend to disk doesn't work with encrypted swap...

Well, that's not entirely correct; suspend to disk still works fine. It's just the resume after the reboot that stops working...

You can have both with some sort of hardware encryption with a passphrase and/or dongle, something like those SecureIDE encryption devices you place between your IDE interface and your harddrive.

But from what I've heard (don't know if this is true, so take with a grain of salt), most consumer encryption hardware solutions use weak encryption anyway.

Personally I would wait. We have review board coming in from Abit, the AW9D Max http://www.abit-usa.com/products/mb/products.php?c ategories=1&model=326/ which looks to be a good board that I will be testing out shortly here. Between that and the upcoming Nvidia 590, and ATI's r600 chipsets, if you don't absolutely need a upgrade wait it out a bit longer. DFI's 590 board is looking promising. http://www.hexus.net/content/item.php?item=5939/

I just bought myself a completely new gaming rig -- my first such rig in about seven years. Prior to that I'd been upgrading various components in my old box. But the newest games were starting to far outstrip my machine's ability to play them (Doom 3/Quake 4 were the earliest offenders). Thanks to a pleasant year-end bonus from my employer (and rather serious prodding from my partner), I got a completely new box:

• ABIT AN8-32X SLI (nForce 4) motherboard,
• AMD Athlon 64 X2 4400+ CPU,
• eVGA geForce 7900GT CO SC graphics card,
• Creative X-Fi XtremeMusic sound card,
• 2 Western Digital WD2500KS SATA drives, 7200RPM, 250G each,
• LiteOn SHM-165P6S DVD-RAM/DVD+-RW/DVD+-R/CD-R/CD-RW drive,
• 2G (1Gx2) Crucial CT2KIT12864Z40B PC3200 RAM,
• Enermax Liberty 500W power supply (12V @ 22A for the gfx card),
• ASYS CK-1022-5 "Eiffel Tower" case, complete with chasing blue-LED rice

Sadly, the graphics card has turned out to be the biggest problem in the new rig. It seems that everyone is having trouble with the new NVidia 7900-based boards. My first card would display "exploding" geometry once it warmed up a bit. Happily, eVGA have been very good to deal with, and performed a free cross-ship RMA. The new card still exhibits a few glitches, but only when I expressly go looking for them. When actually playing games, it's been very well behaved. It's only done the exploding geometry thing once since then, during a game of Oblivion. I'll keep leaning on eVGA to perfect this card.

I have very mixed feelings about the Creative sound card. Creative has a very spotty reputation for drivers, especially when multiple CPUs are involved. However, virtually all the competing sound card vendors have gone away, or have chosen instead to go for a race to the bottom in terms of price (and, sadly, quality). So I got the Creative X-Fi. It makes the games sound pretty good (it's breathed new life into QuakeWorld), but I would have much preferred something that works with Linux. I have my eye on the upcoming Razer Barracuda sound card, though...

I'd have to say that I'm probably happiest with the case. I was very paranoid that I wouldn't have enough space for all the cruft I planned on putting in it, or that it would be very difficult to work with, but it's turned out to be just lovely. It weighs a ton, but no more than the old Antec tower it's replacing. It's very accessible, has a large interior, very well ventilated, very sturdy, has a clean appearance, and the blue LEDs don't hurt, either.

As I said, this is the first new rig I've put together in seven years (the last machine I built was a dual-Pentium III on a PC-100 motherboard). I'd appreciate commentary from a more experienced eye. Could I have selected better RAM? Better drives?

Schwab

IF one knows that one wants a machine that will run "new" release programs in 3 years, that means AMD64, rather than 32-bit
( compatibility-problems, as-in programs simply not running, have been found on the Intel implimentation of x86_64 )

That cuts down the field greatly.

THEN, one looks at whether the thing is guaranteed to be wordprocessing-only
( or equivalent non-taxing, ie NO multimedia-rendering or vid-conferencing, ferinstance ),
and one can sanely go with single-channel-RAM ( socket 754 ),
rather-than dual-channel-RAM ( socket-939 or socket-940 )

THEN once looks at what kind of expandibility one may need, later. . .
Video-card?
No-longer does AGP count ( they aren't making top-end ones anymore, and soon won't be making middle-of-the-road ones, either! ),
so one requires PCIe ( PCI-Express ) 16x on the motherboard.

Does one want to be forced to find a firewire-card to add-in later? or does one want everything built-in?

Does one want the ability to add-in PCIe add-in cards for, say, high-end-audio, or for video-capture, or for ANYTHING?

one needs PCIe slots, then, too ( PCI is going the way of the dodo )

All in all, the one mobo I know-of, that at-the-moment covers it ( including a 4x PCIe slot, for later! ),
is by MSI http://www.msicomputer.com/index2.asp

Unfortunately, it's got a fan on the chipset,
so it's an on-when-one-uses-it cheap workstation-board,
rather-than an always-on everything-server-board
( fans die after however many running-hours they happen to survive )

http://www.msicomputer.com/product/p_spec.asp?mode l=K8N_Neo4_Platinum&class=mb

Abit's got one that is missing the PCIe 4x slot, but that has no chipset-fan, called the
Abit AN8 Ultra
http://www.abit-usa.com/products/mb/techspec.php?c ategories=1&model=278

Right, that's the mobo, howabout the CPU?
syncronous-with-the-RAM is a good rule

IF the mobo can deal-with PC3200 RAM ( these 2 can ), then that means the RAM's communicating-speed is 400MHz ( rather-than, say, 333MHz )
Since there isn't any valid thing as 1/3 of a wait-cycle ( it's either 0 or it's 1, with computers ), I want the CPU's actual physical speed to be a multiple of that, like say 2000MHz.
That gets the speed, so what choices are there?
cheap, and I wasn't able to get-one, is the
SDA3400DIO28W Sempron 3400+ Socket 939 ( the "3400+" is the approximate equivalent in Intel-speed, known-as its "rating" )
More expensive, and having more on-chip cache-memory, is the
2.0 GHz 939-pin Athlon 64 3200+
Ultimate capability would-be the X2 chip ( 2 Athlon64 cores in one chip, so when one program is swamping one core, the system still responds )
http://www.amd.com/us-en/Processors/ProductInforma tion/0,,30_118_9485_13041%5E13076,00.html
shows that cheapest multiple-of-400MHz X2 chip is the "3800+" and the highest-end is 2.4GHz "4800+"
Hit http://www.pricewatch.com/ to discover what sane-prices are for the things, but be sitting-down when you see the highest-end ones. . .

Case? Aluminum. That keeps hard-drives cooler ( whole case acts like a nice-big heatsink ).
Make decorations for it using pipecleaners & a hot-melt-glue gun, if you want. . . : )

Video-card?
IF you want quiet, go for ATI rather-than NVidia ( fan-speed, I'm talking about, here ),
and if you want cheap, grab some X300 or something,
the higher-end cards the X800 XL is a very good bu

My M-Audio Revolution 5.1 sounds much, much, much better than my SB Live and my mobo's built-in nforce2 Soundstorm at playing music in both Linux and 'doze, which I do more than play games (in 'doze). But then again I much prefer the Soundstorm for games.

Most, if not all reviews I read say the Revo sounds better than Audigy 2. ... maybe most do though?

Unichrome is mainly for motherboards with embedded graphics eg ABIT VA-20

I dont even know if there are stand alone unichrome graphics cards.

I agree. Get something like ABIT SecureIDE and install it in every machine. Then you kill 2 birds with one stone. 1) you can be sure that only authorised personel can use the machine and 2) if the drive dies, you unplug it and you can be sure that no one can read the data on it.

Abit has x700 cards already. What I'm jazzed about today though is Vias PCIe chipset for AMD.

x700 + A64 939 + HL2 Collectors edition = Lovin!

Abit makes a product that sits between the IDE port on your motherboard and the hard drive. It encrypts all of the data on-the-fly and requires a small dongle to be plugged in externally to work. Combine that with a good case lock, and you should be all set.

Oh yeah, that reminds me, I've seen something like that before: the Abit SecureIDE. It's a USB key + inline IDE device that encrypts (using 40bit DES, not massively strong) the contents of the HDD at the hardware level, so isn't device-driver dependant. Can't say I've tried it, but it looks interesting and relatively cheap (~40USD).

Of course, as others have already pointed out, if someone determined has got unmonitored physical access to your hardware then the game is pretty much lost anyway... though a device like this, along with a locked case + drives cover, file level encryption, no bootable removable media such as CD/floppy makes things a bit trickier for the opportunist. Like Shrek said (OK, I'm paraphrasing), security's like an onion, it's all about *layers* ;)

From the abit website you linked to:

* Note: Compatible with SATA controller of Silicon Image on motherboard only!

And that refers to using it on ATAPI devices. It's fine for hard drives on ANY SATA controller, but only on abit mobos with the SI controller.

behold the NForce 3 pro. It was the first(?) chipset supporting the Opteron, has many of the features you mention. As for having support for legacy, etc; that's the choice of the motherboard manufacturers. As an example, the Asus A7N8X only has 3 dimm slots, whereas the Gigabyte GA-7N400-l1 has 4.

BTW, for if you really want a legacy free mb, you'll want to check out abit's offering, the AT7. It may not be the latest greatest, and it may not fit your vision of 'legacy-free', nor is it the ideal board you describe.However, its as close as we'll get for now.

A question for you. With all of those onboard components, why do you need 6 pci's(also getting to be legacy at this point)?

-D

onboard (on MB) audio with Dolby whatever

Dig it.

The Abit NF-7 S supports Dolby Digital 5.1 channel audio along with optical or coax SPDIF output. It costs around a hundred and ten bucks. The future is now, baby!

--grendel drago

I've had the same question, and a product search on NewEgg.com brought up three results from ABIT and none from anybody else. I'm thinking about buying the KD7-E in the near future.

It looks to be a powerful board, but I would be making the switch from SDRAM to DDR, which doubles the cost of the upgrade to get any acceptable amount of RAM.

I've had good success with Abit's motherboards in the past, and they always offer boards without the integrated crap. They're usually cheaper, too.

Um... Not EVERY x86 MB has all that legacy cruft on it...

Check out Abit. I know of (at least) 4 boards that they make that has no seriel, parallel, ps/2, etc... check out the IT7, IT7-Max, AT7, and the AT7-Max2. They rely on USB, USB2, and IEEE-1394 (firewire) for periphrial usage.

Um... Not EVERY x86 MB has all that legacy cruft on it...

Check out Abit. I know of (at least) 4 boards that they make that has no seriel, parallel, ps/2, etc... check out the IT7, IT7-Max, AT7, and the AT7-Max2. They rely on USB, USB2, and IEEE-1394 (firewire) for periphrial usage.

Um... Not EVERY x86 MB has all that legacy cruft on it...

Check out Abit. I know of (at least) 4 boards that they make that has no seriel, parallel, ps/2, etc... check out the IT7, IT7-Max, AT7, and the AT7-Max2. They rely on USB, USB2, and IEEE-1394 (firewire) for periphrial usage.

Um... Not EVERY x86 MB has all that legacy cruft on it...

Check out Abit. I know of (at least) 4 boards that they make that has no seriel, parallel, ps/2, etc... check out the IT7, IT7-Max, AT7, and the AT7-Max2. They rely on USB, USB2, and IEEE-1394 (firewire) for periphrial usage.

Um... Not EVERY x86 MB has all that legacy cruft on it...

Check out Abit. I know of (at least) 4 boards that they make that has no seriel, parallel, ps/2, etc... check out the IT7, IT7-Max, AT7, and the AT7-Max2. They rely on USB, USB2, and IEEE-1394 (firewire) for periphrial usage.

Abit's OTES line of GeForce4 cards has coolers similar to the NV30 reference board linked in the post. Abit OTES link: here.

It's definitely Monday.

I botched the link tag for the VP6 board. For the curious, go here.

(If there is an error in your post, well, you should have hit the preview button!)

I can finally vent about my misery! This experience ought to be useful to anyone who is currently in the market for a motherboard. Simply put, don't buy Abit.

About 1.5 years ago, I purchased two motherboards from Abit. This one for an 800MHz Athlon system, and this board for a dual, 733MHz Coppermine system. Last semeter, my KA7 failed slowly over time. At first, I thought it was the power supply because it seemed all the capasitors around the power regulator were fried (they were encrusted with the carbon of some substance that appeared to boil out of them and burn). I replaced my power supply and motherboard. A few weeks ago, I started having interrupt failures on my VP6 (APIC errors on both CPUs). I replaced the motherboard with a Gigabyte GA-6VTXD (sorry for the shameless plug, but Gigabyte denies deep linking, and this is where I got the board - a great buy). Turns out the VP6 also had fried capasitors and I *know* the PS in my that dual proc box is solid (a well tested Antec). The only two Abit mobos I've ever purchased burned out their capasitors. The moral of this story? Don't buy Abit. While this problem is wide spread, Abit seems to have a particular affliction.

You mean like the Asus A78VX, Abit AT7-MAX2, Aopen AX4BMAX, Gigabyte GA-8IEXP, Soyo SY-P4I Fire Dragon, or Asus P4B533-E?

These are all new motherboards, and most of them are on the high end of pricing.

Firewire is more expensive to implement, period. And the number of devices that can substantially benefit from the faster speed of Firewire are very few (basically digital video... high end digital audio as well, but that's so stratospheric as to be irrelevant in the consumer market).

ABit: NV7M spec sheet

This is ABit's mATX version of the nForce motherboard. Compare and contrast Shuttle's spec sheet.Here's a link to someone who's used this to create a great little gaming machine...too bad this costs a premium...

PCFX.cc: "XBrat" gaming bitty box

The first company who makes a bitty box barebones with the nForce at a reasonable price comparable to the Shuttle "shoebox"en and the ASUS Terminator will 0wn the LAN Party market.

For those who are unaware, the Abit website is NOT www.abit.com; that reroutes you to motherboards.com. The site you want is www.abit-usa.com or www.abit.com.twinstead.

If you want a preview of the XBox II/MediaStation, take a look at motherboards using the Nvidia Nforce chipset. Apparently they originally developed this chipset as "plan B" for XBox, and now they may be working up a better version for Microsoft's next machine.

I have mentioned that this current NForce chipset could be used as a unified gaming platform for Linux. Think of it as Indrema's revenge. The mATX motherboard Abit has made with the NForce is from all reports startlingly good. It is perhaps the first all-in-one mobo that is actually usable as designed. Put this in a small case with a strong power supply and there's your Linux gaming console right there.

The problem MS has been having is getting titles out for the XBox that attract Japanese gamers' tastes. Most XBox titles have been very American-oriented. Yes there's DOA3 and Jet Set Radio Future, but that's about it. The XBox has been fine in the US but a console has to do well in Japan to be considered a success.

I hate seeing Sony on top. Dammit!

I think all of us might do well to perhaps consider that stuffing Linux down the throat of a Playstation (or even a Dreamcast, despite my sentimental attraction to the idea) might not be the best possible way to create a Linux-based console. Sadly Indrema wasn't the way to go either...actually manufacturing consoles is a business best left to huge megacorporations.

The Nvidia Nforce Athlon chipset is very, very interesting indeed. There are decent ATX and mATX motherboards available featuring this little gem. This may very well be the first all-in-one mobo that will provide decent gaming performance. A buddy of mine just built a box using an Abit NV7M motherboard with the chipset and he is blown away...he was prepared to "help the board along" by adding a sound card, etc, but no need. Throw the thing in a case like the Casedge 1123 or 1300 and you might have the beginnings of a happening Linux gaming box.

I think this is more along the lines of what we should be thinking about. Certainly something like this would be easier to lug to LAN parties, that's for sure...

The Abit NV7m. Based on nVidia's nForce chipset. Supports Athlon XP's. Up to 1 Gig of unregistered PC2100 DDR RAM. Built in audio (nVidia, but I'd add a nice GeForce 3 Ti 500), sound (which is actually very very good) and LAN. MicroATX form factor. Lowest price is about $130 on Pricewatch, which is damn good.

In other words, you're stupid if you don't go this route. I'm planning on building a full-featured LAN box with one of these, and I'll be spending about $1500 to totally deck it out - and that'll be with a 15" flat panel monitor for hauling to LANs.

See you at Quakecon.

Because of a hardware issue, all KT7* motherboards before rev 1.3 will not work with XP processors. Abit has released a new bios for v1.3 and newer motherboards that give it XP support. Since you probably don't have the KT7a model, and a fairly "old" processor, I'd assume yours is a pre-v1.3 model.

Check for the rev on the motherboard to be sure. Or, if you feel lucky (or careless like I did, since I didn't read their warning at the top of the page and got the 1.3 bios since it was the top one), try flashing your board with the 1.3 compatible bios and see if it works or not. It said it wasn't compatible with my board and simply dropped back to a dos prompt. No damage done though.

See Abit's bios page for details.

IDE RAID on the MOBO has already been done.

Check it out here: Abit KT7A-RAID. It's got the on-board IDE RAID you dreamed of, AND it's been acclaimed on Anandtech... their mobo pick for many of their high-end systems. Ultra ATA-100, 3 DIMMs, 1 AGP, 6 PCI and you even get to keep your one ISA card :)

Sadly, no dual processor support yet :(

I believe that the 760 chipset will handle SMP, and you may rest assured that Abit will supply this need. Also, the venerable BP6 has been updated to the VP6

I use those removable drive bays for IDE. I even set up a computer user that can't read well (dyslexic) with this setup & he loves it. He has 4 drives & backs up & swaps between them. He's fearless because anytime he totally hoses his system, (like installing a new version of Quicken) NO PROBLEMO, pop in the old drive.

I'm gonna buy a kt7-raid motherboard as soon as I can get one locally. Check it out: 4 ide connectors ON board, & IDE Raid to boot! here's the solution: mount 1 hard disk each on the raid channels, then pile on the removable backup HD, bulk storage HD, DVD & rewriteable CD on the slower channels.

Ignore the gayrod flash embedded on the page.

Ignore the gayrod flash embedded on the page.

This says the Asus board will not have the clock-unlocking features, but what about the Abit KT7 which was so proudly hailed on slashdot a few days ago? Does it still have these features?

Ok, the motherboard I can understand, but why would you swap out your case? Damn near everyone uses ATX now.

I guess I'm not "everyone"...my fastest box is in a full-tower AT case. (It's a 450-MHz K6-III with 256 megs of PC133 SDRAM on an FIC VA-503+. (No, the motherboard I have now doesn't take full advantage of the memory speed...I only bought the memory a few months ago with the intent to move it to some kind of K7 box.)) ATX cases used to cost substantially more than AT cases, which is why I've stuck with AT cases for so long. Now that you can get ATX cases for about what AT cases used to cost, it's not as big a hassle. (Also, I don't think anybody is making any AT cases anymore, and I've not heard of any Slot/Socket A AT motherboards.)

With all that said, the specs on Abit's new board look pretty sweet. Six PCI slots, an ISA slot, and no AMR header to waste space that'd be better occupied by a PCI or ISA slot. (Epox also has an AMR-free K7 board (the EP-8KTA) that comes close, but includes on-board audio (isn't the on-board audio on VIA-chipset motherboards kinda difficult to get running under Linux? I'll stick with my Ensoniq AudioPCI...).) The KT7 hasn't found its way to the Price Watch vendors, though...yet.

_/_
/ v \
(IIGS( Scott Alfter (remove Voyager's hull # to send mail)
\_^_/

Those of you in North America may wish to use this link... faster server, fewer pages to wade through...

Which slotkets did you try? Only very few, such as the Abit Slotket III and the Iwill Slocket II will do dual FC-PGA out of the box. Some others can be modified. This should get you dual even with older cA2 steppings, except for 500 and 550 Mhz chips.

Provided your motherboard can provide the right voltage for the Coppermine and your BIOS supports it, the Abit Slotket III or the new revision of the Iwill Slocket II will both do dual FC-PGA Coppermine out of the box. Some popular slightly older slotkets like the MSI BX Master rev 2 and the Soltek SL-02A+ can be modified for dual Cu with a bit of soldering.

You might still be able to use a Cu on other motherboards with the Soltek SL-02D, which draws its power from a drive connector and provides the right Cu voltage through its own voltage regulator, even if the motherboard can't provide it. Unfortunately, this slotket is not yet dual capable.

They are _meant_ to have SMP disabled ;-)

as mentioned above, check out the Abit BP6 for a dual Celery mobo - and more info at www.bp6.com.

Just get an Abit BP6

Abit's USA site still hasn't been updated, but their Taiwanese site has. Check it out here.

I have built lots of PC's using Abit parts and I haven't had much problems with their hardware and Linux (RH 5.2). The only issue I ever encountered is with the intel 740 card they made, and I had to hunt around for those drivers. I noticed that in RH 6.1, they have that card listed under the video drivers. Looks like this distribution is for people who want a complete Abit solution (mobo, video card, DMA66 card, etc.). At least they are making an effort to have their hardware be compatible with an OS besides something made by Microsoft. 3 cheers for Abit! (Even though I am a Mac person at heart ;)
--

I know everybody's doing it, but I couldn't resist giving a simple spec.

Take a rather simple, and perhaps underpowered server like this 1U one from a recent linuxtoday column and pile about 32 of them (32*$697=$22,300) into a standard 19 inch rack ($1,500), add 2 16-port Switches (2*$1,600) and you're almost ready.

Add those together your talking $27,000. You could do some upgrades that would jack up the price. Remember, you'd also still have about 6-10U left if you wanted to rack a KVM, Keyboard and Monitor.

If we could cram the ABIT BP6 ATX into a Micro-ATX form-factor, you could double the number of processors for probably $150 more per node.

You gotta admit, this ain't too shabby

Well, I've been doing a ton of research on the mobo/c466 combo I hope to be recieving for xmas. I've heard good things about the c466, except for the fact that they dont overclock as well as the others. The c466's multiplier is locked at 7, so you can only modify the fsb speed to oc it. It defaults at 7.0x66mhz, which gets you 464mhz. Most people I've talked to can get it up to 7.0x75mhz at 525mhz with no problem, and a few say they've got it up to 7.0x83mhz, or 581mhz with good cooling. As for mobos, if your running linux or another SMP supporting OS, I would definitely reccommend the Abit BP6. This mobo kicks some serious ass and its the only dual celeron board out right now. It also is great for OCing. I have talked to a few people who are currently using dual c366s oc'd to 525 with a TNT2 Ultra vid card and they say it kicks serious gaming ass. If your looking for a cheap kickass gaming machine, this is definitely the way to go.

This will be true when nVidia releases their next chipset code named NV10, which has full hardware transform and lighting acceleration...This is really going to piss Intel off...

"Ah well, someday I may buy a new system but I haven't found ample justification to spend $700 to get something like a Celeron 433 with 128 megs of ram, Abit BX6v2 motherboard, etc."

You can upgrade your system for far less; approximately $450 now that's assuming you need a new case (AT -> ATX) plus 128 megs rams. Now you dont have to take my word it, you can go to www.computernerd.com for MBoard/CPU/Case bundle and to www.mwave.com for memory and see for your self. You can also checkout www.killerapp.com for computer hardware prices.

Now me personally I plan to purchase Abit's new dual slot 370 motherboard with two 366Mhz celerons guaranteed to overclock to 550Mhz for $412....