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Athlon Motherboards And Chipsets Under Linux
appletnc from linhardware.com points us to their article about Athlons and Linux. They're trying to sort out the compatibility problems rumored to exist with the boards and chipsets. He says "Despite SuSE's
Athlon workaround and
RedHat's (in)compatibility
note, etc.) and rumors, we have not seen many reports of problems by LhD users. Are Linux users actually experiencing problems with Athlon motherboards? Given that the outstanding price/performance value of the Athlon, the question is how well do Athlon motherboards work under Linux?"
Type 'free' and make sure linux is using all 256megs of RAM.... Sounds like its only using the first 64megs and swapping.... Even in the 2.2.x series, you sometimes still have to specifically put the APPEND="mem=256m" in lilo.conf ....
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I have an Athlon 750 w/ the ASUS K7V (KX133) board.
An interesting note about this board is that on the box, listed among its various features is a Linux 'icon', with a checkmark and the text "linux-tested.com". Apparantly this is some sort of certification for Linux hardware.
I was curious about this, so I went to linux-tested.com and read up. Asus actually paid these guys money to put this board through various Linux tests (both distro and non-distro specific), and it passed everything. This is a really nice thing for Asus to do, and I thank them for it.
Your problems are likely not Athlon or KDE related.
It may instead have to do with what kernel you're running. Apparently, the later 2.3.XX kernels have VM performance issues, and Alan Cox's Diary hints that 2.2.15 also may have some issues. (I'd give an exact entry date, except that I can't seem to get to the site right now. It was sometime in the last week or two.) I looked at the SuSE USA website, and noticed that SuSE 6.4 comes with Kernel 2.2.14. I'm not sure if it has the same VM issues that Alan was referring to wrt. 2.2.15.
Interestingly, from what I remember reading in the Linux Kernel mailing list archives, the problems are worse on large-memory machines.
--JoePS. Why is it that nobody seems to be able to spell A T H L O N correctly?
--
Program Intellivision!
I have an Asus K7M motherboard with an Athlon 700, and absolutely no problems at all. Well.. at least not since the latest (not in the kernel yet) patch to agpgart anyways. Direct rendering in X woowoo :-)
I've been running a K7 under linux since the first K7 700 was out and have not found a problem yet.
Trevor Taylor -----BEGIN GEEK CODE BLOCK----- Version: 3.1 GCS/M d+@ s+: a?(---) C+++(++) UL++(+++)>++++ P+>+++ L
I have set up a couple machines with Mandrake 7 (sweet install, BTW) with no issues at all. Athlon 700 and 550's, Microstar 6167 and Abit KA7 (rockin boards in their respective generations)and have sen no problems.
A friend with the Microstar and a 750 Athlon also seems to be cruising fine. Not sure whast the fuss is about...
But I don't know if it's athalon related or not, might be the video card... But I'm getting crappy performance under X... We're talking I click to close a window, and the mouse freezes for a few seconds , then is sluggish, then the window closes and everthing is okay. Launching an app also grinds the system to a crawl. Same behaviour with various window managers, although some seem better than others. The system is a Athalon 850 with 256 megs RAM, a Matrox G400 w/32 megs of RAM, Asus VX133 motherboard, and a Maxtor 7200 RPM UltraDMA-66 drive. If anyone has any idea what might be causing this slowness or how I can track it down to a specific component, please share!
Just built a Athlon 650 on a FIC SD-11, which is probably the weirdest Athlon motherboard out there. Not bad, just weird and somewhat picky.
There were some issues:
1) The VIA ATA/66 chipset on board + linux didn't like my Maxtor 30GB HD using DMA when my CD-RW drive was running, and would cause hard locks. I replaced it with a Seagate ATA/66 IDE drive, and all is well.
2) The Irongate AGP is only recently well supported for DRI, and probably still needs some polish.
3) The interactivity does get somewhat sluggish with XFree 4.0 when there is a lot of hard drive activity.
4) The interactivity under X was extremely slow until I turned on UDMA on the hard drive using hdparm.
That all said, the system is quite fast and extremely stable, once I got the HD situation figured out.
I think that the IDE support needs some work for VIA Athlon chipsets (which is an experimental patch for the kernel, BTW), but other than that, no problems.
jf
Confirmed working - Asus K7M, rev 1.2, with K7-700 @ 100. AGP card: Guillemot GeForce 256.
My uptime so far:
6:06pm up 21 days, 25 min, 11 users, load average: 0.06, 0.05, 0.01
I (and a bunch of hardware sites) highly recommend this board, especially if you don't want that STUPID, WORTHLESS "AMR" slot and built-in AC97 ("what's a s/n ratio?") audio.
- A.P.
--
"One World, one Web, one Program" - Microsoft promotional ad
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
Nope. Good power supply, works great, except for the few little picky things I mentioned, which are all compatiblity or code maturity problems.
jf
I've not been able to make agpgart work for me, but I haven't tried the most recent patch yet, either. Apart from that, the thing runs like a champ.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
- A.P.
--
"One World, one Web, one Program" - Microsoft promotional ad
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
I have Athlon 700 with Biostar Motherboard with Mandrake 7.02 installed in it. Along with that, is the Matrox G400 Dual Head Monitor, Hollywood Plus DVD Decoder Card, DVD Drive, and SoundBlaster Live! Platinum. Never had a problem with them at all with dual 13.4 Gigs IBM Desktar 7200 drives.
The only issue I came across is the memory chips which can be an issue with certain motherboards depending on the quality of the memory and who made them. I used to have PC100 cheap ram stick and frankly, it causes the machine to locks up once a while. So I upgraded it to PC133 Micron memory chip and violia.... it works like charm and never had a lockup for past 4 months since I had it running without any shutdown.
One advice, be sure to check on the quality of the power supply and the memory chip since they can be real picky on those. BTW...did I mention that I have 512Meg of RAM here?
Cannot wait for another development machine from my client which will be even more fun...which I specified 1Gig Athlon, Asus Motherboard and 512Meg of Ram...with probably Matrox G400 unless Matrox come out with something newer. Not exactly partial to GeoForce Chips til they get the drivers GPLed for X Servers.
Anyone got any advice on where to purchase the Alpha Motherboards and Processors directly instead of getting pre-built machines? Wanna to get those.
-- Amazing how the Internet still humms along.... -- Dispite all the flaws of Micro$oft in their software!
Maybe Im being dumb, but what the HELL is the 'Smokeless CPU' mentioned as Tier 3 Incompatible and Unsupported CPU. Is this a gag, a real chip, or some bizarre reference to underclocking for heat-disspiation prevention?
And you can phone a friend...
Pax,
White Rabbit +++ Divide by Cucumber Error ++
free experimental electronic music netlabel at www.viablehybrid.com
I also have revision 0.4 of the Epox 7KXA (via kx-133). I have not been able to get the onboard sound working with either the kernel via686xxx driver or the alsa driver. Everything compiles and the modules load, but no sound. Also, I have noticed only fair performance from the udma-66 driver. I have a Maxtor Diamond Max 40 30G udma-66 7200rpm drive. I have tweaked it with hdparm and only gotten about 15 MB/sec performace. I have noticed that some of the bios updates have listed IDE performance. I think this is related to Epox's bios stuff.
Doug Alcorn
[I can only verify that this works on an Asus K7M and may not even work for your Asus K7M. Do not do this if you feel litigious or are just plain retarded. You have been warned.]
Go into the BIOS setup area. Then go to Advanced. Arrow down to Internal cache. It might say write-thru or enabled or something. Hit F5. A little box will come up saying "Load Optimal Settings." Hit Enter. It should now say "Reserved." At this point, you need to go back into your other settings and configure things back the way you wanted them.
As an aside, you have to go through this whole rigamarole EVERY TIME you enter the BIOS. Yay Asus.
As another aside, a friend of mine discovered this while I was visiting him and other friends for a Local Area Network Object. This was a several-hundred-mile trip and involved the purchase of a moose. 3=) 3=) 3=).
Anyway, Linux runs like a champ on my Athlon. I hate it when I have to boot back into Windows just to play Tribes. I did have to add a mem line to lilo.conf (all 128MB wasn't being detected) but that was the only oddity. Whether that was because of chipset issues or not I never found out. I meant to look into it, but haven't had the time.
Oh yeah, one more thing: I've got SCSI everything in that box (Apaptec 2940U2W, Quantum Atlas 10K, Plextor CD and CD-R in case you were curious; they all work great). If I remember correctly, the chipset problems happened a lot with newer IDE controllers. Maybe I skirted the problem with SCSI, I don't know.
-B
Ash and Hickory, straight-grained and true, make excellent bludgeons, dandy for the cudgeling of vegetarians.
Two problems relating to the SD11, both now resolved:
1. The mtrr handling error was fixed by upgrading the kernel.
2. The system would spontaneously reboot every 20-40min, less if under load. I ended up swapping out the power supply, memory, and several cards before a FIC rep told me that there were power management problems on early revs of the SD11 (mine was "0253" -- 028x on were ok if memory serves me right). FIC tech support were up-front and professional, and issued an RMA directly, not thru the retailer. While the problem was irritating, the replacement quick. The system's been running flawlessly since then (7-8 months).
I think not...(*poof*)
I got brand new Athlon 750 + AOpen MB. Weird things, it runs only 1/2 the speed under BeOS. Yes only 375Mhz! I've only once seen it run at full speed, perhaps I'll try every setting in the BIOS someday... Have you checked what Bogomips reports?
J.
Your mother was a hamster, and your father smelled of elderberries.
- A.P.
--
"One World, one Web, one Program" - Microsoft promotional ad
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
http://www.irisa.fr/prive /dmentre/smp-faq/smp-howto-3.html
3. x86 architecture specific questions
1.Can I use my Cyrix/AMD/non-Intel CPU in SMP?
Short answer: no.
Long answer: Intel claims ownership to the APIC SMP scheme, and unless a company licenses it from Intel they may not use it. There are currently no companies that have done so. (This of course can change in the future) FYI - Both Cyrix and AMD support the non-proprietary OpenPIC SMP standard but currently there are no motherboards that use it.
Lars -
Yeah, I've had tons of problems with Athlons and the chipsets. I can't afford one!!! Anyyone, feel free to send one on over and I'll be glad to tell you if I find any incompadibilities.
I thought everything was ok, but I noticed that things are a bit sluggish when running KDE. I don't think I've ever noticed that when playing with KDE/Linux before--and on much slower machines. For instance, I was installing Star Office while playing an MP3, and not only was the installation dog slow, but the MP3 cut in and out as well. No offence, but I can do that and much more under Win2K on the same machine. I can even do it with Win98 SE. Something just isn't right.
I also notice that the mouse is sluggish when navigating through menus, especially if another program is running. Response is far from immediate when I click on icons to load programs, or browse files. I can't tell you what Internet browsing is like, since my external modem is still on order, and all I had to put in the box was an old ISA Plug 'n Pray modem.
All that to say, Linux seems tired and sluggish on an Athelon 600 with loads of RAM--and Win2K blazes on the same machine.
--SpookComix
You read fiction? I write it! Lemme know what you th
There were two problems with running Athlon machines. First, the Memory Type Register Range support was broken in old kernels. Any new distribution should support them. If the kernel hangs before mounting the drives, try a later versions.
Second was the AGP problems. These are still getting worked out, but it looks like there are working drivers for certain kernel versions. I believe these are yet to be merged in the official kernels, but it can't be long now. This caused hangs when starting X Windows.
Both are solved. The first was a real problem. It caused the machine to not boot. The second was only a problem if you wanted really fast 3D speeds.
-Dave
Citizens Against Plate Tectonics
Nope, sorry. The Athlon can do SMP (one of the benefits of a redesign -- and of using the EV6). The K6 cannot do SMP.
I've long looked at that pair of old K6-2/300 CPUs I have sitting left over and wished I could upgrade my MP3 server to an SMP box, but it's not to be. The K6-* chips can't handle SMP because of design limitations (and some patent hinkiness with Intel, if I recall correctly).
A better question is when will the Athlon do SMP? AMD would do well to court the Linux/smaller server crowd and hand us an SMP-able chipset that we can use. Since Intel seems to be having problems delivering just about everything they "release", one would think AMD would jump at the chance to steal some of the workgroup/small server market from them like they've done with the dektop. Guess they're just too busy. Darn shame, too. Best way to get me to buy another AMD chip isn't with a faster clock speed (600MHz is plenty fast, thanks), it's by tempting me with SMP. Hell, they release an SMP chipset, they'll sell me two chips at once! :-)
-B
Ash and Hickory, straight-grained and true, make excellent bludgeons, dandy for the cudgeling of vegetarians.
As the owner of an Athlon mobo (Asus K7M) and GeForce, I figured I would be through hell regarding the AGP. For those of you who don't know, there is an additional known hardware conflict between AGP on AMD Irongate-based chipset moherboards and the GeForce video cards.
I have had RH 6.1 installed (since Feb) and I have not noticed anything. I have run XF86 3.3.5 and XF86 4.0 and only have seen one distoted artifact. It is a half inch strip of pixel coloration across the top of my screen, which probably is a result of the hardware nVidia driver for XF86. It goes away when the grey X background and mouse come onto the screen.
I _did_ have AGP problems when running Q3A. The problem occured after playing Q3A for a while. The game would freeze up and begin repeating sound. I would have to reboot by telneting in from another machine (killing q3a only made the sound stop playing)
Fortunately nVidia includes an option in XF86 4.0 that you can add to your XF86Config file to disable AGP:
(put into your "Screen" section. this is also described in nVidia's FAQ for XF86 v4 installation)
Option "NvAgp" "0"
This will disable AGP under X at least for nvidia video cards running under XF86 v4.0. I would be anxious to know if this option helps/heleped out with any other AGP errors that might be presenting themselves to others...
- Sig
Here is what dmesg says on 2.4.0-test1-ac5
CPU: L1 I Cache: 64K L1 D Cache: 64K
CPU: L2 Cache: 512K
CPU: AMD-K7(tm) Processor stepping 02
Checking 386/387 coupling... OK, FPU using exception 16 error reporting.
Checking 'hlt' instruction... OK.
POSIX conformance testing by UNIFIX
mtrr: v1.36 (20000221) Richard Gooch (rgooch@atnf.csiro.au)
Later on with AGP
installing Linux agpgart interface v0.99 (c) Jeff Hartmann
agpgart: Maximum main memory to use for agp memory: 203M
agpgart: Detected AMD Irongate chipset
agpgart: AGP aperture is 64M @ 0xe8000000
Both are definitly solved.
"think of it as evolution in action"
I recently upgraded from a K6-3/400 w/128M to a K7 700 w/256M (FIC SD11 mainboard) and with 2 exceptions, have had absolutely no problems.
Exception a) Red Hat 6.2 didn't autodetect the RAM size, although append="mem=256M" cleared that problem. Oddly though, while SETI had been running quite smoothly on the K6-3, it caused kernel panic in the K7. *shrug* too bad, it would have been fun to see how much time-per-unit changed.
-Mith
The rumor got started because there is a mention of Althon motherboard problems in RedHat's hardware compatability list.
Dont be fooled! yes, you need to put 'APPEND="mem=256m" in lilo.conf, but then you ALSO need to run lilo on the command line in order for that setting to become active. Klilo will run lilo for you if you add the setting there and do a 'install' - but Klilo freaks on many distributions that put a listing for a floppy device boot option into lilo.conf... if you dont have a floppy mounted at the time you hit 'install' in Klilo, you'll get an error, and the new boot loader settings wont be used. /etc/lilo.conf with your favorite text editor (save a backup first) - and put 'APPEND="mem=256m"' on a new line in the listing for your default kernel, then save your changes, and just type 'lilo' on the command line.
for best results, edit
if lilo chokes, on a listing for a floppy boot kernel for example, try mounting a floppy, then running lilo... if it still chokes, you might have to remove the listing for the floppy boot option. (you can still overide this at the boot prompt if needbe to boot from whatever device you want)
I had many an issue with this when I first started playing with linux - and everyplace I looked skipped over the fact that you need to run lilo after configuring lilo.conf
Doh!
man is machine
gcc does not optimize well for AMD chips at this point.
-l
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my ABIT KA7 has problems with its Sound Blaster PCI 128. It locks up for a period of time and then comes back.
The guys in the Abit news group suggested enabling the "memory hole" in bios. This solved the problem for Windows, but slowed some Linux stuff down and took made the networking not work.
I did some digging in the Kernel development group and it looks like some high level people are on top of the problem, though.
For me, it's not the incompatibilities that matter. Heck, I run OpenBSD on a sparc, which is sure as hell incompatible with an Intel chip. And that's OK. I am, however, pissed that OpenBSD threads are *broken* on the sparc right now. But I can live with this, given the *BSD fixation with Intel. However, if this were an AMD chip, and I had to live with some piece of my OS not working on the Athlon because of their chipset, even though it is *supposedly* compatible with Intel, then I would be demanding a refund. Unless, of course, they provided the support necessary for fixing the problem.
Well it look I'm not the only one with these problems. Except that I actually had at least one real kernel crash (and countless X crashes, some of them requiring reboots) with the NVidia XFree4 driver.
Opus: the Swiss army knife of audio codec