Hardware Selection for AMD64 + Linux?

MrClever asks: "After a disaster involving my cat, a pot of coffee and my workstation, I am now in the market for a new machine. I thought I'd jump on the AMD64 wagon and keep running Linux. After some initial investigation, it became clear that ATi, Promise and other manufacturers don't have 64bit drivers for Linux, which rules out most motherboards with onboard P/SATA RAID, thus limiting my available choices. I know you can run 32bit on AMD64, but if I wanted that I'd get an AthlonXP. So, what AMD64 hardware is the best supported in 64bit mode under Linux? Seems NVidia have 64bit drivers, does anyone else?"

Comments

don't buy an Athlon 64 until new socket comes out!

[Tumbleweed]

Wait for Socket 939 boards & CPUs - the current Socket 754 has a very limited lifespan. Socket 939 processors are due VERY soon now (just saw the first leaked report on one yesterday). FYI.

Of course, this doesn't apply if you're thinking about the Opteron, with its Socket 940.

Hardware RAID on the motherboard

[jmauro]

Most of the RAID on the motherboards are really software RAID that runs in a Windows driver or Linux driver. Since each slot usually shows up as a normal PATA or SATA device, one could then just use Software RAID under linux and get the same effect as the "on board" RAID under 64-bit x86.

Re:Hardware RAID on the motherboard

[photon317]

The real difference is just that the exact layout of the raid is a pre-set standard by the BIOS vendor, and thus if you run Promise or whoever's softraid drivers in both OSes, you can have multi-platform softraid for a dual-boot setup. Linux boots just fine from a software raid device on it's own without this stuff, I assume windows can do the same.

Promise works fine

[OrenWolf]

The Promise controller on the Tyan Opteron motherboards works perfectly in both Red Hat Enterprise Linux (with Update 2), and Fedora Core 1/2 for AMD64.. That same chipset (PDC20378) is available on Athlon64/AthlonFX motherboards as well.

Consider 3ware...

[isaac]

3ware cards work a treat in amd64 systems with one caveat - using the PATA Escalade 7500-series cards on the Tyan Thunder K8W (opteron) MB is asking for trouble. The SATA cards work fine.

Promise is junk anyhow; it's not a hardware raid controller, just a dumb ATA controller card with software RAID drivers.

Just do your own software raid in Linux or buy a real (e.g 3ware) controller.

-Isaac

Search the support databases of linux distributors

[Rauchbier]

Maybe the support database of a linux company like SuSE may be helpful.

Re:Software selection

[Paladin128]

• I'm guessing that you are planning on running very large memory applications (> 2 Gig per process), otherwise 64bit support is useless.

Not at all true! AMD64 has twice the number of general-purpose registers available in 64-bit mode. Some apps also just run faster in 64-bit, like POVray.

SATA with promise chipset works

[MerlynEmrys67]

I am running Fedora Core 2 on a dual opteron Tyan motherboard. I have a 80Gig SATA drive that works fine right out of the box (FC 1 didn't see it though, in fact FC 2Test 3 didn't either)

Dual opteron just rocks

VIA BIOS problems

[S.I.O.]

I'm using a VIA-based Gigabyte m/b and basically everything works fine (SATA, sound), but the famous AMD HALT bug is still not fixed in the latest BIOS, so the kernel is running in polling mode. It means that the CPU cannot switch to sleep mode when there's nothing to do. *Very* irritating. BIOS coders are eventually more evil than trade mark/IP lawyers.

Re:Software selection

[Too Much Noise]

not just instability. Try filling all the slots in a desktop box (read: non-ECC memory) and you'll see the RAM speed throttle down. You get a trade-off, speed for size. Server-type memory doesn't have that problem with all slots full (different addressing scheme for ECC, if I remember correctly).

My amd64 linux system

[riprjak]

is simple
MSI k8t neo FSIR2 motherboard (some issues with slow bios upgrades)
MSI Geforce FX5950ultra 256MB
Soundblaster Audigy
2 x 120GB ATA4 HDD
1 x 36GB SATA 10k drive
1 x dvd+/-rw CDrw combo
amd64 3200+
1 GB (2 x 512MB) kingston ddr333

This system runs gentoo 2004.1 64bit linux fine. SATA and PATA work fine, but there is not now nor, hopefully, will there ever be support for Software RAID as you find on motherboards (it is pointless feature creep IMHO).

Whilst I would say that ASUS appear to be on the ball with bios updates compared to MSI, my system runs fine (even manages wine using 32bit compatibility libraries and runs windows progs...).

I wholeheartedly recommend 64bit linux and would say that EVERYTHING works except high end ATI radeons (ATI couldn'f find their arsehole with two hands and a roadmap in 64bit terms) and many 802.11g cards (mostly due to the atheros binary driver crap, but support is slowly improving). Couple this with *no* support for software RAID (which is no real use anyway) and you nicely encapsulate most of the problems with 64bit linux. Sure, grub and lilo dont play well at 64 bit, so you will need a liveCD or a chrooted 32bit environment to build them (and some other apps); but 32bit apps execute fine as long as you have a set of 32bit libraries for them to play with.

Go for it, join us, we tools who double as early adopters... then you too can whine at manufacturers for their tardiness in supporting "production ready" 64bit OS'... lol

hope this helps...

err!
jak.

64-bit performance revisited

[kompiluj]

This is a comparison done on sparc platform between 64 and 32 bit modes highliting some performance issues. There are two most important things:

• Amount of performance you'll gain/lose when switching to 64 bit mode depends on the application you intend to run (for instance big gains on SSH/SSL )
• sizes of executables (programs, libs) are significantly larger in 64 bit mode

Of course in the case of AMD64 you will also gain something because of ability to use more registers, which is not the case with sparc.
And one more thing - do take a look at the Solaris 64-bit Developer's Guide. They have done the migration 32->64 long time ago. Learn from them.