In my case, I've had nothing but problems. The RAID card I bought turned out to be little more than a standard 2 port IDE card with special drivers - loading the standard drivers gave me an IDE card, not a RAID card.
Similarly I've got one of their 2 port IDE cards and I get, dozens of times a day, SMART errors from the drives connected to it. Connect the drivers to any other controller and it tests out just fine.
Then there was the array I tried to set up using their IDE cards and software RAID (Linux). Attempts to get 2 cards working together resulted in hardware lockups.
Bought 3Ware Escalade cards and all my problems went away. To date they've been rock solid, dead disks don't impact the system in the slightest.
Given the money, I'll buy 3Ware any day, though I hear that the Adaptec and Intel cards are supposed to be as good (though I've no experience of them).
Oh, and I don't have anything to do with any of the above companies, beyond buying and (ab)using their products:)
I've seen the same comments from Linux users about *BSD users (except replace Windows with Linux in your comment).
Keep in mind that in any group you'll get the loud mouthed ignorant people who just want to bash others. Or people from other groups who want to persuade people not to join that group...
Not necessarily. I've got the 9700 version of these cards in a midi tower case, along with an Athlon 2500 and the whole thing is pretty quiet. Not quiet enough that you have to check the power light to see if it's on or not, but getting close.
Yes, it has 5 case fans (6 including the one in the PSU). However they are all low noise fans and spend most of their time running on about 7V. With those all gently blowing air through the case I've seen it get as high as 55 Celcius, with ambient at 30 Celcius.
Trust me, it's a world quieter than the first release GeForce FX a friend has:-)
I've got a pair of C3 boxes at home (Lex systems, see http://www.lex.com.tw/), one of which is a 533 (fanless) using a CF disk (so no moving parts - truely noiseless).
I've only had them for about 4 months however they've been more reliable than the Celeron I bought at the same time.
Just replaced that (dead) Celeron with a 1 GHz C3 and so far it's solid as a rock.
This isn't exclusive to Linux though. FreeBSD's IPFW was made stateful even though IPF has always worked under FreeBSD. Reason? IPFW supports ethernet bridging, while IPF doesn't.
I think you'll find that IPF does support bridging (at least these days), indeed that's one of the features that sold me on it.
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In my case, I've had nothing but problems. The RAID card I bought turned out to be little more than a standard 2 port IDE card with special drivers - loading the standard drivers gave me an IDE card, not a RAID card.
:)
Similarly I've got one of their 2 port IDE cards and I get, dozens of times a day, SMART errors from the drives connected to it. Connect the drivers to any other controller and it tests out just fine.
Then there was the array I tried to set up using their IDE cards and software RAID (Linux). Attempts to get 2 cards working together resulted in hardware lockups.
Bought 3Ware Escalade cards and all my problems went away. To date they've been rock solid, dead disks don't impact the system in the slightest.
Given the money, I'll buy 3Ware any day, though I hear that the Adaptec and Intel cards are supposed to be as good (though I've no experience of them).
Oh, and I don't have anything to do with any of the above companies, beyond buying and (ab)using their products
I've seen the same comments from Linux users about *BSD users (except replace Windows with Linux in your comment).
Keep in mind that in any group you'll get the loud mouthed ignorant people who just want to bash others. Or people from other groups who want to persuade people not to join that group...
Go visit the newsgroups some time.
FreeBSD certainly does support CD writing and has for some time. Maybe you last used it before CD burners were produced :-P
Even your favourite K3b is available.
Not necessarily. I've got the 9700 version of these cards in a midi tower case, along with an Athlon 2500 and the whole thing is pretty quiet. Not quiet enough that you have to check the power light to see if it's on or not, but getting close.
:-)
Yes, it has 5 case fans (6 including the one in the PSU). However they are all low noise fans and spend most of their time running on about 7V. With those all gently blowing air through the case I've seen it get as high as 55 Celcius, with ambient at 30 Celcius.
Trust me, it's a world quieter than the first release GeForce FX a friend has
I've only had them for about 4 months however they've been more reliable than the Celeron I bought at the same time.
Just replaced that (dead) Celeron with a 1 GHz C3 and so far it's solid as a rock.
Take a look at the VIA C3 and EDEN chips. I've got a 533 MHz C3 with nothing more than a heatsink and a 1 GHz system with a tiny low-noise fan.
They're not exactly great for gaming, but for average desktop use they're just fine.
I think you'll find that IPF does support bridging (at least these days), indeed that's one of the features that sold me on it.