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From: Ken Heard on 21 Apr 2010 12:40
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Two years ago I bought a Foxconn 45CM-S mainboard. Unfortunately before
I bought it I failed to research adequately this board and other
alternatives. In time I became unsatisfied with its performance. Lenny
was and is rock-solid stable on my Lenovo R61, but not on my Foxconn
desktop, which has a habit of crashing on average twice a day.

Extensive googling revealed that Foxconn has a reputation for buggy
BIOSes, at least for some models. The googling also revealed that
Gigabyte boards are favoured by some Linux users. I am consequently
looking to replace the the Foxconn with a Gigabyte.

The replacement board must be able use my current CPU and memory
modules. The former is an Intel E2160 dual core (socket LGA775). The
latter are two Crucial Rendition 1 gb DDR2 667/PC3500 240 pin memory
modules.

Several Gigabyte boards meet these requirements. I am concerned however
about the north bridge chipsets on these boards. Both that Foxconn board
and the Lenovo R61 use the 945 chipset, the driver for which is
available in a Lenny package -- xserver-xorg-video-intel.

While Gigabyte did have boards with the 945 I could not find any seller
in Toronto who still had any in stock. The ones now available locally
use Intel north bridge G31, G41, G45, P31, P43 and P45 series chipsets.
(Intel seems to be the chipset manufacturer of choice for Gigabyte; the
Gigabyte boards available in Toronto use only those chipsets.) One
model, GA-G41M-ES2H, even integrates in it the Intel Graphics Media
Accelerator X4500.

The Gigabyte website says that Linux compatible drivers for these
chipsets must be downloaded either from Intel or a third party. I don't
see in the Lenny package list drivers for these newer chipsets; so it
would appear I would have to find them elsewhere.

Has anyone any experience with boards using these chipsets? Advice
about chipset drivers and mainboards suitable for Linux which meet my
basic requirements would be welcomed.

Regards, Ken Heard



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From: Kelly Clowers on 21 Apr 2010 19:50
On Wed, Apr 21, 2010 at 09:31, Ken Heard <ken(a)heard.name> wrote:
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>
> Two years ago I bought a Foxconn 45CM-S mainboard.  Unfortunately before
> I bought it I failed to research adequately this board and other
> alternatives.  In time I became unsatisfied with its performance.  Lenny
> was and is rock-solid stable on my Lenovo R61, but not on my Foxconn
> desktop, which has a habit of crashing on average twice a day.
>
> Extensive googling revealed that Foxconn has a reputation for buggy
> BIOSes, at least for some models.  The googling also revealed that
> Gigabyte boards are favoured by some Linux users. I am consequently
> looking to replace the the Foxconn with a Gigabyte.

I don't know specifically about buggy bioses, but in general, Foxconn
is not a brand associated with quality, while Gigabyte, Asus and Intel are.

<snip>

> While Gigabyte did have boards with the 945 I could not find any seller
> in Toronto who still had any in stock.  The ones now available locally
> use Intel north bridge G31, G41, G45, P31, P43 and P45 series chipsets.
>  (Intel seems to be the chipset manufacturer of choice for Gigabyte; the
> Gigabyte boards available in Toronto use only those chipsets.) One
> model, GA-G41M-ES2H, even integrates in it the Intel Graphics Media
> Accelerator X4500.

Intel chipsets make sense for Intel Motherboards, the days when you
needed to look to Via or someone else to provide the needed features
are mostly gone (Nvidia is, for now, still the best for more powerful
integrated graphics with Intel CPUs. But Linux users probably don't
want Nvidia graphics anyway).

> The Gigabyte website says that Linux compatible drivers for these
> chipsets must be downloaded either from Intel or a third party. I don't
> see in the Lenny package list drivers for these newer chipsets; so it
> would appear I would have to find them elsewhere.

Driver-wise it isn't really a matter of the north- or south- bridge, it is
about the individual chips that need drivers. Things like ATA controllers
and wired Ethernet controllers are generally a non-issue nowadays.
The biggest things you need to look at are the GPU (all Intel GPUs
except the mobile GMA500 have good support), and wireless 802.11
chipsets (not usually built in on desktops, of course)

In the case of the GA-G41M-ES2H, the Southbridge is old (ICH7; ICH11
will be out soon), and the Realtek audio and ethernet chips aren't the
greatest. Nonetheless, they do the job and shouldn't have any major
compatibly problems with recent kernels. It should be noted that
boards with newer ICHs and something other than Realtek are a
fair bit more expensive.


Cheers,
Kelly Clowers


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