On Thu, Sep 01, 2005 at 10:33:22AM -0700, Adam Talbot wrote:
I have no problems with a 939 based board. The major problem there is the nForce 4 chipset. Most of the 939 SFF are based of the Nforce chips. So far i think linux bios has never run on a nForce based board. Is that correct?
That's less of an issue than their hardware accelerated 3d support being only available through proprietary drivers. That nice GPU is worthless on a game console if you can't boot with it, but instead have some cheesy 2d splash screen while the system boots to the point that the nVidia drivers and X11 can load.
That's one reason why VIA is a better option, and why we need to support them. Unlike nVidia, it's possible to build a 3d bootloader which doesn't require a full "boot" to get you through the first screen or two. It's also possible to build support directly into the kernel making booting faster.