yhlu schrieb:
I don't know what is the Superio in the MB...
the only problem maybe the memory man only support one dimm, (the current K8 code in the tree)
That wouldn't be such a big problem for me.
Are you going to look at some opteron and ck804 based MB or Opteron and Serverworks MB?
Yes, opteron and ck804 based MBs are an option as long as they have enough PCI-Express slots and don't cost a fortune. AFAIK Serverworks based motherboards don't support PCIe.
However, right now I'm trying to find a reasonably cheap (as student at an university I don't have too much money to spend) platform for experiments which won't force me to re-do everything once I need better performance or decide to establish a business in that area after graduating. So spending ~300$ for a decent Athlon64/PCIe MB combination is already at the upper end. Most Opteron MBs are above 300$ and then I still have to buy the processors.
Side note: I think LinuxBIOS is very cool and will enable some really exciting possibilities to use computers, faster booting being one of the smaller aspects. Unfortunately the monetary entry barrier is quite high right now for hobbyists. If we had 50$ MBs with support for LinuxBIOS, there might be a lot more hackers able to contribute. Of course contributing to LinuxBIOS needs a lot more skill than for other projects, but some hackers will have that skill.
<dream> The next time slashdot or some other site mentions LinuxBIOS, people will be able to download image files for all modern MBs, flash them and be proud like iPod owners. Tuning freaks will notice that BIOS initialization can be done in 3 seconds instead of 30 and will want to use LinuxBIOS, too. Instant-on will get a whole new meaning where people complain that their cellphones boot slower than their desktops. Suspend-to-{Disk,RAM} will work out of the box because the BIOS does the right thing (tm). Security-aware admins can be sure there are no more generic BIOS passwords/backdoors. Multiple vendors will start to ship boards with LinuxBIOS at the same price as boards with proprietary BIOS. High-end audio professionals will admire the fact that there are no SMM traps killing their low latency requirements. High-end storage servers will be able boot directly from Linux RAID devices even if some of the disks have failed. Some board manufacturers will switch completely to LinuxBIOS, saving a load of money on proprietary BIOS. </dream>
Regards, Carl-Daniel