Hello
I am looking at using the Gigabyte GA-M57SLI-S4 for some servers that we are setting up. I have one reservation with this board - the lack of any PCI-X slots,
Having PCI-X slots brings with it a lot of options such as ability to use existing SCSI RAID cards. Another possibiltiy is the Open Graphics card Project, which I believe will be initially in PCI-X format.
After some research I am led to believe that the only AM2 motherboard with PCI-X is the ASUS M2N32-WS Professional.
With the great work being done on the Gigabyte GA-M57SLI-S4, I am wondering how applicable this would be for the ASUS M2N32-WS board.
The motherboard is a nVIDIA nForce 590 A serial port header It has a socketed PLCC flash chip (Award BIOS). (It has ASUS CrashFree recovery from a USB flash disk - if this is any use? ) For the additional $100 you get an extra GigE port, +3 SATA ports, +1 IDE port & apparently with 590 you can use both PCIe slots at 16x.
Here are some websites: http://www.asus.com/products4.aspx?l1=3&l2=82&l3=0&model=1207&am... http://www.pcstats.com/articleview.cfm?articleID=2093
So in summary I am just wondering if it would be possible to support a consumer motherboard (AM2) with PCI-X slots.
Charles
On Wed, May 09, 2007 at 03:07:34AM +1000, Charles Hanum wrote:
With the great work being done on the Gigabyte GA-M57SLI-S4, I am wondering how applicable this would be for the ASUS M2N32-WS board.
The motherboard is a nVIDIA nForce 590
590 is a variation of MCP55, sometimes called MCP55XE it seems. I would guess that the mcp55 code in the tree works. The revF CPUs are also supported. It might be really easy to create a port if ASUS haven't made strange things on the board.
A serial port header
..this is nice to have for early debugging when creating a new port. :)
It has a socketed PLCC flash chip (Award BIOS).
Also useful.
(It has ASUS CrashFree recovery from a USB flash disk
- if this is any use? )
No, this is a software feature of the factory BIOS.
So in summary I am just wondering if it would be possible to support a consumer motherboard (AM2) with PCI-X slots.
Certainly, but it will need some work. If you want to make a go at it I suggest to copy one of the mcp55 boards and try it out. If you're really lucky most things will work immediately. :)
//Peter
Peter Stuge schrieb:
On Wed, May 09, 2007 at 03:07:34AM +1000, Charles Hanum wrote:
With the great work being done on the Gigabyte GA-M57SLI-S4, I am wondering how applicable this would be for the ASUS M2N32-WS board.
The motherboard is a nVIDIA nForce 590
590 is a variation of MCP55, sometimes called MCP55XE it seems. I would guess that the mcp55 code in the tree works. The revF CPUs are also supported. It might be really easy to create a port if ASUS haven't made strange things on the board.
Since there are quite many 590 boards around it would be interesting to know factual stuff about whether the 570 code works on 590 and how hard it is to make it work. let us know your findings ! Beside Asus there is also ECS Elitegroup featuring "top hat flash" right out of the box and 590 chipset. --Q
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Charles Hanum -
Peter Stuge -
Quux