AMD 790FX Phenom Chipset On Linux

[phoronix]

Phoronix: AMD 790FX Phenom Chipset On Linux

Back in November AMD had launched their "Spider platform", which is made up of AMD's first quad-core processor, ATI Radeon HD 3800 series graphics, and the AMD 7-Series chipsets. While we were quick to cover the ATI Radeon HD 3850 and 3870 graphics under Linux, today after much testing we are finally delivering our first Linux report from AMD's new 790FX Chipset. Is the chipset that's designed for PC enthusiasts and performance seeking overclockers worth anything under Linux? Does this chipset even work with the latest Linux desktop distributions? We'll be answering these questions and more, as we look at the Gigabyte MA790FX-DS5 motherboard.

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=11636

[makoto42]

I'm interested in potentially dual booting a setup, and I can't find details about dmraid and the SB600 SATA controller. In pure linux configurations I never bother with that headache, opting for the controller independent software RAID, but if Windows coexists, I can't find any resources about booting Windows from a Windows software raid setup, so 'fakeraid' may be the most realistic path to peaceful coexistance.

All this presumes that the controller doesn't frontend this in a way as to make it a moot point, but my experience with AHCI chips is that they don't do anything that nice for you.

[moonboots]

Would be nice to see a real linux solution to BIOS updates, without having to resort to using Wine.

[Janusz11]

Thanks for the article. I was really looking forward to it, as I'm planing to put myself together a system with the new AMD 790FX chipset. I don't need the benchmarks though, as I know that momentarily AMD's quad cores are significantly slower than Intel's (and even slower than their own dual core processors).

But what about the onboard sound? I know, there is no Dolby Digital or DTS encoding in the fly and there will never be. But is the chipset recognised by ALSA or OSS, is it working at all?

I don't know what's the situation with ATi's graphic card drivers nowadays, as I've switched to nVidia when I had to buy a new card, to save me from all the trouble I had with my old Radeon. But if the drivers are today on par with those of nVidia (especially when it comes to proper render support and all the desktop bling-bling) it would be great to grab a ATi card and put together a pure AMD system (and save a lot of money).

[Michael]

Yes, the onboard audio works with ALSA, that's part of our standard test procedure.

[teroedni]

Considering the ALC883 had okay sounds in linux, im really looking forward to the Alc889a sounds experience.

[vext]

Hi,

Just a sincere thanks for reviewing the AMD 790FX chipset. I plan to pick up a Phenom in a couple of months, and am happy to read that there are no fundamental issues with Linux.

[duby229]

Yes, the onboard audio works with ALSA, that's part of our standard test procedure.

Did you est surround sound? preferably 5.1 channels to make sure that would work? I really like alsa except when they force you to edit the damn soundrc file which I swear never works right becouse most sound drivers are horribly buggy. And forget making mplayer work. xinelib usually gets 5.1 sound right if the soundrc is right, but mplayer is horribly broken with most sound drivers even if the soundrc is set up properly.

[pipe13]

I note with interest the ECC memory support. Thanks for the mention. Thanks to Gigabyte for its implementation.

[DrYak]

I can't find details about dmraid and the SB600 SATA controller. <...> so 'fakeraid' may be the most realistic path to peaceful coexistance.

Hello has anyone managed to get the FakeRaid to work under Linux with that mother board ?
Currently I've tried with a couple of distro and they all give the same result :

- The SB600 raid isn't recognised, the meta data is only found on 1 of the 2 drive.

- The JMicron (aka GigaByte Sata in the bios) raid is correctly recognised, the /dev/mapper/ device for the raid array is correctly created and I have full access to the whole disk (successfully partitioned the drive, including extented partitions).
Boot when I reboot or reload the partition table, dmraid fails to create the additionnal device in /dev/mapper/ for all the partitions, so I don't have access to the individual partitions.
(i.e.: /dev/mapper/jmicron_raid is successfully created, but the creation of /dev/mapper/jmicron_raid_0, /dev/mapper/jmicron_raid_1, /dev/mapper/jmicron_raid_2, etc... fails).

Has someone had more success than me ?

I need fakeraid working for the same reasons (coexisting Windows Vista on the same Raid).