On Fri, May 02, 2003 at 10:44:26AM -0400, alex wrote:A bit off topic for this list but I haven't been able to find any up to date documentation about the relative merits of the various brands of CPUs especially for use with Debian. My only experience has been with the Intel P2 333MHz and I plan to upgrade with a new faster motherboard. Could someone offer recommendations for a motherboard and 1.5 to 2 Ghz CPU that perform well with Debian? Cost is a consideration.Athlons seem to work pretty well for many people and are somewhat cheaper than equivalent Intels. Remember when choosing the MB to go with the CPU that the x in "Athlon x XP" is not the real clock rate - that is somewhat lower, eg. Athlon 1800 XP uses a 1.533GHz clock. Take care putting the heatsink on because it is in direct contact with the back of the chip! Don't forget thermal transfer compound, but don't overdo it. The processor will be a bit strangled if you use SDRAM, so go for DDR which is pretty nearly as cheap now (in the UK at any rate). Some motherboards (Asus?) are available which take both SDRAM and DDR, so you could get one of these and keep your existing memory for a while until you accumulate some more spare dosh. Try and avoid a VIA chipset due to buggy DMA (a frequent topic on this list) - unfortunately this is difficult with cheap motherboards. Having said that, mine gives me no problem, although I hardly use the IDE as all my commonly-used stuff is on SCSI drives. WRT onboard video, some newer SiS chipsets are poorly supported by X in woody, though some non-Debian patches can be googled for. Similarly, "my NVidia doesn't work [properly]" is also a frequent topic on this list.