RE: Asus M2NPV-VM RAID and SMP64 feedback
Nuno Magalhães wrote:
> I'm considering upgrading my box in an either-or scenario.
> *) either i buy an AMD Phenom X4 (9650, no TLB issue; socket AM2+ is
> compatible with AM2) to replace my Athlon64; or
> *) i buy one 500+ GB SATA-2 drive; or two with RAID. I'm considering
> Western Digital, two of them with 32Mb cache are roughtly the same
> price as an X4.
> The questions being: has anyone had experience with the X4 and Debian
> (64); and how well is RAID(1?) supported? I believe the motherboard
> has hw raid.
I have that board with an Athlon 64 3800+, 1 GB DDR2-800 (dual channel 512MB matched pair), and currently Windows XP Pro SP3. I have installed/ used Debian on it several times (32-bit, IDE only?). I've thought about using the hardware RAID, but haven't tried it yet.
Be sure to pick a CPU that's supported:
http://usa.asus.com/product.aspx?P_ID=HGTVnGv5nGahCYgK&content=specifications
STFW for Linux driver support:
http://www.nvidia.com/object/linux_nforce_1.11.html
http://www.linux-drivers.org/
http://kmuto.jp/debian/hcl/NVIDIA/6100-430
It looks like it might work. To find out for sure, get your hands on two (or four) SATA drives and try it. You might need a driver floppy/CD if you're installing onto hardware RAID. (I put my O/S on a single drive so that it's easy to backup/ restore the drive image.)
I've done Linux software RAID and it works, but hardware RAID should have less impact on the CPU. I'd be interested to see some benchmarks if/when you get it working.
What are you trying to accomplish? Server? Workstation? What software? What users? Why RAID?
David
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