Re: [PLUG] Hardware resolution

[Forge <forge@dca.net>]

Beldon Dominello wrote:

> On Monday 09 June 2003 21:01, gabriel rosenkoetter wrote:
>  
>
> > Hrm. RealTek's chipset is fairly well-supported, if fairly poor from
> > a performance point of view.
> >
> > You sure it isn't just hidden behind some odd PCI bridge? What's
> > dmesg actually say about it?
> >    
>
> It's the number that's weird-- 8201-- something.  The manual says its 
> "integrated" with the onboard chipset.  Linux recognizes it, but doesn't come 
> up with a driver.  I can experiment a bit, but I haven't had time yet.
>  
Realtek has nothing to do with the NIC itself, it's only the PHY. For 
support for the onboard Nvidia NIC, you'd need to use their binary only 
nvnet driver, in the nForce driver pack from www.nvidia.com

> > > The sound's pretty good, as is the onboard AGP
> > > graphics chip.  The sound also has digital output-- RCA as well as
> > > optical--- which is perfect, since my digital recorder accepts both types
> > > of digital input.
> > >      
> > Wow. That's a step up from the AC'97 ASUS usually ships. What's the
> > chipset?
> >    
>
> nVidia chipset.  The North Bridge is 220D GeForce MX Integrated.  South Bridge 
> is nForce MCP-D.  Not a bad little board, from my limited experience with it.  
> Between the ATA100 and the nice drive I got, the I/O time has been noticably 
> shorter-- not to mention quieter.
>
> Overall, nice value for the money.
>
> 	-Beldon

Hopefully you'll have luck with the sound. It works under ALSA, 
OSS/commercial, Nvidia binaries, and OSS/free. OSS/commercial and free 
pretty much support stereo output only, if you use a digital connection. 
ALSA support was somewhat spotty, last I checked (nForce2s here, very, 
very similar, at least sound/NIC). Proper AGPGART support is now working 
it's way into the mainstream kernel sources, but hardware monitoring may 
never work (Asus proprietary monitoring chip, no docs available).

Asus's page: http://usa.asus.com/prog/spec.asp?langs=09&m=A7N266-VM


Sounds good, all in all. Nvidia's chipsets are based off AMD ones, so 
the IDE/PCI/etc should be very reliable, and perform well. Memory 
bandwidth will be good, too, though nothing above PC2100 is 
usable/useful. You won't be able to upgrade to a 333FSB or 400FSB CPU 
either, but that's a concern for quite a ways down the road, I'd 
imagine. My nForce2s treat me pretty decently now, you managed to miss 
the months of campaigning and whining for *any* AGP support outside the 
Nvidia driver's internal support. :)

Enjoy,
Rich 'Forge' Mingin


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