What socket 939 motherboard to use?

oldkawman · #1 4th October 2005, 07:31 PM

I am planning to upgrade to an AMD athlon 64 socket 939 system. I would like to know what are the nice and easy known compatable boards. What works well?

steve1961 · #2 4th October 2005, 09:16 PM

I have an MSI K8N Neo4 Platinum board (the non-sli version) with an AMD 64 3500+ (newcastle core). I dual boot FC4 with Ubuntu with no problems at all.

mach_zero · #3 5th October 2005, 03:59 AM

I have heard relatively positive things about the Neo4 series of MSI mobos myself, and am planning to purchase a Neo4-F next week. Only thing that makes me kind of jumpy is how well that Marvell LAN chipset may or may not be supported. Any issues with yours, steve1961?

steve1961 · #4 5th October 2005, 08:10 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by mach_zero

I have heard relatively positive things about the Neo4 series of MSI mobos myself, and am planning to purchase a Neo4-F next week. Only thing that makes me kind of jumpy is how well that Marvell LAN chipset may or may not be supported. Any issues with yours, steve1961?

I had problems with Ubuntu recognising the Marvell Lan and so I disabled it in the bios as the Nvidia Lan is recognised. Since installing FC4 the Marvell Lan has always been disabled, so I don't know if FC4 would recognise it or not.

mach_zero · #5 5th October 2005, 02:07 PM

OK, thanks. But maybe you could explain something to me, being that I am not that knowledgeable on the hardware side of things. The specs for the Neo4 Platinum shown here at Newegg lists both chipsets for that board as Marvell. How is it that one Marvell chipset would be recognized but the other not? Did the older revision have a different primary chipset?

alphonsebrown · #6 5th October 2005, 02:23 PM

I wouldn't recommend MSI although particularly this chipset might be good, try with Asus

it depends if you will do overcrocking then ASUS or Epox

steve1961 · #7 5th October 2005, 03:29 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by mach_zero

OK, thanks. But maybe you could explain something to me, being that I am not that knowledgeable on the hardware side of things. The specs for the Neo4 Platinum shown here at Newegg lists both chipsets for that board as Marvell. How is it that one Marvell chipset would be recognized but the other not? Did the older revision have a different primary chipset?

On my MSI K8N Neo4 Platinum the primary Lan has an Nvidia chipset and the secondary Lan has a Marvell chipset. I agree it's not clear here. However, all the nforce4 boards I've come across have an nvidia Lan, and if they have a second one it's Marvell. I have no idea whether this spec is variable.

Another suggestion. I've just installed FC4 on a friends PC with a Foxconn 939 board -again an nvidia lan but no secondary lan - and this worked fine. The model no. was NF4UK8AA-8EKRS.

Update: OK, I've just got home from work and I re-enabled the second LAN. It now shows up in the hardware browser as a Marvell. The primary LAN shows up as an Nvidia CK804 ethernet controller. However, I've just looked in the motherboard manual and it says:

Supports dual LAN jacks
-1st LAN supports 10/100/1000 Fast Ethernet by Marvell 88E111
-2nd LAN supports 10/100/1000 Fast Ethernet by Marvell 88E8053

Not sure what's going on here. In windows the device manager also identifies one as Nvidia and the other as Marvell?? Anyway, the first one works fine.

Another update: OK, after a bit of googling it appears that the marvell 88E1111 is managed by the backwards engineered forcedeth driver - hence it shows up as an Nvidia device. The 2nd Lan requires a Marvell driver. Either way, the first lan definately works. Hope this helps.

mach_zero · #8 6th October 2005, 02:35 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by alphonsebrown

I wouldn't recommend MSI although particularly this chipset might be good, try with Asus

it depends if you will do overcrocking then ASUS or Epox

No overclocking, and just occasional gaming. More in the market for compatibility and stability as much as an obvious performance increase. I've had 2 MSI and 1 Abit board and liked both. Only Asus I ever had was an A7V333 that was DOA, RMA'ed it and the second one only lasted me 2 months. Probably a fluke, as many of those things are, but it still left a bad taste in my mouth where Asus was concerned. That's how I ended up with my first MSI (which, incidentally, my oldest son and his family are still running to this day). Have heard more good than bad about Epox though, and a friend of mine just bought one. I'll have to ask him how he likes it. Thanks for the suggestions!

Quote:

Originally Posted by steve1961

Another update: OK, after a bit of googling it appears that the marvell 88E1111 is managed by the backwards engineered forcedeth driver - hence it shows up as an Nvidia device. The 2nd Lan requires a Marvell driver. Either way, the first lan definately works. Hope this helps.

Yes, it does help very much since that is the identical LAN chipset on the Neo4-F. Thank you!

imdeemvp · #9 6th October 2005, 02:39 AM

They have some here: http://www.geeks.com/products_sc.asp?cat=473

mach_zero · #10 6th October 2005, 04:18 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by imdeemvp

They have some here: http://www.geeks.com/products_sc.asp?cat=473

And loads of them here and here.

jcliburn · #11 7th October 2005, 07:57 PM

I've had success with Abit AV8 motherboards (see sig below). I built a machine for myself and an identical one for my wife, each using the AV8 and an AMD64 3000+. We both run Fedora 4. (Fedora 3 ran fine on them, too.)

There are some enduring issues with inaccurate temperature readings coming from the board, but nothing that affects operation or performance. Also, Abit won't release documentation on its hardware monitoring chip to the LM Sensors group, so we don't have a Linux-based hardware monitoring solution. Other than that, I have no complaints.

Jay

plamalice · #12 7th October 2005, 09:54 PM

nForce4-based motherboards are supported correctly by recent kernels + nvidia official drivers.

I use a DFI nF4 Ultra-D. Works like a charm. Best board for overclocking if this is something you are after.

ViA K8T890 Chipsets should also cause no problems AFAIK, but i dont have first hand experience with them under linux.

good luck.

fpoole · #13 7th October 2005, 10:01 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by steve1961

I have an MSI K8N Neo4 Platinum board (the non-sli version) with an AMD 64 3500+ (newcastle core). I dual boot FC4 with Ubuntu with no problems at all.

I have the SLI version and it serves me faithfully.

mach_zero · #14 7th October 2005, 10:15 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by jcliburn

Also, Abit won't release documentation on its hardware monitoring chip to the LM Sensors group, so we don't have a Linux-based hardware monitoring solution.

That seems odd. My youngest son is running SUSE 9.3 on a KV8 Pro and I seem to recall that he was running some kind of sensor program (Superkaramba?) on his desktop. I'll have to ask him how he get that worked out......

jcliburn · #15 7th October 2005, 11:19 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by mach_zero

That seems odd. My youngest son is running SUSE 9.3 on a KV8 Pro and I seem to recall that he was running some kind of sensor program (Superkaramba?) on his desktop. I'll have to ask him how he get that worked out......

See this link .

The AV8 uses the so-called µGuru hardware monitor. Here's an excerpt from the referenced link.

Abit µGuru no (2004-09-14) Actually a Winbond W83L950D in disguise (despite Abit claiming it is "a new microprocessor designed by the ABIT Engineers") with many Abit-specific additions. A driver was requested by several users but no datasheet is available from Abit, so we cannot help. We do not support undocumented chips.