Riding the 64-bit Chariot: Choosing Socket 939 and Linux

Subjective Testing

One of the most immediate and discouraging issues with SuSE/VIA/NVIDIA was an issue using the YAST updated NVIDIA driver. It seems as though our installation was extremely picky about the order of the installation, so we just installed the driver manually after several failed attempts with YAST.

There were other various "gotchas" as far as Linux and these reference boards go, in general. Even VIA's core logic is still identified as K8T400, the previous code name to the chipset rather than K8T800.

Audio and integrated Ethernet were critical components in this analysis. Although we were not going to benchmark and debate whether NVIDIA or VIA has better audio quality, what we did want to see is which platform provided better support. NVIDIA tends to incorporate all of its components into single chips, but VIA spreads their chipsets out a little farther. It turns out that both methods have drawbacks in Linux.

Chip	Comments
VIA VT8237 (Southbridge)	SATA RAID support seems incomplete on x86_64
VIA VT6306 (Firewire)	Fully Supported
VIA K8T800 (Northbridge)	-
VIA VT6122 (Gigabit PHY)	-
VIA VT1720 (Envy Audio)	Only partially supported?
VIA VT6421 (SATA RAID)	-
VIA VT1616 (AC'97)	ALSA supported
NVIDIA nForce3 250GB	Gigabit Ethernet not supported
Realtek ALC850	Fully supported

Our via82xx blanket driver detects some sound device, but SuSE never recognizes a device. The ALSA project, which is integrated into SuSE 9.1, provides some support for the chip, but it seems as though there are a lot of missing features for Envy. Parts of the source are released for those brave enough.

We also run into issues with AGPGART on the VIA board (both 64-bit and 32-bit).

agpgart: Unsupported VIA chipset (device id: 0282)

We would like to see a Hyperion driver for Linux, particularly since sorting through all the little nitpicks becomes particularly discouraging for Linux. Our drivers are supposed to be installed in the kernel, but clearly some things are not.

NVIDIA is not without problems either. Getting either the VIA or NVIDIA Gigabit Ethernet working out of the box became more trouble than it was worth. The second VIA reference board (built by MSI) uses a Realtek 8110S, which is supported right in the kernel. Even after installing the nForce platform drivers for Linux on AMD64, we were unable to get the integrated GB Ethernet working. The secondary strong point of nForce GB, NVIDIA's firewall and configuration software, seems moot compared to the robustness and completeness of Linux's in-kernel packet filtering.

VIA has traditionally been behind the curve (compared to NVIDIA anyway), but they definitely deserve credit for the amount of work that they have done. A unified Linux driver would put them in a much better position for further adoption.