AMD Athlon64 and Nforce3

[desire]

Hi,
Just wanted to know if anyone out there has an AMD Athlon64 with an NForce3 chipset and if anyone had any problems running it in Linux. The reason I'm asking is I'm thinking of getting a Gigabyte GA-K8N mobo with an Athlon64 3000 CPU. This board has the NForce3 chipset and the price is almost irresistable. I do like the Asus board which has the K8T800 chipset but it's around $50 more. I would just like to hear some feedback.
Thanks
Desire

[gowator]

I'd also be interested......
So someone keep it coming.....

[desire]

Actually after a little research I found the Asus board has SATA and uses a Promise controller which I've come across in posts at a couple of sites that there are problems with Promise controllers in Linux, although the board does also have an ATA133 controller. Whereas the Gigabyte board surprisingly just has an ATA133 controller. Although I'm not a fan of Gigabyte boards I think I'll probably go with that. I'm itching to try out the Suse 9.0 for AMD64 (and Knoppix )

[gowator]

Im actually thinking of a dual processor board.
Ill start off with one and then go for a second later when the prices crash!!!

That way you get to keep your investment in the first processor and more importantly the time spent configuring everything....

[pwoods]

Actually after a little research I found the Asus board has SATA and uses a Promise controller which I've come across in posts at a couple of sites that there are problems with Promise controllers in Linux...

Am I out of it, or did I read somewhere that SATA is problematic...? I'm looking for a SFF system, most likely either an SN41G2 or the SN85G4 - but am leaning towards the slower box in favor of supported hardware.

[gowator]

Yeah I'd like to wait on that one....
My current main box is a FN41G 1GB RAM and AMD 3200+ and its really nice.....

However i think my first AMD64 is likely to be full form factor.

I recently had a problem with an older shuttle i gave to my girlfriend.
It had a Duron1300 in and had been running fine
However when i gave it her I also had an Old AMD1400+ (1250 Mhz) which I thought would be fine and give her the extra cache and be a bit better for ripping mp3

What a nightmare.....
The 1400+ was one of the very first....
Everytinme she started to rip it powered off.

I tried EVERYTHING, different encoder ... etc. etc.
In the end I guessed it was a power issue. After spending a long time downloading the tech data from AMD and calculating the wattage needed the 1250Mhz used 20% more peak than the Duron....

I replaced it with a 2200+ which uses about 50% of the 1400+ !!!!
and its running perfectly.....

The moral is that early revisions of new chips tend to be power hungry!!
I would expect AMD64 to be a little hot at first!!!

And the shuttle is, well a shuttle.
The PSU is limited, although you can buy uprated ones theyre noisier so eventually you loose that nice pretty quiet thing that is why you bought it!!!

My advice is go for the full form factor until they get cheaper and better unless you REALLY need al that bang in a small box!!