[clug] Linux mobo - good and cheap

[David Collett]

I'm late to this party and it sounds like you're on the right track already.

Just wanted to give my support integrated intel video. I've been using
integrated intel video for years now (945G, G965 and G31 chipsets) and
reckon they are great. Specifically, I've been using cheap and
easy-to-find gigabyte boards from the Canberra computer fair.

They work 'out-of-the-box' and they do have 3D support which is plenty
good enough for desktop bling (e.g. compiz) and the like (perhaps not
good enough for games as noted).

It also has good 2D support including basic video acceleration (xv). I
use a 945G board in my mythtv box and it plays back HDTV just fine.

As noted, many boards don't have DVI out (certainly mine don't, but
perhaps newer ones do), however you *can* get DVI output by buying an
"ADD2" riser board. It is a PCIe x16 card that sits in your x16 slot
and adds a DVI output to the onboard video. Works with any intel mobos
and should be easy to find online for about $25. Intel also support
the new spec for dynamic monitor detection and reconfiguration
('xrandr' ?). I run a dual-monitor setup here with one monitor
connected to the onboard VGA plug and a second on the ADD2 card DVI
plug. It is trivial to configure dual-head with the latest distros
which contain a gui for xrandr compliant drivers (e.g. ubuntu 8.10).
The only bad thing I've encountered is that with my dual-head setup,
compiz is disabled because the frame buffer width exceeds the limits
of the DRI driver, see here for details:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/mesa/+bug/146859

Finally, my gigabyte mobos all support suspend (and resume!) out of
the box on recent distros (Ubuntu anyway).

Of course YMMV, good luck,

Dave




On Tue, Jan 6, 2009 at 3:49 PM, Algis Kabaila <akabaila at pcug.org.au> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> A big "Thank You"  to all who responded to the enquiry, particularly to ("in
> order of appearance"):
> Mike Carden, Chris Smart, David Tulloh, Owen Cook, Daniel Pitman, Rainer
> Klein, Rod Peters, Adam Jenkins.  A lot of information there!
>
> Just to underline something that I mentioned in my enquiry: On the amd64 box
> with a mobo with Nvidia chipset I do get the same "out of range" result with
> the recent ubuntu as well as suse.
>
> To be fair, In another situation with an el cheapo Acer laptop, ubuntu *did*
> have a better support for that Acer.  So, actually there is not much to pick
> between distros.   I should also note that openSUSE10.3 works well with my
> amd64 box. I am writing with that box now and that is one reason why I am so
> slow to test hardware on it.
>
> To sum it up in a sentence, for an old newbie it seems that Chris' suggestion
> of mobo with Intel chipsets is a good starting point.  Also, Rod's
> information of his experience with EAH3450 tells me that it is well worth
> investigating. I would experiment with all suggestions, but the time is
> catching up with me, so I need to select a subset.
>
> Thank you all again,
>
> OldAl.
>
> --
> Dr Algis Kabaila
> http://akabaila.pcug.org.au/StructuralAnalysis/
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