Hi. I'm hoping to upgrade basically all the internals of my computer to upgrade from a P II/233 (bought when it was the top-end processor!)

The main problem seems to be choosing a motherboard. My current plan (comments invited) is to buy a mobo and memory that will handle an XP3200+, but actually put an XP2000+ in the computer. In 12 months time, when XP3200+ cost 40 quid, I'd then upgrade just the processor.

I've seen people's comments about nforce2 boards being better than VIA boards. Even without those comments I'd prefer to avoid VIA as I have heard that the USB does not work well with all hardware (this may be just rumour).

I can't seem to find ABIT NF7 boards around. However, I can buy a board called a "MSI K7N2", which seems (from a few quick peeks on the web) to have a reputation as a good board.

Can anyone comment on its use for linux? I would prefer to use Redhat 9.0, solely because it's what I'm most used to, but would consider any other quality desktop distribution.

Thanks in anticipation,

Ross-c

I myself have an asus a7n8x which is also an nforce2 board.
It works perfectly. slight notes.
needs kernel 2.4.21 for proper ide drivers
alsa drivers recomended for nv audio
unfortunately there is no choice other than to use nvidias non GPL
nvnet drivers, they do work perfectly.
The feature I mis the most is the lack of smb bus support for lm_sensors it is forthcoming in version 2.8 which is currently in CVS.
So with this said I would recomend the Abit board since it uses the ISA bus for the lm_sensors.
If you are allready an experimented linux user I would highly recomend Gentoo.
You can find much information regarding nforce2 at this web
http://www.nforcershq.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=29&sid=28a47b81142d393e41fcb8e932af1fa0

Thanks for the feedback. I was considering the Asus board, but have heard conflicting information about the VIA chipset. I've just asked our networks manager, and he says that the MSI boards (at least some of the ones we received) weren't so good, and he recommended Asus. I am not very experienced at configuring linux, mostly my experience has been in installing linux on old machines, where everything that I need is detected, and runs properly. Though, I will be building a machine (XP2000+/Asus nforce mb, from memory it's something like an A7VN266 or something like that (my mouse has just stopped working and I can't check the actual code). So, hopefully after that, I'll be able to choose the next MB (topic of my questions in this thread) more sensibly.

I don't know what a lm_sensor is, and am wondering if it is something that I will need immediately or not (I suspect not).

Cheers,

Ross-c[url][/url]

lm sensors are in short for hardware health monitoring.
For reading cpu and system temperature and cpu and system fan rotation speeds and various other readings such as cpu core voltage
etc...
This eventhough it is not indispensable it is very usefull (You can also read all the data in the bios). Especially if you are overclocking.
for more info check http://secure.netroedge.com/~lm78/

Hi. Thanks. lm_sensors would be useful in the long run, but I won't be overclocking. IMHO there's not much point in overclocking an XP2000+. If I wanted better performance, I could just drop in a better processor.

My new motherboard just arrived (A7N266-VM SE/LAN-UAY). This'll give me some experience with nforce chipsets, and once I'm finished with it, I can choose a new motherboard for home.

Cheers,

Ross-c