zfs discuss - Aug 2009 - Supported Motherboard SATA controller chipsets?

Hi all,

I think I''ve read that the AMD 790FX/750SB chipset''s SATA
controller is
upported, but may have recently had bugs?

I''m currently trying to decide between a MB with that chipset and 
another that uses the nVidia 780a and nf200 south bridge.

Is the nVidia SATA controller well supported? (in AHCI mode?)

At the moment I''m leaning toward that MB (ASUS M3N-HT) since it seems
to
still be available. Where as the AMD one (ASUS M3A79-T) seems harder to 
find. There is the ASUS M4A79T which is almost the same board, but it 
has 1 less SATA port - Which is also the reason I''m not looking at the 
M4N82 nVidia board.

I wanted to run all this through something like the driver detection 
tool, but since I haven''t bought the boards yet, that''s kind
of tough.

 -Kyle

On Mon, Aug 3, 2009 at 12:43 PM, Kyle McDonald<KMcDonald at egenera.com>
wrote:
> I think I''ve read that the AMD 790FX/750SB chipset''s SATA
controller is
> upported, but may have recently had bugs?
I think the SB700 / SB750 problem was related to doing DMA transfers
with more than 4GB of memory. I think the chip set lies about 64 bit
support.

I''m not sure where I read that, however, so you should verify on your
own.

-B

-- 
Brandon High : bhigh at freaks.com

> I''m currently trying to decide between a MB with that chipset and
> another that uses the nVidia 780a and nf200 south bridge.
>
> Is the nVidia SATA controller well supported? (in AHCI mode?)
Be careful with nVidia if you want to use Samsung SATA disks.
There is a problem with the disk freezing up.   This bit me with
our X2100M2 and X2200M2 systems.


Regards -- Volker
-- 
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Volker A. Brandt                  Consulting and Support for Sun Solaris
Brandt & Brandt Computer GmbH                   WWW: http://www.bb-c.de/
Am Wiesenpfad 6, 53340 Meckenheim                     Email: vab at bb-c.de
Handelsregister: Amtsgericht Bonn, HRB 10513              Schuhgr??e: 45
Gesch?ftsf?hrer: Rainer J. H. Brandt und Volker A. Brandt

Volker A. Brandt wrote:
>> I''m currently trying to decide between a MB with that chipset
and
>> another that uses the nVidia 780a and nf200 south bridge.
>>
>> Is the nVidia SATA controller well supported? (in AHCI mode?)
>>     
>
> Be careful with nVidia if you want to use Samsung SATA disks.
> There is a problem with the disk freezing up.   This bit me with
> our X2100M2 and X2200M2 systems.
>
>   
I don''t know if it''s related to your issue, but I have also
seen
comments around about the nv-sata windows drivers hanging up when 
formatting drives > than 1024GB. But that''s been fixed in the latest
nvidia windows drivers.

Does that sound related, or like something different?

  -Kyle
> Regards -- Volker
>

Hello Kyle!


Sorry for the late answer.
> > Be careful with nVidia if you want to use Samsung SATA disks.
> > There is a problem with the disk freezing up.   This bit me with
> > our X2100M2 and X2200M2 systems.
>
> I don''t know if it''s related to your issue, but I have
also seen
> comments around about the nv-sata windows drivers hanging up when
> formatting drives > than 1024GB. But that''s been fixed in the
latest
> nvidia windows drivers.
>
> Does that sound related, or like something different?
Something different.  The problem with the X2100M2 and X2200M2 will
only occur with specific Samsung disk models, in my case the HD103UJ
1 TB disk.  The system will work fine, until suddenly the disk freezes
up.  The disk is then no longer recognized at all.  It will not respond
to any command whatsoever.

After a power cycle, the disks is fine -- until the next freeze.

I think the same happened to some people on the ''net with the 750GB
variant of the same disk, but I have only seen it with the 1 TB type.


Regards -- Volker
-- 
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Volker A. Brandt                  Consulting and Support for Sun Solaris
Brandt & Brandt Computer GmbH                   WWW: http://www.bb-c.de/
Am Wiesenpfad 6, 53340 Meckenheim                     Email: vab at bb-c.de
Handelsregister: Amtsgericht Bonn, HRB 10513              Schuhgr??e: 45
Gesch?ftsf?hrer: Rainer J. H. Brandt und Volker A. Brandt

Hi Kyle,

AMD/ATI SB700/750 will use 64-bit DMA for data transfer with Solaris 
ahci driver since snv_116.

Morever Solaris ahci driver has already supported nVidia AHCI SATA 
controller.(0x10de,0ad4).

Thanks,
- ying -


Kyle McDonald wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> I think I''ve read that the AMD 790FX/750SB chipset''s SATA
controller
> is upported, but may have recently had bugs?
>
> I''m currently trying to decide between a MB with that chipset and 
> another that uses the nVidia 780a and nf200 south bridge.
>
> Is the nVidia SATA controller well supported? (in AHCI mode?)
>
> At the moment I''m leaning toward that MB (ASUS M3N-HT) since it
seems
> to still be available. Where as the AMD one (ASUS M3A79-T) seems 
> harder to find. There is the ASUS M4A79T which is almost the same 
> board, but it has 1 less SATA port - Which is also the reason I''m
not
> looking at the M4N82 nVidia board.
>
> I wanted to run all this through something like the driver detection 
> tool, but since I haven''t bought the boards yet, that''s
kind of tough.
>
> -Kyle
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> driver-discuss mailing list
> driver-discuss at opensolaris.org
> http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/driver-discuss