[mythtv-users] Marvell drivers WAS:gforce 7600gs

Norm Dugas normdugas at yahoo.ca
Fri Sep 28 22:28:51 UTC 2007


Deyan Bektchiev wrote:
>
>
> On 9/28/07, *Norm Dugas* <normdugas at yahoo.ca
> <mailto:normdugas at yahoo.ca>> wrote:
>
>     Deyan Bektchiev wrote:
>     >
>     >
>     > On 9/28/07, *mythtv at clayfish.net <mailto:mythtv at clayfish.net>
>     <mailto:mythtv at clayfish.net <mailto:mythtv at clayfish.net>>*
>     > < mythtv at clayfish.net <mailto:mythtv at clayfish.net>
>     <mailto:mythtv at clayfish.net <mailto:mythtv at clayfish.net>>> wrote:
>     >
>     >     Begin forwarded message:
>     >
>     >     > From: les ( bert at pacbell.net <mailto:bert at pacbell.net>
>     <mailto:bert at pacbell.net <mailto:bert at pacbell.net>>)
>     >     > Date Sent:
>     >     > To: mythtv-users at mythtv.org
>     <mailto:mythtv-users at mythtv.org> <mailto: mythtv-users at mythtv.org
>     <mailto:mythtv-users at mythtv.org>>
>     >     > Subject: [mythtv-users] gforce 7600gs
>     >     >
>     >     > hello all... am just starting to build a box.. was
>     thinking of
>     >     using the
>     >     > gforce 7600gs because my sony hdtv has hdmi in..
>     >     > and any ideas for a motherboard would be nice too..
>     >     >
>     >     > les
>     >     > _______________________________________________
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>     <http://mythtv.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users>>
>     >
>     >     The 7600GS works great.  I don't think you can go wrong
>     there.  I
>     >     have no experience on the 6200 series.  I had trouble getting a
>     >     5200 to drive a 1080p LCD TV (see below), but they work fine
>     on a
>     >     720p TV, a 1024x768 LCD monitor, and a S-Video and composite out
>     >     to a standard definition TV in my house.
>     >
>     >     I have a Athlon X2 4200 on a nForce3 250 chipset motherboard
>     >     (Epox) with 2GB of memory running Fedora 6 w/Atrpms and the
>     nVidia
>     >     proprietary drivers ( 100.14.11) as a FE/BE.  I was running
>     a 5200
>     >     to drive a Sony 720p 42" LCD projection TV.  Playback was clear
>     >     and smooth.   The projection TV was a little too washed out
>     in my
>     >     bright living, so I moved it to the bedroom and got a
>     Westinghouse
>     >     1080p 47" LCD panel TV.  The same FE/BE had problems driving the
>     >     1080p LCD.   The picture was gorgeous but the playback was
>     choppy,
>     >     even standard definition.  I tried the "UseEvents" "True" option
>     >     and disabling the Composite extension that had been suggested in
>     >     this list, but they made no difference.  CPU on one core was
>     65%
>     >     on HD playback.  The thing that pointed me to the video card
>     being
>     >     inadequate was the big slowdown of the OpenGL menu transitions
>     >     moving from 720p to 1080p.  I bought the most advanced fanless
>     >     nVidia AGP card I could find, a 7600GS, and replaced the 5200.
>     >     OpenGL transitions went back to normal.  Playback was
>     smooth, even
>     >     in HD.  CPU was still 65% on one core.  The 5200 is still
>     driving
>     >     the Sony 720p perfectly well in my bedroom FE (Sempron 3400).
>     >
>     >     I have had the best luck with nVidia chipset motherboards
>     for AMD
>     >     CPUs.  I recently gave up fighting a VIA K8T890 motherboard
>     (SATA
>     >     and Ethernet problems) and put it in a Windows machine where it
>     >     works fine, so I am guessing there were some driver
>     issues.  I put
>     >     the nVidia board from the Windows machine into the FE/BE and
>     have
>     >     had no problems.
>     >
>     >     Steve
>     >
>     >
>     > If you are getting a motherboard with an onboard NIC, just make
>     a note
>     > of the chipset. I bought an Asus P5K-VM board with Marvell
>     88E8056 NIC
>     > chipset and there is no way this one can be made to work under Linux
>     > and I really tried hard. There are reports on the web that some
>     > revisions do work better than others, however mine was one of
>     the bad
>     > ones. The same bad chipset apparently is also used on some Gigabyte
>     > boards...
>     >
>     > Deyan
>     >
>     I've got an Asus P5LD2 Deluxe with a Marvell 88E8053 NIC onboard
>     and it
>     works fine for me.  There is an issue if you're using the sky2
>     driver.
>     What happens is under times of heavy network load, the driver will
>     just
>     give up.  To recover, you have to unload and reload the module.
>     Something else you can do is use the Marvell drivers.  I
>     downloaded them
>     from the Marvell site and installed them as a kernel
>     patch.  Recompiled
>     my kernel selecting their driver (sk98lin) and building as a module.
>     I'm running kernel 2.6.22 on Gentoo.
>
>     rodimus norm # lspci | grep Marvell
>     04:00.0 Ethernet controller: Marvell Technology Group Ltd. 88E8053
>     PCI-E
>     Gigabit Ethernet Controller (rev 19)
>
>
> The board that I had (I already returned it and replaced it with an
> Intel one) an earlier revision (I believe rev 12 - I did not bother
> saving the lspci output) of the chipset so this might have contributed
> to the problems.
>
> I did compile the sk98lin driver from Marvell and it was working
> better than the sky2 driver, but would still hang after 10-15 minutes
> and report hardware problem with the NIC.
>
> One thing I do need is the network of my Myth box to be up since I
> don't have a keyboard attached in order to reload the module so the
> Asus board just didn't cut it. I did like the other features though so
> it's a pity I had to settle for Intel.
>
> Deyan
Could be the version, like you said.  I recall a thread somewhere about
it, now that you mention it.  There were also threads for Asus BIOS
updates to fix issues with GigE but I don't recall the chipset.  I'm
glad I was able to resolve the driver issues with my board.  I'm turning
that PC into a backend.   With all of the IDE and SATA ports, I have it
filled with disks:  a 3x300G disk raid5 (waiting for add a 4th from my
current myth box when it gets freed up), a 4x400G disk raid5, a
Hauppauge PVR-500.  Now, once I'm happy with it, I'll be moving my
PVR-350 and my DCT-6412 over.

Norm




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