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

[Deyan Bektchiev]

On 9/28/07, Norm Dugas <normdugas at yahoo.ca> wrote:
>
> Deyan Bektchiev wrote:
> >
> >
> > On 9/28/07, *mythtv at clayfish.net <mailto:mythtv at clayfish.net>*
> > <mythtv at clayfish.net <mailto:mythtv at clayfish.net>> wrote:
> >
> >     Begin forwarded message:
> >
> >     > From: les ( bert at pacbell.net <mailto:bert at pacbell.net>)
> >     > Date Sent:
> >     > To: 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
> >     > _______________________________________________
> >     > mythtv-users mailing list
> >     > mythtv-users at mythtv.org <mailto:mythtv-users at mythtv.org>
> >     > http://mythtv.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users
> >     <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
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