MEPIS Community Forum

Hi,

I intend to buy an Intel DZ68DB, a mobo with good integral graphics; an i3 core 2100 Sandybridge cpu; and 8gb of Corsair 1600 ram. These will be used with my existing hard drive, dvd drive, sound card and power supply.

I have a few questions. Is the above combo compatible with Mepis 11? That's the main one. The others are about anything I should beware of, like having to flash the bios or something?

I don't game by the way so the proposed system should suit my needs very well. Hope somebody can advise, please.

Hope you had a good Christmas.

Hopefully, some of our members that know more about it than I do will chime in.

But, I think you'll probably need to upgrade the kernel and xorg to get Sandy Bridge Graphics to work. If you search for Sandy Bridge in the forums here, you'll find some threads discussing it. For example, this one:

viewtopic.php?f=84&t=32213

Most of them are discussing laptops. But, I think the same thing would apply to the Sandy Bridge Graphics in desktops.

So, you may want to consider a cheap nvidia card to go with that setup to avoid some of the upgrade headaches. For example, I just bought a cheap refurbished Nvidia GT 440 for use in one desktop with Mepis 11, and it works fine after installing the latest Nvidia proprietary driver using the sgfxi script.

But, I don't know if you'd have any issues with other aspects of that MB chipset or not. So, hopefully, others that know more about that Z68 board will see this thread and participate.

May very well have an issue. My laptop came with a discrete Nvidia card and integrated Intel card, Sandybridge processor.Linux will only use the Intel integrated card. Nvidia is not supporting Sandybridge. Win 7 does.

There is an opensource project, Bumblebee, that is supposed to give limited support, but I have been unsuccessful in getting it to work. Besides with its limitations, it was not worth pursuing further.

If you want to use Linux with an Nvidia card I would suggest a different processor. Not sure about ATI.

The system is running well with the Intel graphics but required both a kernel and xorg upgrade.The link JimC provided has more information.

Doesn't that problem have more to do with the Optimus switching in laptop boards (where the laptop switches between Sandy Bridge and Nvidia), versus any lack of support from Nvidia for Sandy Bridge when we're talking about a desktop board (like the OP is looking at)?

IOW, I wouldn't think a dedicated Nvidia Card in a Desktop would pose the same kind of problems as you'd have in a laptop that's designed to allow switching back and forth between video chipsets based on graphics requirements/load, since you wouldn't have that graphics switching technology in a desktop.

I do not know. It is beyond me. But you are probably right that it is an Optimus issue. The OP would be well served to do more research and be cautious, however.

I don't want to start a argument, but I would recommend you rethink going the Intel route. With AMD you'll get more bang for your buck and won't have to contend with any Sandybridge idiosyncrasies.

This is funny. I posted a thank you answer a couple of hours ago and it hasn't appeared here. So here we go again.

I'm pleased with your replies because they have saved me the sort of hassle I couldn't contend with. I will go for an AMD set up and if anyone has any sound advice on that I'd be pleased to read it.

I can go to around £250 which is $390. I do get a bit confused over the AMD chipsets and sockets. I have read recently that the latest integrated graphics socket, I think called A75, does give problems with Linux because it is too new to have had the initial bugs ironed out.

Anyway, I don't game so don't need anything at the high end of hardware. Reliability and durability would be my priorities and I'd be grateful for advice with that in mind.

Thanks

I'd go with a middle of the road X4 2.8-3.0GHz (retail with cooler) , Asus, Gigabyte, or MSI board with SATA 3.0 and USB3 (socket AM3), and a decent nVidia graphics card. Your budget should allow you to do quite well. If you need to save a buck, you could drop down from the 8G RAM -- that's overkill in most cases. Four gigs should be plenty unless you plan on running virtual machines or doing heavy duty graphics work. And you can always add later.

No argument from me. I have my laptop working quite nicely now with both M11 and Kubuntu 11.10, but If I had to do it over I would go AMD as well. The extra cost I paid for the discrete nVidia card was a waste of money as far as Linux is concerned.
With Win7 it works well, but I do Windows as little as possible.

I dunno...

If I were buying a new PC right this minute, I'd lean towards a Sandy Bridge Chipset.

Even a Dual Core i3 2100 like the OP is looking at will outperform any AMD processor slower than the 6 Core AMD 1100T for imaging processing tasks (Photoshop CS5, Bibble Pro, etc.), as even a 6 Core AMD 1075T tests slower than a dual core Intel Core i3 2100 for that purpose, and the Intel CPU is less expensive, too. See this benchmark for an example of that kind of thing showing how processors compare running the popular retouch artists speed test:

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/CPU/25

Or, here's an article about the Core i3 2100 with a page showing how Bibble Pro performs for RAW conversion compared to a newer AMD A8-3850:

http://www.overclockersclub.com/reviews ... 2120/4.htm

Once you get into the newer Quad Core Sandy Bridge Core i5 models like the Intel Core i5 2500, then there is really no comparison (it's going to be *much* faster than any of the Quad or Hex Core AMD CPUs for image processing work for things like raw conversion using products like Bibble 5 or Photoshop).

I haven't seen any comparisons of something like Bibble 5 under Linux, but I doubt there is going to be a lot of difference compared to how it benchmarks under Windows, and the Sandy Bridge CPUs tend to "run circles around" similarly priced AMD CPUs for that type of work (where even dual Core Sandy Bridge Intel CPUs will tend to outperform Quad and Hex Core AMD CPUs for tasks like RAW conversion for similar clock speeds).

Now... I work with photography a lot. So, that kind of thing is probably more important to me; and for some other tasks, an AMD CPU may be a good bet.

So, you may want to look at benchmarks for tasks you perform more often to get a better idea of how CPUs compare for those tasks.

But, if I were buying a new PC, I'd probably grab something like a Dell XPS 8300 with a Core i5 2400 or Core i5 2500 in it, as you can usually pick one up at Dell Outlet for around $500 with 8GB of DDR3, a dedicated video card, Wireless N Card, 1TB or larger hard drive, 460 Watt PSU, 64 Bit Win 7 and a 1 year warranty (or even less with a coupon code, as I've seen them selling for around $400 with a 20% off coupon code for one that's relatively loaded like that with one of the popular Sandy Bridge Core i5 (not the slower Core i3) CPUs.

I've come close to buying one of them more than once lately when they had coupon codes for more off, as my fastest PC right now is using a Core 2 Quad (Q6600). But, I'll probably wait until the newer Ivy Bridge chipsets are on shelves for a while before doing any kind of upgrade.