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Topic: Gigabyte motherboard and AMD Llano (Read 520 times)

Anthony Nordquist
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Gigabyte motherboard and AMD Llano
« Thread Started on Feb 28, 2012, 11:54pm »

Well I have just gotten a new development machine, seeing as the old one was pushing 5 years old, it is long overdue. Honestly wasn't that great of a system when I put it together. Since everyone loves new hardware, I thought I would share

For the motherboard I got a Gigabyte A75M-D2H, which is a fairly nice board, if you forgive the hell that the audio chipset is. Basically I will make this quick, to get sound working perfectly you need to:

Update the bios, the images are available here http://uk.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=3930&dl=1#bios The exe files are self extracting 7zip archives, wine has no problems running it. Try not to vomit while you are forced to format a USB key into such an inferior filesystem ::)

Install pulse audio, instructions are here: http://forums.debian.net/viewtopic.php?t=12497

Open the mixer and mute the HDMI output (This isn't really needed, but will remove more of the low static you hear in the output).

Run this command as root:
aptitude reinstall firmware-linux-nonfree firmware-linux-free && update-initramfs -u

(You need to reboot now)

This line isn't needed to get sound, but for some reason before running it, the wrong firmware was loading, causing horrific noises from the output... I blame the BIOS. Linus always blames the BIOS and he is always right, so by extension this is the BIOS fault. You must run this after updating the BIOS as above.

Other than the AMD hudson, I really like this board, the BIOS includes everything you could ever ask for in a BIOS.

I got the motherboard and the CPU in a combo for dirt cheap so that considered it is a hell of a deal, the board sports 6 USB 3.0 ports and a handful of Sata 3 connections.

The CPU is an AMD Llano A6 3500, which AMD has labeled an APU for Accelerated Processing Unit. A quick rundown:

Triple core CPU clocked at 2.1/2.4 GHz (Varies its clock to save energy) with a Radeon HD 6530D graphics chip on the processor itself.

32 Nanometer chip.

I set the fans on the system to run at full speed at all times, the CPU is steadily running cooler than any chip I have ever owned.

As for performance, it blows my old Athlon XP dual core out of the water, but will easily be crushed by an Intel i3 i5 or i7. Considering that I got the CPU and motherboard for less than the cost of an i5 I don't mind in the least.

The Radeon HD 6530D is a decent enough video card, it will play the best of the open source games with ease and runs Amnesia the Dark Descent with acceptable FPS. I don't own anything more graphics intensive, but it is closing in on its limits with Amnesia at 1920x1080 with most settings cranked up. The fglrx driver in the Debian repositories does not function with the Llano processors, sgfxi is included for times like these and works perfectly.

To round out the build, I got parts that should help speed up, well just about everything:
OCZ Agility 3 60 gigabyte SSD (SATA III)
1 terabyte Seagate barracuda 7200 RPM SATA III hard disk with 32 megabytes cache
4 Gigabytes of 1866 MHz DDR3

« Last Edit: Mar 1, 2012, 5:49am by Anthony Nordquist »

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beardedragon
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Re: Gigabyte motherboard and AMD Llano
« Reply #1 on Feb 29, 2012, 10:47am »

Welcome to the world of AMD LOL

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Robert Collard, Madison, WI
HP s5710f, 2x AMD Athlon II 260@3.2Ghz 3GB RAM, 640GB HD
SalineOS 2.0 XFCE-4.8 3.2.0-4-amd64
Debian 7.0 XFCE-4.8 3.2.0-4-amd64

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Anthony Nordquist
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Re: Gigabyte motherboard and AMD Llano
« Reply #2 on Feb 29, 2012, 2:18pm »

I have been an AMD user ever since my k6 3 400 MHz build. The k63 had a lot more cache than its Pentium rival at the time which made it a far superior chip (For less money even). This was followed by me sticking by AMD for early 64 bit support. I have really had no reason to jump ship, and buying AMD keeps some Jackson's in my pocket. More specifically, let me spend them on high end RAM and a solid state disk, which in the end is more important for me.

The cheapest i3 is a whole 50% more expensive than the Llano, has inferior graphics by quite a large margin actually and uses more electricity to run. Really, unless you spend your days compiling software, encoding video or building squash filesystems, you really won't see any improvement with an Intel chip.

All that being said, this is actually the first ever audio chipset I have owned from AMD, and they get a solid F. Honestly, it still starts crackling sometimes, and I don't know if it is the BIOS or Linux. Upgrading the kernel and firmware through backports brings me nothing but silence

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beardedragon
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Re: Gigabyte motherboard and AMD Llano
« Reply #3 on Feb 29, 2012, 2:33pm »

My audio works on Alsa (SalineOS) and Pulse (SolusOS) Never a problem with that, Perhaps HP found a workaround for their BIOS? Glad you got an AMD to work out your solutions on, but, I will still help with testing if you like.
Bob

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