advice needed (on AMD64 MB/GD & redhat linux)

[learninglinux]

Hi eveyone,

This is my first time posting, hope you all have a
wonderful x'mas/new-year holiday.

I'm trying to buy an inexpensive new PC system
that can boot from both Windows2000 and Red
Hat Linux 8.0, hence I hope you can give me some
advice...

1) Is AMD Athlon64 3000+ a good system for
above application? How's this compared to
Intel P4 2.6GHz ver. C with 800MHz FSB?

2) If I go for Athlon64 CPU system, which mother-
board should I pick? Asus K8Vdeluxe or Gigabyte
K8N? I'm trying to use the Asus graphics card
with Nvidia's FX5600 graphics chip. (Some of my
friends told me Nvidia supports Linux).

3) Should I consider the Shuttle SN85G4 motherboard
and case?

4) I'm trying to run some programs in the Linux
environment, is there any benefit for me to buy
a different harddisk drive for Linux (and one for
Windows2000 environment)? Will this affect how
I should set up my boot environment?

Thank you for your help, I look forward to hear
from you.

learninglinux

[whig]

1) According to some benchmarks the 3000+ performs just like the 3200+ when playing games, so I would have bought it if I had the option. As for comparisons to the P4s I suggest you look at a few benchmark sites.

2) I bought a nVidia card because they have drivers for AMD64 now. They don't work as good as I would like tho. ATI are still to offer 64 bit. But motherboards: I have a Gigabyte K8V - works OK. For a bit more info see

http://www.tweaktown.com/document.php?dType=article&dId=598&71923&80881

3) I have no experience with small form factor PCs.

4) You don't need a seperate drive to dual boot Windows / Linux. Windows must boot from a primary partition on the first disk (hda1-4), Linux can be anywhere. To load Linux I use lilo but to boot the system I use the Smart Boot Manager (it's open source.) Neither is hard to learn.

There are advantages to having two disks: if Windows is already installed you don't have to shrink its size. And backups: by coping important Windows data to the other disk (&vv) you still have it should one disk fail.

[SuLinUX]

Dispite what people say nvidia support Linux very well however, I would recommend a VIA chipset over nForce in Linux, the a KT400 is spot on and nice price/speed in Linux.

See my SIG below, Linux runs extreemly well and games run equievent to Windows. i.e Quake3, UT2003, Tribes2, FAKK2 in Linux.

Hope this helps.