Socket F, mcp55, mcp65 and drivers. [Archive]

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uOpt

09-25-07, 02:00 PM

I would need a Socket F system, but I am held back by the issue of the SATA ports in the NVidia chipsets.

Can somebody confirm that the following findings are correct re the SATA ports?

1) mcp55 doesn't have any opensource driver, the old nvidia one doesn't work anymore and it doesn't do AHCI and AHCI support isn't planned as a BIOS update.

2) mcp65 is ahci based and would, with an OpenSource driver, support SATA including NCQ.

3) all NVidia Socket F chipsets have mcp55. Some selected chipsets for AM2 have mcp65.

Is that correct?

What are the plans for Barcelona and the new powermanagement? Anything with mcp65 or other AHCI based SATA ports?

netllama

09-25-07, 02:04 PM

I'm afraid that you're misinformed. You're first & third statements are inaccurate.

otchie1

09-25-07, 02:48 PM

I'm afraid that you're misinformed. You're first & third statements are inaccurate.
oh real helpful...would you mind sharing your knowledge with us customers so we can decide whether or not to be suckered into to yet another unsupported motherboard?

From where I sit MCP55 has problems in modern kernels post edgy.

netllama

09-25-07, 02:53 PM

uOpt

09-25-07, 03:15 PM

A list of which mcp is in which chipset, exactly, would also help. I browsed nvidia.com quite extensively without finding anything.

Here is what I scraped together on my own:
MCP55: no support at all [570 + some Intel stuff + all nforce am2]
- nForce 550 (MCP55S)
- nForce 570 Ultra (MCP55 Ultra)
- nForce 570 SLI (MCP55P)
- nForce 590 SLI (C51XE + MCP55PXE)
MCP65, MCP67: AHCI:
Nforce:
- 520 LE [2x SATA]
- 520
- 560
- 570 LT SLI

(that means no AM2 chipsets with mcp65, I mixed it up with socket 775)

otchie1

09-25-07, 07:29 PM

I'm not clear on what you mean by "modern kernels post edgy".

You stated that "mcp55 doesn't have any opensource driver" which is untrue. sata_nv supports MCP55.

You stated "Some selected chipsets for AM2 have mcp65" which is also untrue. There are some MCP55 motherboards that have AM2 CPU sockets.

You've not provided any information on what kind of problems you're experiencing, however since sata_nv is an open source driver, you should report the issues to whomever provides your kernel(s).

my mistake.

My specific problem is that MCP55, although working fine under NForce (closed source) drivers when i bought the mobo, and functioning fine up to kernel 2.6.12 under Ubuntu Edgy eft, now, under kernel 2.6.20 and beyond in Ubuntu fesity fawn & gutsy has stopped working.
Correct me if I'm wrong but isn't it the case that NVidia no longer support MCP55 under linux and rely on OS developers to do the work for them?

What was once the domain of NForce is now sata_nv.

But all that is irrelevant, will NVidia support MCP6x and future SATA controllers in house (open or closed source) or are we to rely of OS developers?

netllama

09-25-07, 07:34 PM

You're confusing the binary-only NFORCE drivers (which were only ethernet & audio) with the open source SATA storage driver (sata_nv) which was never binary-only.

There was never a closed source SATA storage driver for NVIDIA SATA controllers.

otchie1

09-26-07, 08:06 AM

uOpt

09-26-07, 06:43 PM

I cannot find it right now but when I looked this up in summer mcp55 was not supported at all. Apparently that changed by then. But I would hate to buy a SMP board, SMP CPUs and DDR2 registered memory (which fits no other modern platform) to try this in practice without confirmation.

Also, I think it's not a good thing NVidia doesn't even have a table of which mcp is in which chipset. It's no surprise that NVidia gets disrecommended in OpenSource circles.

netllama

09-26-07, 07:02 PM

I'm not sure what you were looking at last summer, however support for MCP55 was added to sata_nv over 2 years ago, in 2.6.11.12:
http://osdir.com/ml/linux.ide/2005-06/msg00175.html

Please make sure that you're not confusing whichever kernel ships with your Linux distribution with what exists in an official kernel.org kernel.

nightmorph

12-07-07, 04:14 AM

I've got an MCP55 board, an MSI K9N Platinum (nForce 570 Ultra). sata_nv works just fine, however, this means that I can't use NCQ with my hard drives, as it's not supported by the driver (http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=77319&highlight=ahci").

According to the Linux SATA status page (http://linux-ata.org/driver-status.html#nvidia), "newer nVidia chipsets are AHCI", but nothing I can find on the internet says how new these chipsets must be. My board dates back to 2Q or 3Q 2006 . . . is this new enough?

I tried compiling only AHCI SATA support into my kernel (2.6.23-r3), but it fails to boot, giving the dreaded "VFS/root not found/give a valid device" message -- meaning it seems that sata_ahci isn't the right driver. I changed it back to sata_nv and it boots up just fine, albeit without NCQ.

Is this normal? Should MCP55-based boards work with AHCI, or am I stuck with sata_nv? I'd really like to start using NCQ with my RAID array.

uOpt

12-14-07, 01:10 PM

According to the Linux SATA status page (http://linux-ata.org/driver-status.html#nvidia), "newer nVidia chipsets are AHCI", but nothing I can find on the internet says how new these chipsets must be. My board dates back to 2Q or 3Q 2006 . . . is this new enough?

Well, welcome to my world. As long as NVidia doesn't even document which controllers are in which chipset they won't get a single one of my dollars.

I even went through the trouble of asking here and didn't get anything useful either.

I can go with Intel. There I know which chipsets' SATA controller is supported by which Linux driver and which one does NCQ. Oh wait, that's right. They all use the same driver and they all do NCQ under Linux and FreeBSD, so I don't even have to look.

nightmorph

01-27-08, 05:19 PM

There's some good news on sata_nv supporting NCQ. Kernel 2.6.24 has support for software NCQ, according to Kernel Newbies (http://kernelnewbies.org/Linux_2_6_24#head-f29764e7ef293be84e2f8aa1b08b8816b15ebfca). According to the nVidia engineers' commit log (http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux-2.6.git;a=commit;h=f140f0f12fc8dc7264d2f97cbe66356 4e7d24f6d), NCQ is disabled by default. You have to enable it by appending swncq=1 to your kernel boot line.

Well, it's a start. :)

uOpt

02-13-08, 07:26 PM

Very nice, nightmorph.

Add the Software NCQ support to sata_nv.c for MCP51/MCP55/MCP61 SATA
controller. NCQ function is disable by default, you can enable it
with 'swncq=1'. NCQ will be turned off if the drive is Maxtor on
MCP51 or MCP55 rev 0xa2 platform.

Now I'm back to the problem that NVidia doesn't even publish a list of which MCH* is in which NForce*.

Which MCP does an NForce4 SLI chipset have?

energyman76b

05-31-08, 10:34 AM

Very nice, nightmorph.

Now I'm back to the problem that NVidia doesn't even publish a list of which MCH* is in which NForce*.

Which MCP does an NForce4 SLI chipset have?

lspci can tell you that - if you own such a board. If not - since it is 2008 why buying something old?

otchie1

05-31-08, 03:28 PM

lspci can tell you that - if you own such a board. If not - since it is 2008 why buying something old?

Thread started in 2007..........

energyman76b

05-31-08, 04:29 PM

bought my 520/MCP65 board in 2007 ...

uOpt

06-11-08, 06:35 PM

lspci can tell you that - if you own such a board. If not - since it is 2008 why buying something old?

Like hell I'm going to buy a board with NVidia chipset if they don't even publish a clear table with what chipset has which controller.

energyman76b

06-11-08, 07:27 PM

Ok,

I can tell you somthing:
I have a nforce 520 board.
The board has the MCP65 controller.
This controller supports AHCI.
Some revisions of this controller have problems with MSI.
This controller supports NCQ but does not set the right flag.
Monday a patch on linux-ide was posted that deactivates MSI with problematic revisions and enables NCQ. I am testing this patch, it works fine so far.

NVIDIA-employees were part of the solution finding process.