Asus P6T experiences on openSUSE-11.1

English Open Chat
1

My Asus P6T (custom built) PC showed up today. It has an Intel Core i7-920 motherboard, with 6GB RAM, 1.5 TB Seagate drive, GeForce GTX260 (896MG) graphics, with a Samsung SH-S223Q DVD burner (and Samsung SH-D163B DVD-ROM). Its mounted in a Chieftec case with a BeQuite 550 watt power supply and a couple of massive fans.

I had it delivered assembled, but with NO operating system. So in this thread I thought I would document some of my experiences.

INITIAL STEPS

The first thing I did was read the documentation! (boring eh ) … In fact I had downloaded and read the motherboard manual a couple of days before, … but there other documents (such as the power supply manual, graphic card manual, etc … that came with the PC).

Then I checked out the spare parts that were not included with the PC by the assemblers, and then finally opened the computer case and inspected the innards. I took a bunch of pix with my digital camera (part numbers, PCI slots, memory slots, drive bays, cabling … etc … ).

I followed this by closing the computer case. I noted the Asus P6T motherboard has only one PS2 port, than can be used for either a keyboard or a mouse. So I plugged my hardware KVM keyboard connection to the PS2, and put a portable wireless mouse on a USB. The GTX260 graphic card has no VGA, so I put a DVI to VGA converter on it, and then connected that VGA output to my hardware KVM video connection.

I connected my 5.1 surround sound system, plugged in the ethernet cable, plugged in the power cable, and switched ON the PC. As soon as I had a power indication, I inserted the openSUSE-11.1 KDE live CD (the basic 4.1.3 CD created by SuSE-GmbH).

The PC booted immediately to the live CD (before I could inspect the BIOS … I was not quick enough) to go to the BIOS first.

BOOT TO OpenSUSE-11.1 Live CD / KDE-4.1.3

Upon boot to the liveCD the PC had 2-channel sound (not surround sound). This PC puportedly has an AD1200 (although alsa-info.sh idenfied its an AD1989B which is close, but not the same). Ethernet worked immediately, as did graphics. The live CD booted to 1600x1200 using the openGL nv driver. My very new 25.5” Samsung monitor is capable of 1920x1200, so that may need tuning when I get around to installing.

I noted the SATA hard drive was detected, but there was no partition table, nor an partitions on the Seagate SATA drive. I went to YaST, and created a 100GB partition for WinXP (that my wife wants me to install). I was given the choice of MSDOS or GPT when creating the partition table. A quick surf on my other PC (connected via hardware KVM) told me GPT was for hard drives greater than 2 Terabytes and that it might give fdisk problems, so the choice of MSDOS for the partition table was obvious.

After a bit more playing around with the live CD, I decided it was time to check out the BIOS.

BIOS

I went into BIOS, with some trepidation, thinking I may have to change some settings, and that I could screw everything up. Fortunately the successful live CD boot gave me some confidence.

The first thing I noted was the BIOS language was “English”. That was a very nice touch by the German computer shop (in preparing the PC for me). :slight_smile: I have to make a point of thanking them.

The only thing I changed was the boot order, so that the DVD drive would be the first check for a boot, followed by the Hard drive. I noted the Plug and Play (PCI/PnP settings) was for Operating System select (and not BIOS). I left it like that.

Legacy USB support was on auto. I left it like that. Both Marvel LAN 1 and LAN 2 were enabled. I left it like that, although I only plan to use LAN 1. I noted ACPI 2.0 support and ACPI APIC support were both enabled.

And that was it for the BIOS.

NEXT STEPS

With my wife hovering near by, I then opened the DVD drive, put in the new WinXP installation CD, and rebooted the PC for an MS-Windows install.

Don’t shoot me! Martial bliss is important, and my wife is not a Linux lover.

Its still installing winXP as I type this …. I’m not sure I will get to an openSUSE-11.1 install tonight, as the winXP install is not particularly fast. :slight_smile: ….But give the behaviour of the liveCD, I have high expectations the openSUSE install should go well.

Note – I put this post in chit chat because I don’t have any questions (yet) … When I do, and I am certain I will, I’ll post those questions, hopefully in the appropriate area of the forums.

2

I enjoyed reading this Lee. Just very envious of you now. Sounds loads of fun. I’ll be interested to see just how many drivers XP has properly installed. Both XP and Vista on my laptop are a right pain. I have to download all the drivers from Lenovo. OS11.1 on the other hand - everything just works. I’m afraid XP is looking it’s age now, the best it will get from me is in Virtual Box.

So are you planning to load OS from the CD? Maybe you are considering the kde4.2 community spin? Keep us updated!

3

Very envious :wink: I was only allowed to get this netbook (My wife always
wonders what computer stuff is turning up when a courier arrives lol)
this year. The X4400+ is still going strong, so expect another few
years of use. Although she now has the Toshiba notebook at her work
now, running openSuSE 11.1 which she is using in preference to her work
windows machine :slight_smile: It’s funny too in that if you connect via wireless
at her work, you need to run windows and a cisco product, but wired, she
can use linux…

Plus our two year old is demanding more of our time, so am struggling
at times too find forum time :frowning:

@oldcpu I’m surprise that you haven’t grabbed the windows 7 RC release
to try :wink: <ducking>

–
Cheers Malcolm °¿° (Linux Counter #276890)
openSUSE 11.1 (i586) Kernel 2.6.27.21-0.1-pae
up 20:54, 1 user, load average: 0.12, 0.27, 0.18
ASUS eeePC 1000HE ATOM N280 1.66GHz | GPU Mobile 945GM/GMS/GME

4

I plan to install from the boxed DVD that I purchased in early Dec-08 (*the free one that I almost finagled showed up in January-2009 when I was on vacation, and was returned to Novell because I was not around to pick it up! … but in truth, I prefer to purchase my DVD as a contribution * ) …

I don’t plan to play with KDE-4.2, UNLESS I put it on my Sandbox partition (see my next post)

Hah !! Just installing XP was a challenge. … I was totally confused by the language options, and I had to get the wife come bail me out (to ensure we added Thai language support). More on my next post …

5

Anyway, after what seemed like a tortuous period of time, WinXP finally installed.

It took some time to add WinXP sound drivers (reboot), ethernet driver (reboot), SATA driver (reboot), nVidia graphic drivers (reboot). … I left it like that. We have our home router firewall to protect it for now, so I’ll let the wife install Zone Alarm firewall on it some time. Plus all the antivirus stuff. And she can install applications and tune Windows further sometime when I am at work, and she is not on shift.

So, I then rebooted to gparted live CD, and partitioned the remaining unallocated hard drive space (about 1.25 terabytes). I allocated as follows

  • sda1 – primary partition - 100 GB ntfs for WinXP
  • sda2 – primary partition – 30 GB ext3 reserved for openSUSE-11.1 / (root)
  • sda3 – primary partition – 2 GB swap [some will say thats too small, as PC has 6GB RAM but given how much RAM this PC has, I don’t understand the point of extra swap]
  • sda4 – extended partition
  • sda5 – logical partition – 1.19 Terabytes ext3 reserved for openSUSE-11.1 /home
  • sda6 – logical partition – 15 Gb ext3 reserved for TBD (sandbox) Linux / (root)
  • sda7 – logical partition – 34 GB ext3 reserved for TBD (sandbox) Linux /home

I used the 0.4.1-2 gparted Live CD to do that partitioning. Its not the most current version, as I noted I burned that live CD back in December 2008. I really should burn a new gparted liveCD. It turns out that is the gparted version where the shutdown button does not work. But thats not a worry, as I only had to open a terminal and type “shutdown -r now” which worked for me.

Now I may muck around and change this partitioning later. The 1.19 terabyte logical strikes me as a bit too big.

But I figure this should get me started.

Now it time to go to bed. Maybe installation of openSUSE-11.1 tomorrow night or the night after.

6

On Tue, 05 May 2009 19:56:05 +0000, oldcpu wrote:

> My Asus P6T (custom built) PC showed up today.

Out of curiosity, what did the system cost you, roughly?

I’m getting rid of a bunch of old hardware in order (ostensibly) to make
room for a new system that’s similar in configuration. I haven’t started
pricing anything yet, though.

Jim

7

Let me start by saying it was very expensive. One does not purchase a PC with close to the current state of the art, without paying a large premium.

My requirement was a very FAST PC with large storage, so as to enable me to process in a Non Linear Video editor, AVCHD videos of the highest resolution and bit rate. Hence the Intel Core i7-920 motherboard, with 6GB RAM, 1.5 TB Seagate drive, GeForce GTX260 (896MG) graphics.

I could have purchased a similar (slightly less capable) Core i7 system for 30% less. One of our other local PC discount warehouse stores had a Microstar Intel Core i7 system with an unkown Median motherboard, 4GB RAM (instead of the 6GB I went for) less capable graphic card, and 750 GB hard drive, for $1000 euros. I had no idea as to the sound device on that PC, nor any details on the motherboard compatibility with Linux. And I did not like the graphic card. And I wanted an extra DVD ROM reader (add 15 euros for that).

When was I purchasing my Asus P6T based system, the store attendant tried to talk me into getting 12GB of RAM, suggesting I would notice the difference with the extra RAM when editing AVCHD videos. He may be right, but I felt 6GB was more than enough to start with. He tried me into getting a less capable (and hence much cheaper - 1/2 the price) graphics card than the nVidia GTX260. I am almost certain he is correct here, but I irrationally wanted the GTX260. He DID talk me into getting a higher quality (read significantly more expensive power supply and significantly more expensive PC case). Actually the 550 watt power supply I ended up with is more expensive than the 750 watt power supply I was considering. The store attendant advised me the “BeQuiet” power supply was higher quality (would keep its power thru its lifetime more) and had a higher current rating. He stated the Chieftec brand case was more EMI/EMC resistent (against cell phones and other home electronic devices). My athlon-2800 has a Chieftec, I like it, so it did not take much convincing.

The PC has two large “Artic-Cooling” Fans. One over the CPU. One on the side of the case. He noted if I intended to overclock he would add an extra fan somewhere, which would make the PC slightly noisier unless I went for a more expensive quieter fan. I don’t over clock, and the “BeQuiet” fans are generically fairly quiet. But I did spend more here than I expected.

I also spent about 50 euros more, getting the store to assemble the PC. They initially advised they charged about 150 euros for assembly, but then when my wife noted we would assemble the PC our selves, they noted if we let them assemble, they would give us a price discount for purchasing all the PC parts from them. End result, 50 euros more for them to assemble.

In truth, I would not assemble a PC myself any more, even for 150 euro saving. I’ve done this in the past, and its too hard on my back, and for the time it takes me to put the PC together, I can be doing other things with my time. My wife’s idea was to give an unemployed friend the 150 euros to assemble the PC, but when the price dropped to 50 euros, she decided not to go the “friend” assembly route. Those sorts of things are “her call” and I stay out of those decisions. :slight_smile: …

So end price? 1310 euros, inclusive (of tax … etc … ). The PC was put in my wife’s name, as she can tax deduct it, and I can not. It comes with a 2 year warantee. We have assurances Linux will NOT void the warantee. I also like giving business to the local PC store if they are not too over expensive.

I researched every part, so I am reasonably certain it will be Linux compatible. I will know for certain tonight or tomorrow night when I go to install.

8

On Wed, 06 May 2009 05:46:01 +0000, oldcpu wrote:

> So end price? 1310 euros, inclusive (of tax … etc … ). The PC was
> put in my wife’s name, as she can tax deduct it, and I can not. It comes
> with a 2 year warantee. We have assurances Linux will NOT void the
> warantee. I also like giving business to the local PC store if they are
> not too over expensive.

That’s not too bad, really - I was expecting it to be more.

Like you, I have an application (in my case a flight simulator) that can
use the memory, processor, and a high-end graphics card.

Unfortunately for me, the local PC store I have used in the past has
decided that replacing defective parts isn’t part of their charter, so
they don’t get my business any more. A few years ago I bought a power
supply from them and it was defective - the owner told me I plugged the
keyed power cable in backwards to a floppy drive and that’s what fried
the power supply (burning insulation off the leads) and refused to make
it right.

So they lost out on several thousand dollars’ worth of future purchases
over a defective $30 power supply.

Now I tend to source from newegg. I’d really like to find a good,
inexpensive local supplier, though.

Jim

9

Installing XP is a real pain and it needs reinstalling every so often. I’ve found nLite is very useful as it allows you to create a custom install CD that includes all the service packs and fixes, has lots of unwanted stuff stripped out , and includes other stuff like drivers and software (e.g. Firefox). See also RyanVM and WinAddons.

10

Thanks. I’ll pass those to my wife. WinXP does not get used much on my PC, and hence never requires a re-install, unless the wife decides to do it. (On the other hand, she is known to re-install winXP on her PC, or the family laptop, on occasion).

11

Installing 64-bit openSUSE-11.1

After proving last night that the openSUSE-11.1 liveCD (w/KDE-4-1.3) worked on this Intel Core i7 motherboard (Asus P6T), tonights installation of openSUSE-11.1 was fairly boring, although there were somethings I noted, that might snarl a new user. … or maybe I am just being picky …

Insert DVD

So I booted from a commercial boxed openSUSE-11.1 DVD, noting that x86_64 was selected (which I wanted) and that the best install resolution was 1600x1200. Normally I would NOT recommend such a high install resolution, but I thought I would try, to see what happens.

Note this would be my first 64-bit install. I’ve only installed 32-bit PCs until now.

Desktop:

For the desktop selection I chose “other” and “KDE-3.5”. Sorry, I do test somethings on openSUSE, for the community, BUT the desktop is not one of these things. My patience is too thin there. Hence with KDE-3.5.10 I went with the best Linux desktop around, bar none (IMHO, of course).

Partitioning:

I had partitioned the hard drive the night before with gparted (see above post) so I knew where I wanted openSUSE located. The SuSEinstaller guessed wrong (guessing sda5 for /home (correct) but wrongly guessing sda6 for /). I pretty much expected this. It would be a clever piece of software that could read my mind.

So I had the installer rescan the disk and I selected sda2 for / and re-selected sda5 for /home. No worries, but I’m pretty certain a new user would be lost there, mainly because they would not know the difference between “/” and “/home” and the “sdax” nomenclature would be lost on them, as would the terms “mount”, and the various Linux file systems. Not much to do there me thinks for New Users, other than insist new users MUST !! do some research and reading before installing Linux.

**Configuration: **

Some configuration aspects I changed. I deselected:

  • use automatic configuration
  • use this password for system admin
  • automatic login.
    I don’t like those options.
    I’m a bit security conscious, and I like more control over the installation than is given with “automatic configuration”.

I selected to disable ipv6. Its never worked well for me.

Boot loader:

I noted the grub boot loader was selected with it to be located under dev/sda2 (“boot”). Going into more details I noted the PC was set to boot from the boot partition and NOT from the MBR. I was a bit surprised, and I am beginning to think my knowledge needs brushing up here. This only makes sence to me if sda2 is the active partition, and I saw no evidence of that (although it could be the case). But later the PC booted OK, so clearly grub WAS put in the correct location. :slight_smile: …

During the installation I noted the SuSEinstaller talking about deploying Image Gnome[1] and [2] and [3] … that gave me a fright. I did not want Gnome, and by that name it appeared it might be installing Gnome. Of course that was not the case, and its the naming convention that threw me …. I guess I’m a bit jumpy, this being my first 64-bit install.

**Software Install: **

For software configuration under patterns, I selected the “development pattern”. Searching for specific applications, I removed ALL of the beagle applications. I also added checkinstall and some chess programs.

I was surprised during the software install to see the updates go grab the latest 2.6.27.21 kernel. This is the 1st time I’ve installed an openSUSE release so far (6-months) after the release date, and hence I’d never seen that before. This new kernel install was confirmed by a dialog box that popped up and stated “The kernel has been updated. The system will reboot now and then continue the installation” … of course that means nothing to a new user, but to an experienced user, it means “all bets are off” wrt automatic driver installation. Cross one’s fingers. (Fortunately it all worked for me).

Final hardware configuration:

Next, after the reboot, I noted my brand new 25.5” Samsung monitor was not recognized. No surprise there. But it was setup as a 18.8” VESA. I did not want that. So I changed that to a 26” VESA monitor. It also still had my resolution at the 1600x1200 resolution. I changed that to 1920x1200. I would NOT recommend making such aggressive changes, so early in the install, for new users. Familiarity breeds contempt (and often a big fall for experienced users … :slight_smile: … ) . In my case, I was fortunate (very very fortunate) to have no problems.

Desktop:

And that was pretty much it. The PC booted to KDE-3.5.10 ok. I tuned the very familiar KDE3 desktop to my liking that I have done many times over the years. Things like adding more desktop panels, going for a large panel, larger fonts, larger icons, disable screen saver, pick a nicer background, disable show windows from all desktops, tune the appearance of konsole, drag a yast and konsole icon to the desktop and toolbar and other stuff …

Sound:

I then checked my sound with the sound test: “speaker-test -c2 -l5 -twav” . Two channel sound worked with the 2.6.27.21 kernel !! THAT was a surprise. I was expecting complete broken sound with the new kernel. But 2 channel sound work. However 5.1 sound did not work as near as I could tell (I’m not 100% certain yet, more tests to do). But the volume was low. Real low. Turning up PCM and Master did not help. Still VERY low. I went into YaST > Hardware > Sound > Other and cranked up the volume to 95% (it was already pretty high). No difference. And YaST test sound did not work (That was no surprise – its a known bug in 11.1 ). OK, so much for cursory non-thinking steps. :slight_smile: … So I closed YaST and took a much closer look at the mixer. Hmmmm… so I have a 5.1 surround system. Hence I un-muted and turned up settings for surround, center and LFE volume. THAT did the trick. Great volume now ! Is it 5.1 ? I don’t know. I need to find another test since the 5.1 sound test: ”speaker-test -c6 -Dplug:surround51 -t wav -l1” fails.

Software:

Then it was my standard ensure OSS, Non-OSS, Update and Packman were installed. I also installed and setup the Smart Software Package Manager (I like having a good high quality backup to zypper/yast). And I installed a bunch of Packman multimedia apps.

Firewall:

The I went into my firewall, and opened it up for ssh and vnc.

Summary:

Not much else to say. The PC is FAST. Real FAST. But I need to do some bench mark testing. And also test out kdenlive and some video editing aspects, as that is the main reason why I purchased this PC.

I probably will install the nVidia driver on the weekend, after I back up some files, and play a bit more with the openGL (nv) driver that I am currently using for the graphics. If it turns out that surround sound is not working, I may update to the latest alsa release.

Ok, and “My computer” reports the Intel Core i7 (with 8 cores), speed 1600MHz (that reads a bit low) and Display Info with nv (openGL) graphic driver and GeForce GTX 260 recognized.

12

All is not well in multimedia land :frowning:

Well, I did my standard openSUSE install for multimedia, and all is NOT well on the new PC. … I may go to bed and ponder this in the morning. …

I have not figured out if the problem is:

  • poorly built 64-bit apps, or
  • openGL graphic driver still needs lots of work for this GTX 260, or
  • alsa driver still needs lots of work for this audio hardware , or
  • something else

In essence, video plays back incredibly slow, taking up 100% cpu (not a big problem when one has 4 cores) for a small screen, except at full screen the videos do NOT play smoothly. This is for all players: vlc, smplayer, mplayer basic, ffplay … Nominal codecs are installed. Its not like I have not helped dozens of users and know nothing about this … (unless 64-bit is dramatically different somewhere). All my apps are 64-bit (no 32-bit snuck in).

I tried different video modules (xv, x11, gl … etc … ) and no difference. I also noticed on occasion xorg % load went up to 100%. I am thinking it suggests the openGL driver is no good.

In comparison, my 5 year old 32-bit athlon-2800 and my athlon-1100, both NOT using vdpau, with an AGP graphic card on the 32-bit athlon-1100 and a PCI graphic card on the 32-bit athlon-2800, simply blows the drawers off of this Intel Core i7 when it comes to video playback with less CPU load. … That should NOT be. No way should that be. So something is seriously wrong in the setup in the Intel Core i7.

As noted, I suspect the openGL driver, and I may roll back to the VESA driver. Or I may move up and try the proprietary nVidia driver. I definitely can NOT survive like this :slight_smile: …

If I have no success with the driver change, I’ll likely start a help thread. But first some of my own investigation.

13

I did a check with WinXP as a sanity check.

My wife had not bothered to setup winXP, so first I had to install Zone Alarm (free version) firewall, reboot, install AVG Anti-virus, set-it up, then download and install Firefox … Some times windows apps first ask one to download a setup program, which then downloads an installation program. One has to navigate to one’s download directory to find the file, then scan for virus, then install. I find that incredibly painful (compared to what a Linux Software Package Manager can do). … but anyway, I finished that, and then went and grabbed the free mplayerc Home Cinema (or called something like that).

I had some hints to try this in another thread on our forum.

The beauty of that mplayerc Home Cinema program (besides being free) is it takes advantage of nVidia Pure Video (windows equivalent to Linux vdpau) and also takes advantage of ATI avivo. I then played back some difficult h264 files, and the windows mplayerc Home Cinema breezed through them, playing back with about 1% to 2% cpu loading (even at 1920x1080 60i resolution). Now I have a nVidia proprietary driver installed on WinXP.

So I need to install the proprietary nVidia driver on openSUSE-11.1 and see if that cures the problem. … This could also be an xorg executable problem, or I’m also thinking this could be a 2.6.27.21 kernel problem. I have read of a user who noted they had to move to a 2.6.28 kernel (which they found in Ubuntu) to solve their video problem with the Asus P6T. …

Such is life in the fast lane on the cutting edge. :stuck_out_tongue:

14

I’ll likely do this on the weekend, although I may do some reconfiguring tonight. A note to myself, before removing the openGL driver, I need to record some log files to support a possible bug report. … probably dmesg, and some various xorg log files. Its been a while since I had to look at such files , so I need to dig into this to see which ones …

Then I’ll likely backup my /etc/x11/xorg.conf, and install the vesa graphic driver. Do the same sort of tests. Record the same sort of logs.

Then install the proprietary nVidia graphic driver. Do the same sort of tests. Record the same sort of logs (and maybe some additional nVidia specific logs/scripts).

If neither of this cure it then its unlikely graphics. Maybe kernel. Hence at that stage, I may roll back to the openGL driver and then try a different kernel. I recall there being some experimental packaged kernels for openSUSE-11.1 (both 2.6.28 and 2.6.29). I need to find where they are located. I may also install another distribution (that has a newer kernel) in my Sandbox partition area. … I can’t use openSUSE-11.2 Milestone1 for this without doing a lot of custom multimedia compiling, and I don’t want to spend the time doing that.

After all that settles, I think I’ll have enough information and log files to start asking questions and start raising bug reports.

15

With the Core i7-920 motherboard it is all you need 6GB of ram?.
My motherboard cames with core i7-920 that is all with GTX 295.

Mike

16

You bring up 32bit and I know I ask about what is the different betwen 32and 64bit and I get only hand full answer it could be not in these forum but may in Madriva.
Mandriva is I use second,Amiga is the first I use it and third is Suse ,sso I be few years around with linux now.
So yeah it is little different bet. 32 and 64bit:)

Mike

17

Something else I could test, after checking out graphic drivers, and after checking out new kernels, is testing 32-bit openSUSE-11.1 on this PC. Although given 32-bit will not use the 6GB of RAM as much as 64-bit (at least that is my understanding) and given 32-bit encodes videos slower than 64-bit (and encoding is one of the reasons I purchased this PC) I am not particularly keen on installing 32-bit openSUSE-11.1 on this PC (I want to see 64-bit work). But I won’t rule out that possibility of 32-bit.

One thing to note is I am just a regular user. And not a developer. I try to collect logs, and test various things on my PCs, but the botton line is I am not a developer. And there is a BIG difference there in the knowledge that I know that I do not have. I work in an establishment with engineers who have forgotton more about Unix and Linux than I will ever know.

18

I like to open a new thread about 34 and 64 bit can you tell me please and direct me where should I open a new thread and the rest I understand you.

19

Our subforum area for 64-bit hardware issues is here: 64-bit - openSUSE Forums

20

Something else obvious that I have to check is the BIOS. I note that Asus P6T Deluxe V2 BIOS update Version 0406 has a vista fix (that may be applicable to linux):
P6T Deluxe V2 0406 BIOS

  1. Fixed the key may lag in BIOS setup when a Turbo Mode ratio was selected.
  2. Supported EIST function when CPU ratio is in manual mode.
  3. Adjusted max value of CPU ratio setting according to the number of cores active in BIOS setup.
  4. Fixed setup item “CPU Ratio Setting” may disappear if down CPU ratio.
    **5. Fixed Vista may loading slowly when populated memory size is larger than 3GB and with high-end VGAs. **
    Item 5 reads similar to what I was seeing with videos on openSUSE-11.1, as the GTX260 graphic card is considered “high end” by many. I do note 32-bit winXP did not have the problem, but it only see’s 3GB of RAM. I need to check the BIOS version of the motherboard when I get home. I think version 0406 refers to a fix on 2009/05/04 (4-May-2009) update , so its quite possible that update is not in the motherboard I purchased.