[Beowulf] mobos/chipsets for small Athlon64-based cluster

[Mikhail Kuzminsky]

I need to build very small and cheap Athlon64 (not FX)-based
(i.e. w/single CPU nodes) GiGE cluster. The processors planned are 
Athlon64 3200+ Socket939 w/1 Gbyte/s "bus".

The problem is in preferred Linux x86-64 versions: only SuSE 9.0 and
9.1 are officially "available" for some binary application.
Of course, we need only minimal graphics; SATA drives are not 
necessary.

The choice is 1st of all between chipsets; for mobos available on 
market
(as I understand) there is nVidia nForce3 (nForce 4 has "more high 
requirements to the kernel", I beleive) and VIA K8T800 Pro.
The mobos analyzed are MSI K8N Neo2(nForce 3) or Gigabyte (like GA-K8V 
Ultra939 w/VIA chipset).

The question is about support of this chipsets for SuSE 9.0/9.1 
kernels
(i.e. for 2.4.21 - SuSE 9.0 or 2.6.x for SuSE 9.1). Formally I have
no needs to have support of all the chipset features (see above).

But nVidia wrote, for example, that kernel 2.4.21 is "too old" for 
nForce3 (IDE will not work), it's necessary minimum 2.4.23, so the 
standard SuSE 9.0 installation (if I'm correct) simple will not work.

So I'll be very appreciate in any information about possible "SuSE 
kernels" for the chipsets I said above.

Yours
Mikhail Kuzminsky
Zelinsky Institute of Organic Chemistry
Moscow