2 The FreeBSD Documentation Project
3 The FreeBSD French Documentation Project
10 <title>Supported Processors and Motherboards</title>
12 <para>&os;/i386 runs on a wide variety of
13 <quote>IBM PC compatible</quote> machines. Due to the wide range of
14 hardware available for this architecture, it is impossible to
15 exhaustively list all combinations of equipment supported by &os;.
16 Nevertheless, some general guidelines are presented here.</para>
18 <para>Almost all i386-compatible processors are supported. All
19 Intel processors beginning with the 80386 are supported, including
20 the 80386, 80486, Pentium, Pentium Pro, Pentium II, Pentium III,
21 Pentium 4, and variants thereof, such as the Xeon and Celeron
22 processors. (While technically supported, the use of the 80386SX is
23 specifically not recommended.) All i386-compatible AMD processors
24 are also supported, including the Am486, Am5x86, K5, K6 (and variants),
25 Athlon (including Athlon-MP, Athlon-XP, Athlon-4, and Athlon Thunderbird), and Duron processors.
26 The AMD Élan SC520 embedded processor is supported.
27 The Transmeta Crusoe is recognized
28 and supported, as are i386-compatible processors from Cyrix and
31 <para>There is a wide variety of motherboards available for this
32 architecture. Motherboards using the ISA, VLB, EISA, AGP, and PCI
33 expansion busses are well-supported. There is some limited support
34 for the MCA (<quote>MicroChannel</quote>) expansion bus used in the
35 IBM PS/2 line of PCs.</para>
37 <para>Symmetric multi-processor (SMP) systems are generally
38 supported by &os;, although in some cases, BIOS or motherboard bugs
39 may generate some problems. Perusal of the archives of the &a.smp;
40 may yield some clues.</para>
42 <para>&os; will generally run on i386-based laptops, albeit with
43 varying levels of support for certain hardware features such as
44 sound, graphics, power management, and PCCARD expansion slots.
45 These features tend to vary in idiosyncratic ways between machines,
46 and frequently require special-case support in &os; to work around
47 hardware bugs or other oddities. When in doubt, a search of the
48 archives of the &a.mobile; may be useful.</para>