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AMD's DDR-Capable 760 Chipset Reviewed X3
An unnamed correspondent writes: "The Tech Report has posted a review of AMD's 760 chipset. This is the one that includes a 133 MHz DDR bus, with support for 133 MHz DDR (a.k.a. PC2100) SDRAM. Benchmarks were done using a 1.2 GHz Athlon, and include everything from memory bandwidth tests to a variety of Quake III scores; they even attempted Linux tests, but Linux and the 760 wouldn't play nice." For another point of view, Fr0child writes "Today is the day that AMD officially announces their DDR SDRAM supporting chipset, the AMD 760. They promise "Increasing Memory Data Rate by Up to 100 Percent," which is quite promising to say the least. Of course, who would sit back and believe what a manufacturer says without verification? Anandtech has taken an in depth look at all the performance and features of the AMD 760. Looks like the combination of DDR + Athlon easily topples the RDRAM + Intel platforms out there."
And on the other, other hand, romeomustdie writes: "According to this [Sharky Extreme] piece, AMD is finally debuting the 760 DDR capable chipset, which is, for the most part, an evolutionary step up from the 750 chipset which has been out for the past year. Boasting a faster system bus, support for DDR memory, and a brand new South Bridge, AMD has set themselves up to not only surpass their first-generation offering, but also the current performance Athlon chipset, VIA's KT133. DDR is finally here to stay."
This is a popular misconception. The granularity of RDRAM makes it an attractive solution for Sony, and at the price that Rambus must sell it to them for, it must be almost as cheap if not cheaper than if they had to go out and buy SDRAM.
l ink</a>
Also, for the kind of work that the memory does, RDRAM trumps SDRAM. Read about how it works into the PS2 model on Ars. <a href="http://arstechnica.com/paedia/3dtech.html">
OMG, Sony is using RDRAM for what it is supposed to be used for!!!
/me faints.
-inq
Methinks I remember somewhere that the KT133 Northbridge/Southbridge combo was something like 25$ in 1k quantities, which ain't bad, considering that Intel has said that the Tehama (or however you spell it) will cost like 50$ in 1k quantities. However, if you look at the prices of the boards right now, you will see that the top of the line boards will come out to be somewhere in the neighborhood of 145$ - 155$.
Abit KT7-RAID, top of the line, 150$, Add 760 chipset, add 15$ price. Lose the Highpoint controller, lose 20$ (?) price. Of course, you lose the RAID, but you keep the ATA-100.
Then again, it might be cheaper just to use the Via southbridge than it would be to use the AMD 766... that might shave another 5$ off the price or so, and I would expect that you would lose a little disk performance under win2k because of the driver support.
-inq
You've got to be kidding me. He put that poll up pretty recently, and for several weeks before it he was asking "what is the most innovative feature of the P4?" He's giving equal time to both sides there.
You do understand that software controls the hardware, not the other way round, right? It's not like this was made incompatible with Linux, it's that Linux hasn't been made compatible with this yet.
It's understandable that AMD's first priority would be to get Windows up and running. That's where the big money is (for now). You'd better believe that they'll make sure Linux runs on it as well, though. They are quite interested in providing a solid platform for Linux.
--Lenny
Anyone know what the difference will be goin from SDRAM to RDRAM? I couldnt find anything on pricewatch, but then again, I know very little about all these new fangled memory technologies comming out. :)
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If Bill Gates had a nickel for every time Windows crashed...
The 760 is NOT at fault. The Linux error he reported is a known bug -- see Red Hat bugzilla ID 19535 (I added the workaround this morning, after realizing that we hadn't put anything up about this on our website). It is basically the kernel trying to disable the P3 serial number -- on the Athlon processor. (oops) It only affects Thunderbird-core Athlons and Durons. It has been fixed in all 2.2.16 and later kernels. I emailed damage to let him know about -- hopefully we'll get to see some benchmarks.
After installation, at the LILO boot: prompt use this command:
linux x86_serial_nr=1That'll get you booted, and you can upgrade/recompile/append to lilo.conf from there. There was supposed to be a Gotcha added for this, but obviously it isn't up yet. I'll track things down today and get it added to the Gotchas page for 6.2
AetiusI'm not a fanboy for any player in this war, but unless AMD has an ace up its sleeve, they are going to have trouble taking mindshare away from the p3 launch. I mean, this damn thing is launching at 1.5ghz... the public will OOH and AAH, and then go buy it, even though p4 + RDRAM will be slower than athlon 1.2 + DDR SDRAM. Clockspeed is EVERYTHING to the buying public, even though the DDR platform might THRASH the p4.
:)
:) How would THAT be for catchup?
Of course, knowing AMD, they DO have an ace up their sleeve... they might pull the same stunt that they did when Intel was releasing their first ghz chip. Now THAT was a laugh. Intel ate crow for that one
My prediction: on the p4 launch date, AMD will announce something BIG, like
1) Athlon SMP chipset, with benchmarks showing that a cheaper Athlon DDR SMP rig will RAIL UPON a p4 rig,
2) Mustang (mmmm, 2MB on die cache)
3) TBird in 1.6, 1.5, 1.4, and 1.3 ghz flavors
-inq
hell it might be the only hope of having netscape render tables!!!!
HHell let make things more interesting and start up staroffice!!!
Non-Deterministic Finite Automata
I had the same thing with my Duron and RH-6.2, it's just an option they have turned on in their kernel (not the install kernel, apparently). Just recompile the kernel with the option turned off and it worked. I don't see why that fix wouldn't work with this new chipset.
This means that you have to install from CD, then boot 'linux rescue' from CD, mount your newly installed system, chroot, and compile/install a new kernel, but it works. Maybe RH should provide kernels specially compiled for AMDs.
I believe posters are recognized by their sig. So I made one.
I'd like the performance boost, but the price better come down, since I need a lot of memory.
--
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
>DOESN'T WORK ON [ALL] ATHLON CHIPS[...]
:-)
...ETS
A quote from the webpage:
"AMD Athlon processors with certain chipset combinations will cause problems for the Dazzle Digital Video Creator II"
What matters: certain chipset combinations. Not the processor.
I think what they are trying to say is that one of the current Athlon Chipsets (either the AMD one or the VIA one) is not compatible. But the Athlon CPU itself is perfectly compatible.
>And no, this is not a case of bribed or lazy programmers favoring Intel or "not writing in AMD compatibility".
It's likely a case of poor hardware. Either the chipset is at fault (which is what I'll believe, I know how poor the VIA KT133 chipset is firsthand... I owned a Vortex 2 soundcard and an ATI Radeon, ouch!) or the card is.
>AMD itself doesn't know what's going on
Only if the AMD chipset is the broken item. Not the processor.
>But I simply cannot afford to "take a chance" that all kinds of stuff I need to do won't run on "mostly compatible" AMD chips.
I have only ever heard of a single "major" error in AMD CPUs (there may be more...) that affected the K6 CPU when a jump larger than 32 MB was executed.
I have also heard of major errors on Intel's part, making them incompatible with Intel specs (haha) or just broken. Like the FDIV bug and the F00F bug for example.
You take a chance on whatever you buy. If you want a totally error free processor, you need to buy a 486. That way any errors that exist are very likely known and accounted for (and workarounds enabled). Why do you think NASA didn't put a PIII in the Hubble Telescope? Because it isn't tested well enough.
But don't take my word for it. You really have to decide for yourself.
If you could be told what you can see or read, then it follows that you could be told what to say or think - BoC
Umm, according to Intel's road map we'll have 2 GHz before the end of the year.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
There's another review here as well.
Let's hear it for the onward march of technology! Marketer-speak aside, aren't we all just glad that our wonderful machines are going faster, going farther, and doing more? I for one remember my first computer, a TI-99 4/A, with a tape cassette as it's read/write drive. It was a wonderful thing, and lasted until my mother threw it out when I went to college. Now I sit in front of a Penium-2 on top of a nice fat DSL line, with winamp going, a linux partition just a dual-boot away, and my drives are full of luscious games and applications that would have exploded my good old TI-99/4A into so much hamburger if it had even thought about running them. Where will we be 10 years from now? I don't know, but I was at a Zellers [Canadian sort of Wal-Mart, I'm an American-in-Canada, BTW] this past weekend and there was a glorified 3D snazzy-background Pong-clone for sale, with big plastic paddles. A few decades development from it's birth and it's now -3D- [with goofy controllers] Pong :)
In July O7, I got a mac pro. There's no punchline. Just endless joy and wonder.
This certainly make no sense...Ive had nothing but positive experience between AMD & Linux combo's.
No Linux support, those engineers need to work with this somemore.
-RedElf
You know, I have one simple request. And that is to have sharks with frickin' laser beams attached to their heads!
Looks like the battle's already over. Anything that RDRAM gets will be because of Intel. If P4 does well, RDRAM will do well by decree. However if P4 and the Athlon are evenly matched, DDR is going to take it all the way. DDR is faster and cheaper, what more can you want?
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
With DDR SDRAM giving such good results and Intel regretting its decision to support RAMBUS, how long before RAMBUS finally realizes its game is over?
.)
(One of the things that irritate me about the PS2, by the way, is that it uses RDRAM. I'm sure the price of the console would be a lot cheaper if it used DDR SDRAm instead . .
SMP support. I know with the 760 chipset (a revision of the chipset at least), is supposed to have support for 2 processors. DDR is great and all, but when you can scale to 2 1.2 GHz Thunderbirds, imagine the power you can have. You could have 2 Netscape windwos open in Gnome, each running on a seperate processor. It will double the chances of getting that f1r5t p05t on /.
Its not what it is, its something else.
Its not what it is, its something else.
Red Hat didn't add that feature, Linux 2.2.x post CPU ID fiasco includes a feature to disable the unique ID during boot, before userspace apps have a chance to read it.
Unfortunately it triggers for non-Intel hardware too, so later revisions (x >= 16) check first. Kernel boot line overrides it (see previous posts)
This bit me on a hand-built kernel with same old disks but a new MB, Duron 700, etc.
Booting a rescue kernel buys you an opportunity to check the solutions database, find the magic bootline and install a fixed kernel. Bingo.
Temporary copy of NT4 survived this switch (but doesn't do ATA66, USB, etc.)
On a friend's upgrade Win95 (98?) went haywire and now refuses to see USB or work properly with his Dual Head G400.
Indeed...
DDR = Deutsche Demokratische Republik (yeah right!) aka East Germany
BRD = Bundesrepublik Deutschland (federal republic of Germany) aka West Germany
I hope this DDR (the RAM) will do better than the other DDR, which is no longer.
<grub> Reading
You should know what you're comparing. CAS3 PC133 will be slow as hell compared to a PC2100 CAS2.5 (I don't think the CAS2 DDR modules are out yet).
I've heard that to use present CPU's with the 760 chip set you'll want to reduce the clock multipliers, unless you want to fry the CPU. Supposedly this is because of the higher FSB speed. Is this true? Can someone please explain?
Jc is reporting that Dell pulled their P4 system out of a "shootout" vs the DDR Athlon systems after looking at their performance. He also has numerous other links to 760-land. It is really looking like Intel had better dump Rambust and get with the program if they are ever going to sell anything with the P4. Likewise, Dell had better re-consider its Intelicide policy and start making AMD machines, especially when the multi-processor version of the 760 goes commercial. They have held the server market because Intel was the only multi-processor game in town. This is going to change soon bigtime.
Sheesh. Life in the slow lane, huh? I'll settle for nothing less that dual 1.5 Gig Athlons; and we're not talking anything exotic here.
--
Life's a bitch but somebody's gotta do it.
Whats the point of living if the next generation is being born round us every day? Damn I shouldn't have gotten out of bed this morning. And with everything already being invented and all, whats the point of me going on!
I agree that the DDR Athlon system looks like a killer but I'm not sure that we can trust this report:
at the right of the frontpage, there is a poll which asks "what is the most negative downside of the P4?".
Urg! The P4 is not even released so how can you benchmark your application on the P4 and see where is the bottleneck!!
And now just looking at the spec of a processor is NOT ENOUGH to say: this is the bottleneck/downside...
So me,I will take this website with a "grain of salt"...
"The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than that of whether a submarine can swim" -EWD
I know I'm burning karma by saying this, but it's become part of any Athlon-related story.
Why don't we just get some kind of petition together and go to the various motherboard manfacturers saying "if you build an SMP Athlon board, (Linux and FreeBSD compatible) you will NOT BE ABLE TO KEEP IT ON THE SHELVES."
Which is true...
Instead of legitimately complaining these options aren't available, why not pound on marketing at these various companies until the clue train finally arrives at the station?
--- Jump!! Fire!! Bullet time!! - Lego version of the Matrix
If you really want the full DDR SDRAM promise then wait for the Mustang. It should be out shortly and addresses some of the Thunderbird's shortcomings. The combination of DDR, 760 and the Mustang has been the goal. DDR for the Thunderbird is merely introducing the new technology, the Mustang will take full advantage of it.
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A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
You have to take this information lightly, as I haven't tried to confirm it, but:
RDram is supposedly easier to fabric for integration on the mothermoard, and that is probably the case with PS2.
This would make RDram cheaper.
In addition, the PS2 could have other requirements than a PC.
This is about DDR being the abbreviation for East Germany, and BRD West Germany, isn't it?
I'll remember to set my chip to Eastern-bloc mode.