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Motherboards with i845 Chipsets

Posted by michael on from the penny-pincher dept.

manplusdog writes: "Dan reviews a couple of i845 motherboards here and lets just say he doesn't hold back! "Mainboards For The Stupid" is the verdict. I have no affiliation with Dan or his site (aside from being Australian) but found the review..... entertaining. Cheers"

35 of 207 comments (clear)

  1. Good article by Inthewire · · Score: 5, Interesting

    He reinforced my belief in the value of a competitive market...without AMD, Intel would have a lock on all of our business. It's interesting how destructive human nature can be...logically, the thing to do is run a single company that can leverage suppliers, research, manufacturing, distribution, administration, etc. This would reduce all the redundancies in the market and allow for superior products at reasonable prices.
    Advertising could be focused on actual products, not competitive differentation. If something new was developed by this company, they would only need make the value known...no more blue men.
    INstead of this utopia, when a single company gains the majority of the market they tend to maximize profit instead of customer value.
    It's a hell of a world, isn't it?

    --


    Writers imply. Readers infer.
  2. Speech output by kingdon · · Score: 4, Funny

    The coolest part was the ASUS board which speaks for power on self-test errors, rather than the age-old cryptic beep system. And the fact that you could download new messages. Anyone done the Klingon translation yet?

  3. His page is upside down by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

    This Australian forgot to add the hemisphere qualifier to his HTML tag. When will they learn?

    <html hemisphere="south">

    1. Re:His page is upside down by Chagrin · · Score: 4, Funny

      I'll bet that once the server gets slashdotted it will go down counter-clockwise.

      --

      I/O Error G-17: Aborting Installation

  4. Custom Errors by Myriad · · Score: 5, Funny
    Instead of using lights or mere beeps to tell you about its Power On Self Test progress, it speaks its errors,in a quite comprehensible female voice.

    The P4B also comes with a Windows utility that lets you convert WAV files to make your own error messages.

    In related news, Asus will begin shipping the Custom Error Pack with errors including:
    - I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that!
    - It's Microsofts Fault - Really!
    - BSOD my ass!
    - Doh!
    - Need Beer!
    - I've been Slashdotted!
    and many more!

    --
    "They do not preach that their god will rouse them, a little before the Nuts work loose." Kipling, 'The Sons of Martha'
    1. Re:Custom Errors by samason · · Score: 2, Funny
      I'm taking bets for the amount of time someone will take to record a standard set of POST beeps. . .
      • 1 year
      • 1 month
      • 1 week
      • tomorrow
      • its already been done
  5. The Pentium 4 is worth the extra price. by Starship+Trooper · · Score: 2, Interesting
    Now, Athlons may be fine for gaming and other unsubstantial desktop usage. But for the workout my Fortune 500 company gives their computers, AMD's products cannot compare to Intel for one simple reason - Reliability. This is where the value of the Pentium 4 comes in. In my experience, Athlon processors, while maybe a few percent faster than their Intel counterparts, die at least three times more frequently. When you have to buy the same AMD processor thrice as often as the comparable Intel one, the cost difference becomes negligible.

    There are a number of other reasons the Pentium 4 platform is a better value than the Athlon:

    • Rambus memory. Despite the common anti-Rambus sentiment here at Slashdot, RDRAM is of consistently higher quality and better performance than SDRAM, especially in quad-processor situations where memory bandwidth is everything and even DDR SDRAM becomes a bottleneck. Not so with RDRAM.
    • SSE support. SSE2-enabled code beats the pants off the Athlon in performance. My company's heavy data processing algorithms depend heavily on SSE2 optimizations in order to process gigabytes of data in real time.
    • Commitment to open source. Linux serves an important rôle in our work, and it's good to know that Intel has continued to support Linux and open source, and that part of our purchases goes to fund that support. Meanwhile, AMD jumps on the "XP" bandwagon with their new, specially-designed-for-Windows chips. That sort of behavior is detrimental to both our business and the entire tech economy.
    So, I urge you all to transcend the Slashbot stereotype and realize that Intel truly provides the best value for business and home use. Just because they are the big player in the market don't make them bad.
    --
    Loneliness is a power that we possess to give or take away forever
    1. Re:The Pentium 4 is worth the extra price. by Watts · · Score: 2, Informative

      I personally have had no reliability issues with Athlon systems, nor have any of my associates (with the exception of one faulty motherboard). While this personal point isn't going to prove anything for overall reliability worldwide, it makes me think when I see half a dozen systems running night and day in constant use with no crashes, freezing, or hardware failure.


      Let's address your issues:
      • Rambus memory: I'm not against Rambus. Maybe on an intellectual-property standpoint, or on a corporate standpoint, but they make some good memory. However, Intel has done an amazingly mediocre job of taking advantage of such memory in their chipset offerings. They obviously aren't going to get the performance gains that have been seen in game consoles because they don't have a unified memory architecture, but the fact remains that Intel engineers have had difficulty pulling the possible performance out of Rambus memory.
      • SSE Support: As you've stated, SSE2 code does some really nice tricks. For "heavy data processing algorithms" it doesn't really have any competitors in the x86 world, yet. However, this is really limitjng the scope of applications, as not every program is going to be able to take advantage of this functionality. In fact, most won't. Overall, SSE2 is nice but takes some attention to optimize for. Whether a lot of mass usage programs will take advantage of it is yet to be seen. I'm not going to say anything too negative about it, because it is something that can be used well.
      • Commitment to open source: Amazingly poor naming schemes aside, I don't believe AMD has any less of a commitment to open source than Intel does. I have a friend who was employed at AMD over a year ago who was paid to optimize software like glibc and gcc to take advantage of the Athlon processor. AMD's x86-64 has public specs and x86-64.org is hosted by AMD to showcase ports of open source projects to this new processor.

      The Pentium 4 is a useful platform, but there are viable alternatives as well. Just because one piece of technology is good does not mean that others are bad. I personally would gladly use any stable, well-performing system that fits the given task.
    2. Re:The Pentium 4 is worth the extra price. by spiro_killglance · · Score: 2, Insightful
      "SSE Support: As you've stated, SSE2 code does some really nice tricks. For heavy data processing algorithms"


      N.B. Note SSE2 code only applies to Double
      precession floating point code.


      For single precession SSE/3D Now to the same
      jobs. Need Quad precession, your in software
      emulation and its real slow.


      Despite SSE2, the Athlon still rules at ScienceMark


      Intels SSE2 autovectorising compiler still has
      a lot of issues for general use.

  6. actually i am kind of bummed. by motherhead · · Score: 4, Insightful

    All my personal boxes are currently Athlon 1.2 and 1.4 GHz 266FSBs running DDR, except for a little sad rarely used mother that was once my main box, a 1GHz P-III on a Asus "Black Pearl" BX board.

    So I love AMDs, they are swell. But there is one thing about Athlons that frosts my ass, well no, the opposite. I have had to build in the odd year of 2001, twenty-two separate AMD Athlon/Thunderbird boxes. I have had seven Athlons burn on and die on boot up (stinky silicon).

    I am not a retard. And that is just unacceptable.

    I have never dealt with a chip as volatile as the Thunderbird. Some are just hardy little bastardos, others need a level of anal retentiveness that borders on owning ones own clean room. For me and my absolute need to have a box that makes apps open before I can remove finger from the enter key, or off the mouse on the second click. This is okay. When I am building a blah beige business box, for a client, or a friend or Auntie Ann. Then this makes me borderline homicidal.

    The fact of the matter is, any monkey with a hammer can knock together a P-III box. Intel chips tend to be as robust as those freaky bubble glass ashtrays that weigh fifty pounds. I can knock together a P-III box and have an operating system installed in an hour, mostly while I am doing something more important then watching Win2K load or whatever.

    I honestly wanted to see a nice Asus/Abit P4 board available so I can do more of the same for business clients ("Oh! goodness Bob! look! ONE POINT EIGHT GIGAHERTZ!!! INTEL BOB!!! HAVE AT IT BAYBE!!!... But first, pay me.")

    Cheap boxes that run as stable and reliable as hell and can be assembled almost by remote control rock, the extra cash keeps me in Geforce 3 cards and klipsch speakers and other shiny things I see in the forest. I would be happy as a clam to see this whole i845 thing straighten it's wings and head into the promised land that the BX chipset promised us exists. Speaking of BX, that Asus black pearl box in the corner. It's not nearly as fast as my other three Athlon boxes, but damn it, it is as reliable as my subzero fridge.

    As for myself, I will stick to my yummy AMD goodness until the data becomes more compelling otherwise. I am still a sucker when I notice that something is really "noticeably faster"

    1. Re:actually i am kind of bummed. by Barbarian · · Score: 2

      Golden orbs suck, they're worse than a Volcano II, which is barely adequate.

      Sounds like the clips suck on those orbs, or you're putting them on rotated 180 degrees the wrong way, causing a miniscule air gap on the core. You know, you can put the heatsink on when the board is out of the case, and then look carefully to see if it's on properly. Also use Arctic Silver II thermal compound..

    2. Re:actually i am kind of bummed. by dasunt · · Score: 2


      Building 1+ GHz Athlon-based systems for a living, I am familiar with a large amount of athlon based systems on several motherboards, (computer grunt gives one interesting knowledge).


      Now even though we use the default OEM heatsink, which sucks, I've never seen an Athlon system with a properly installed processor overheat. This includes systems that are in older, forced air-heated homes with several pets (ewww, cat-hair is evil). The OEM heatsink is probably one of the poorer heatsinks, an Athlon under heavy load can reach 60C, and at idle on an operating system like win98, it doesn't even reach a low of 50C. Win2k and linux systems do better on idle, because of the HALT instructions sent to the CPU by the OS.


      Please note that the temperature measurements were done using the the sensor on the motherboard. And 60C is still 35C cooler then the top limit Athlon sets for their TBirds.

  7. I agree. by Joe+Groff · · Score: 2, Interesting

    While we aren't Fortune 500 where I work, we gave Athlons a try and, sorry to say, they just didn't make the cut. Too many hardware issues and not enough performance to justify putting up with it. Too bad the moderators will mod you down for telling the truth =(

    --

    -Joe

  8. Re:Yawn.. by Arker · · Score: 3, Informative

    Why would any self respecting slashdot reader not opt for a DDR Athlon??

    Well there's a couple reasons I can think of. First off you might be looking to upgrade an Intel board you got for free *cough* but in that case you wouldn't be buying one of these motherboards. :)


    The second reason would be thermal protection. Intel build a little thermometre into their chips, along with some circuitry that'll turn the sucker off in case the temperature goes way over where it should be. Which isn't such a huge thing, if you use proper cooling it shouldn't matter, but in some cases it's probably worth thinking about.


    If you do get an Athlon, be sure and cool it properly. They'll keep processing till they burst into flames... :)

    --
    =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
    Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
  9. Athlon Cooling by Greyfox · · Score: 2

    My cheap ass no-name Athlon motherboard comes with a handy array of temperature sensors and a bios-settable emergency shut-down feature. If I feel like putting some work into it, I can also access the sensors from Linux and initiate a shut-down if things get too hot, which they will only ever do if I lose one or more cooling fans. Logic to do this on the processor iself is, in my view, completely redundant.

    --

    I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?

    1. Re: Athlon Cooling by Inthewire · · Score: 2, Informative

      Yeah? Wrong, unless you use some pretty aggressive settings. The time it takes software to detect the problem is 5 times longer than it takes an Athlon to self destruct.
      Tom's reported a rise of a few hundred degrees per second...no software solution will catch it, unless you've found or written one in the last three days.
      That said, I still choose AMD over Intel...I know how to keep the cooler locked on and finctioning.

      --


      Writers imply. Readers infer.
    2. Re:Athlon Cooling by crimoid · · Score: 2, Informative

      Given that the P4 will just throttle back to cool off (thereby staying up and operational with no data loss) rather than requiring a motherboard manufacturer to build in extra functionality to only _shut_down_ the system IMHO it seems that having the processor control this function is the ideal solution.

    3. Re:Athlon Cooling by Animats · · Score: 2

      Actually, AMD finally has put thermal sensing on-chip. The AMD Athlon 4 model 6 has a thermal diode on-chip.

  10. Tom's Hardware has a review too by Anonymous+DWord · · Score: 2, Informative

    Here: http://www6.tomshardware.com/mainboard/01q3/010702 /index.html

    The question now is, who will be interested in it? It is true that it will make Pentium 4 much more affordable due to its PC133 SDRAM support, but its lackluster memory performance impacts Pentium 4 so badly, that it makes AMD's Athlon an even more attractive solution than it already is. I personally would consider everyone as close to crazy if he should choose Pentium 4 plus i845 and PC133 SDRAM.

    --
    "If he thinks he can hide and run from the United States and our allies, he's sorely mistaken." Bush on bin Laden
  11. Trivia by Daniel+Rutter · · Score: 5, Informative
    Howdy. Page mine. Server looks fine to me. Site hosted in USA, not here in Australia. So if you can't see it, not my fault. And I can get my mail just fine, thanks :-).

    On a more interesting note, I put that review up on the 30th of August, which was while motherboard manufacturers were still getting busted for even saying that they'd shipped i845 boards, because the chipset hadn't officially been launched yet.

    But here in Australia, for some reason, the boards were already being sold retail. I just grabbed those two from m'verygoodfriends at Aus PC Market.

    I should probably update the review; I bet Abit and Asus have product pages for those boards, now :-).

  12. Good line by Argy · · Score: 2

    "The kind of people who manage to cram three syllables into the word 'Athlon' are, most likely, not going to buy one."

    The author could use a grammar checker for subject/verb agreement, but he does have an amusing writing style, considering this was a motherboard review.

    1. Re:Good line by Argy · · Score: 2

      Sorry for the confusion, I didn't mean that line in particular needed a grammar checker. The article as a whole, however, had a number of errors.

  13. Re:Reviews are cool, but whats the best hardware n by EulerX07 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    For AMD: I'd say don't buy anything until the KT266A (the A being VERY important) chipset is used by the manufacturer. Personally I'd wait until Asus churns out an A7V266 that uses the KT266A. The performance difference is staggering, it blows out of the water the Sis 735, which in turn outperforms the KT266 and AMD760 on mostapplications. Nforce reference board should be available soon for the benchmarkers, so we'll see what the 2X memory bandwidth does for the athlon.

    I'm not enough of a whore to go out and find the links to kt266a reviews though.

  14. Where should I buy an Athlon by JeffL · · Score: 4, Interesting
    This is serious, and hopefully not too offtopic. I purchase lots of desktop machines, and for myself I can build exactly what I want from whatever pieces I think are best. However, for some random new post-doc I just want a decent machine that is easy for me to buy, and easy to get fixed if it breaks.

    I have always bought Dells, because they make doing educational institution purchases incredibly easy, and if I need service I just call one place. I can customize the computers I am buying, and their prices are reasonable.

    I am finding myself in the position of having to buy a very fast computer for somebody else. The problem I am running into is that Dell does not sell Athlons. I can buy a 1.8Ghz P4 from them for about $1900 fully loaded. I can also build myself a dual Athlon 1.2Ghz for the same price, and the Athlon is much faster.

    So my question, is there a reputable and reliable company which sells customizable Athlon machines for a reasonable price?

    1. Re:Where should I buy an Athlon by Animats · · Score: 2
      HP, Compaq, and Sony all offer AMD CPUs if you want a prepackaged system.

      Polywell Computers in South San Francisco is a good system builder for high-end systems, and they sell AMD CPUs.

    2. Re:Where should I buy an Athlon by DaveWood · · Score: 2

      I recently price hunted quite a while for a friend who wanted a good workstation for doing 3D modeling. Dell was my first stop too. At the time I looked (several months ago) they did sell Athlons, and while their prices were at the reasonable end of the big 1st tier builders, I found it was possible to beat them by at least $400 with the 2nd tier vendors.

      We built what, at the time, was the fastest uniprocessor x86 computer available (1.4Ghz Athlon, DDR) for ~$850 (not including monitor). The URL is:

      http://www.epcworld.com/

      I see that today, the same system (which has - barely and arguably - been edged out of the "fastest possible" title by the ludicrously priced 2Ghz P4) is now selling for $783.

      We found them to be acceptable, though not thrilling to deal with, and the hardware was of good quality.

      --
      We're on the road to Tycho.
  15. Glad I'm not a gamer or running Windows by PD · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I've got Linux on my Celery 300 (overclocked to 333 - couldn't get it any higher without cooling and it's more hassle than it's worth). With 320 megs of ram and a lot of disk space, I can't imagine what I'd do with a bigger computer. I also have a Thinkpad laptop with an 800 MHZ Pent III and as far as system usability goes, I cannot tell the difference at all. X is fast, compiles are very fast on both systems.

    So, I will just sit back and laugh while I use my trusty Celery 300 for the next 5 years or so. Maybe then I'll pick up a real cheap antique Athlon or something to replace it.

    --
    If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
    1. Re:Glad I'm not a gamer or running Windows by Angst+Badger · · Score: 2

      I am running Windows on a machine not much faster than yours and with less RAM, and it works just fine. The most processor-intensive stuff I do is run Photoshop under Windows and gcc under Linux, and while I wouldn't mind being able to do a kernel compile in a few minutes like I can on the dual 1GHz babies I manage at work, then again, I don't recompile the kernel all that often, so who cares?

      Years ago, I figured we'd eventually reach the point that machines would be good enough for the average user, and eventually good enough for me, too, and then upgrading would slow way down. It seems most of us have reached that point. Gamers, as you note, are the obvious exception, but even if I had the time to play games, the main obstacle there isn't processor speed, it's the expensive and not especially well-supported graphics and sound cards. (Obviously, someone who's really into gaming will find this less of an obstacle than I do.)

      My next "upgrade" is less likely to be a new desktop machine than it is a household file server with four 80GB IDE drives so my wife and I can share MP3s across the household LAN. And for that, any cheap-ass second-hand machine will probably do just fine.

      --
      Proud member of the Weirdo-American community.
    2. Re:Glad I'm not a gamer or running Windows by PD · · Score: 2

      1) I've tried overclocking. Random lockups at any speed over 75 MHz. Too bad. It's an IWill BX motherboard, and I've got the PC-100 RAM.

      2) The laptop is a thinkpad with 320 megs of RAM. Once the compiler is loaded into the cache, my hard drive light barely flicks. It's also a top of the line Thinkpad, so it's NOT a slouch in that department anyway.

      --
      If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
  16. Re:Ooh...neat! by Daniel+Rutter · · Score: 2
    > I remember you! I wrote you probably about three years ago about some page you had with "warning signs" for troubled teenagers

    That'd be this page...

    > I think I found you from something to do with about 300 (1000?) sparklers being wired together to create a huge bomb sort of thing...

    That'd be this page (and this one)...

    > (Please tell me I'm not going crazy!)

    You aren't. Well, not any crazier than an artist with a top hat habit is already likely to be.

  17. Of course the simple solution... by Arker · · Score: 2

    ...would be to put the cooler on right the first time. :)

    --
    =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
    Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
  18. Re:Insightful? No... Dumb! by EnglishTim · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Idiot.
    Did you even bother to read his post properly?

    1) He never said it was a virtue. He just said it has higher bandwidth. He's right.
    2) He mentions he's running quad processor configurations, which means that he's going to be very dependant on memory bandwidth - hence the Rambus memory.
    3) '[his] company's heavy data processing algorithms'... Yes, people *do* write in-house code, you know...
    4) Hoisted on your own petard on that one...

    FUD? where exactly is the FUD in his post? As compared you yours? In his experience the Athlons are less reliable. It wouldn't suprise me - several people have mentioned reliability in this topic. Do you think he's making this up? Do you even *have* any experience with P4 systems?

    Yes, Intel is normally taken as the 'big bad guy' of the processor industry. Yes, Rambus has undoubtably been very nasty with their patents, but all of this has nothing to do with whether or not P4s + Rambus memory are actually any good or not.

    Next time, think before you type.

  19. Re:Stick to reviewing the motherboard, Dan by dutky · · Score: 2
    There are a number of good things about the P4's new instruction set and architecture like 128 integer and 128 floating point registers, not to mention making use of predication and data speculation at the hardware level.

    um, have there been some really big changes is the IA32 or is this guy getting P4 confused with the IA64?

  20. Re:Site blocks NS4 by ncc74656 · · Score: 2
    His site is unreadable to visitors using NS 4.0x...

    Dan, please make your website complaint [enough] with standards so that all browsers can at least see the basic text.

    Seeing as how Nutscrape has a problem implementing standards properly (its CSS implementation blows goats), I don't see how you could do more than a basic design without either (1) breaking all the rules to make a site that renders properly in Nutscrape or (2) make a site that follows established standards, and screw the people (both of them) who are still using Nutscrape 4.x.

    A third way would be to detect the browser and send either a standards-compliant page or a "lobotomized-for-Nutscrape" page. I did this in the redesign of this commercial site and refined it a bit further when I redid my personal site. It's not that I personally care if people who continue using outdated, buggy software can access my site...for the dot-com site, accessibility was considered important enough to figure out a work-around.

    Here's a test for you: pull up my site in Nutscrape 4.x and in another browser (Mozilla, IE, Lynx, Opera...it doesn't matter). Save the returned HTML (grab the stylesheet, too) to a file somewhere on your webserver and have W3C's validator check both. You'll see that one validates as HTML 4.01 Strict, while the other doesn't validate as anything. Now load the page that validated properly into Nutscrape and tell me what you get. It's a mess, isn't it? It displayed just fine in your other browser, though (unless your other browser was IE 2 or something similarly ancient).

    --
    20 January 2017: the End of an Error.
  21. Re:Site blocks NS4 by Daniel+Rutter · · Score: 2

    > His site is unreadable to visitors using NS 4.0x

    Or, to put it another way, no it isn't. I just read a few pages in Navigator 4.08 for Windows, no problemo.

    Mind you, I've had the occasional e-mail from people telling me that there's some magic cookie in my HTML that stops _Mozilla_ from rendering it properly.

    I just can't please you people, can I :-)?