THG Looks at ClawHammer Mobo

An anonymous reader writes "Tom's Hardware Guide managed to get a first look at the new Socket 754 ClawHammer motherboard. While they don't provide the benchmarks that you might be looking for, they do an excellent job and providing pictures and an overview of the ClawHammer Platform."

Comments

isnt there a saying...

[Snuffub]

I think this pretty much defines putting the cart in front of the horse. still a fun read though.

Re:isnt there a saying...

[Anonymous Coward]

THC does what? uh, what were we talking about?

Re:isnt there a saying...

[Real World Stuff]

A relevant post, second in the article, and rated redundant. Moderator on crack! Someone fix this please!

Re:isnt there a saying...

[Squash]

Hardly.

Were you around when the AMD K7 was release? If so, you would remember, and I quote:
August 18, 1999 As a matter of fact, there's only a minority of motherboard manufacturers that are actually offering Athlon-platforms right now, the minority is either quiet, or even announcing that they will not produce Athlon-motherboards for rather cheesy reasons.
Or,
August 23, 1999
Now we should hope that finally more motherboard makers will supply Athlon-boards soon, so that those powerful but lonely AMD-chips can finally find a new home in computer systems.
Or,
November 10, 1999
A person must look extremely hard on most of these manufacturers website's to find any literature or promotion for their Athlon supported motherboards.
And then,
December 8, 1999
I believe we will start seeing Athlon's motherboard support grow.
And finally, the first chipset NOT based on the AMD 750 Reference Chipset,
Februrary 4, 2000

AMD's Athlon is currently still damned to run on platforms using the one-and-only Athlon chipset 'Irongate', also manufactured by AMD. This chipset was initially still good enough to compete against all Intel processors on any platform, but it was already pretty outdated when it came to market.

AMD got burned last time, and is (rightfully so) doing what it can to keep it from happening again.

With thanks to Tom's Hardware...

tubes

[trollercoaster]

I love the old-timey tubes used for the sound. I wonder how reliable these will be. I'm old enough to remeber having to replace tubes in our old tv back in the day.

At least they're smart enough

[spyder913]

to have active cooling on the north bridge, too many new, high speed bus mobos are coming out right now with passive cooling that doesn't come close to making it easy to OC.

Re:At least they're smart enough

[jmv]

have active cooling on the north bridge I may have missed something but I was under the impression that on Hammer, the north bridge was on the CPU (not on the board).

Re:At least they're smart enough

[spyder913]

Well either they have a north bridge, or they have another chip separate from the cpu that does a good job of impersonating the north bridge.

Re:At least they're smart enough

[Merlin42]

Actually just one component of the northbridge, the memory controller, was moved into the CPU. Other things such as: AGP interface, interface to southbridge, etc (hmmm is there anything else?) still need to be on a separate chip.

Re:At least they're smart enough

[Zathrus]

So add a fan on yourself if you want to OC.

Most people don't want to OC. I've done it before and I won't do it again - the added speed isn't worth the instability. Especially if you're planning to keep using the computer for several years.

As others have said, adding yet another fan is a detriment for normal use. It's another mechanical part that will fail - especially since most of the bundled fans are as cheap as they can afford to keep prices down.

One of my buying criteria on a motherboard is passive cooling for the north bridge. I don't need the active cooling and I really don't need the added noise.

Re:At least they're smart enough

[Guitarzan]

YES!!

I just want a computer that I can't hear. Is that really too much to ask?

Re:At least they're smart enough

[ACNiel]

And do you think ASUS will tell you where to replace that fan at?

I can't stand the fact that about 9 months into the life of my computer (still under warranty, but old enough to have the reciept lost) my fan is failing.

I can find every size of CPU fan imaginable, but no one carries these tiny littel buggers. I tried calling ASUS, just to ask them where I might be able to order, and that is no help. They don't answer their phone messages or email ever.

Re:At least they're smart enough

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree fully. I have a motherboard with a northbridge fan (A7V133 rev 1.05.), and the fan has stopped working properly. Finding a replacement isn't exactly straightforward. I'm hoping to get some kind of passive cooling solution, since I don't want to have to worry about replacing the damn thing again.

Re:At least they're smart enough

[Zathrus]

Which is why there shouldn't be a fan in the first place.

You may want to try some enthusiast boards - try www.hardocp.com and it's forums. Or the AnandTech forums.

I've long since left the world of OCing. Works fine for 6 months to a year and then things start going whacky fast.

Re:At least they're smart enough

[qnonsense]

• still under warranty, but old enough to have the reciept lost

ASUS is actually pretty good about honoring their warranty. I bought my A7V266-E from some no-name and it failed after 5 months. It was such a no-name that I forgot what their name was, so I just called ASUS (502-995-0883) and simply RMAd it back to them. Took 2 weeks. Hope that helps.

Re:At least they're smart enough

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey! Radio Shack carries that fan. (I know 'cause mine went out -- funny thing is that the RS replacement only lasted 2 months...)

Re:At least they're smart enough

[Lord Apathy]

Go to radio shack my friend. They have a nice fan that will fit prefectly in the place of the one on the motherboard, with a little modification that is.

Re:At least they're smart enough

[the way, you die]

I too had the northbridge fan fail on my ASUS board (A7V 133A).

I replaced it not with a fan, but with a large passive heatsink made by Zalman for just this purpose. Has had no detrimental effect on stability at all (I don't overclock), and has quieted down my system quite a bit. It was a bit pricy for a chunk of aluminum IMHO, but worth it.

To avoid sounding like a complete shill, just google for 'zalman northbridge cooler' and you will get some links to folks selling the thing.

Re:At least they're smart enough

[JebusIsLord]

actually the "northbridge" on clawhammer chipsets is basically just an AGP controller. I thus doubt it would need active cooling.

Re:At least they're smart enough

[Hoser McMoose]

On the Hammer, there's no such thing as a "northbridge".

Actually, there isn't all that much of a "northbridge" in most of today's chipsets either. Ironically enough, these days the "southbridge" is really more of a northbridge than the northbridge is.

The reason for all of this is that the "bridge" terminology is all defined with regards to the PCI bus. The northbridge is sort of where the PCI bus starts and where it has a bridge to the host controller. The southbridge is hanging off the other end of the PCI bus and provides a bridge to a different bus (ie the ISA bus).

Now though, the layout of the chipsets is quite different, and we have the PCI bus starting off of the I/O chip (ie the ICH in Intel chipsets, or the MCP in nVidia chipsets). These chips than connect using another interconnect (Intel's Accerlated Hub Architecture, Hypertransport, V-Link, etc.) to a memory controller, AGP and processor bus chip (Intel's MCH, nVidia's IGP).

With the Hammer, they stretch the separation a little bit more by moving the memory controller onto the processor itself.

Ohh, and as for the original poster, active cooling is a BAD thing IMO. Those little fans are quite possibly the least reliable part of an entire PC. If at all possible, they should be avoided from a reliability standpoint. Mind you, if you're overclocking, reliability is probably not your #1 concern. As for me though, give me a nice big passive heatsink anyday.

Re:At least they're smart enough

[Hoser McMoose]

You think that's bad, I still haven't been able to find a replacement for the failed fan that came INSIDE OF MY CD-RW DRIVE!

Talk about a pain in the ass, I couldn't even figure out which fan was failing for the longest time. It was making all kinds of noise, but I couldn't even see the fan. It wasn't until I tried unplugging every device in my PC one by one that I found that the CD-RW was the cause of the noise, and than I discovered this TINY little fan inside of it!

The only place I've found that sells the right sized fans is Digi-key, and they cost $30 + s/h :

Interesting

[Alizarin Erythrosin]

My co-worker was telling me about this earlier this morning. I especially like the vacuum tubes for the audio on the motherboard. Audiophiles will be drooling over that. Do they make mobos now with that on them?

On a side note, I like the number of pins on the cpu socket. Hammer is gonna be interesting to say the least.

Re:Interesting

[dubiousmike]

This might be ok for gaming, but having worked for a music software company in the past, we'd ALWAYS tell customers to stay away from mobos with onboard audio. Latency is usually very high which comes into play when recording and playing multiple tracks with live effects.

Drop outs galore.

Re:Interesting

[verch]

But its got tubes! That has got to be the coolest thing I've seen for a long time. HAve to get some more details on this.

Re:Interesting

[verch]

It seems this has been done already by AOpen.

Re:Interesting

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah! At least as cool as this mobo announced a few months ago!

http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/06/03/1822 22 2&mode=thread&tid=126

Lamer.

Re:Interesting

[(startx)]

Did you even click the link and view the first page of the article? this is an aopen board.

Re:Interesting

[GypC]

Plus, they look cool! Makes you want to build one of those acrylic case kits to show it off.

Re:Interesting

[Anonymous Coward]

Absolutely NOT a good idea. Besides the heat concerns and the microphonic nature of vacuum tubes, putting them in the EM radiation bath that is a computer case with the heavy vibrations that you'll need from the fans that have to cool that thing means that this will sound much worse than a well-engineered soundcard.

Jeez. Pay $60 for a Turtle Beach card and be done with is unless you LIKE overheating, humming audio, and replacing tube.

Re:Interesting

[iomud]

Agreed, the inside of a computer is a notoriously bad place for making sound.

Re:Interesting

[CrypticOutsider]

My co-worker was telling me about this earlier this morning. I especially like the vacuum tubes for the audio on the motherboard. Audiophiles will be drooling over that. Do they make mobos now with that on them?

I find it very interesting that they would put tubes on there for the center, satellite and stereo channels. From my experience rec.audio.* groups (sampling of the "high end" users that have computers), those that prefer the tube sound would probably not buy a mobo with that (preferring instead to waste $20k on an amp that would do it for them).

Of course, since a tube just distorts the sound anyway, and you already have a computer, why not just provide a setting for a tube EQ?

This is ignoring the marketing effects of having the tube there: maybe it will work for the novelty factor.

Re:Interesting

[Faggot]

I find it very interesting that they would put tubes on there for the center, satellite and stereo channels. From my experience rec.audio.* groups (sampling of the "high end" users that have computers), those that prefer the tube sound would probably not buy a mobo with that (preferring instead to waste $20k on an amp that would do it for them).

Tube power amps sound just a little bit better than their solid-state counterparts. The place where tubes really shine is in Class A (non-push-pull) amplification, which is generally used in the preamp phase. It's here where tubes' famous even-order harmonics are produced -- it's these octave harmonics which make tube sound so sweet and agreeable to human ears. Taking audio from a regular computer sound card, audio which has been produced with a solid-state preamp, and pumping it through a $20k tube power amp is just what you called -- a waste. However, when tubes are intimately involved in the sound production within the computer and are used for preamplification, you can hook it up to a $150 solid-state power amp and it will sound better than sound from a regular soundcard.

Re:Interesting

[dubiousmike]

I agree - the tubes theoretically would privide for a cleaner sound (signal to noise ratio?). Just don't bump your box too hard.

no, not THAT...

Re:Interesting

[BrookHarty]

Sounds to me like a good way to bring in some extra income, charge for new tubes.

Personally, I use amp'ed headphones for my PC, 5.1 is for my living room.

Re:Interesting

[dildatron]

I would think audiophiles would be puking their guts out screaming bloody mary between puke-vapored breaths.

Most people that are really anal about sound(not me, BTW), would tell you to get as far away from things like your computer as possible. True that, there is a lot of RF emissions going on inside that little box.

Of course, these are the same people that argue that speaker wire void of oxygen sounds better. I think many of them are full of shit in some respects, as the placebo effect convinces them that it sounds better. I could be wrong though. I just know some of them claim to hear things that humans can't hear (i.e., outside of our hearing spectrum).

For a good laugh, wade through a few of the audiophile newsgroups on google. You will see what I am talking about. They are so completely anal I think it is funny.

Re:Interesting

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know about this. The insides of my computer makes lots of sound.

Re:Interesting

[dildatron]

Don't argue with their logic! There is none! It's for the same reason many of them think LP's sound better than modern media. They might, but it is because they distort sound somewhat, providing a little "Warmer" sound. They sound different, and one may like the different sound, but it is hard to argue that it is "better".

Re:Interesting

[CrypticOutsider]

Tube power amps sound just a little bit better than their solid-state counterparts. The place where tubes really shine is in Class A (non-push-pull) amplification, which is generally used in the preamp phase. It's here where tubes' famous even-order harmonics are produced -- it's these octave harmonics which make tube sound so sweet and agreeable to human ears. Taking audio from a regular computer sound card, audio which has been produced with a solid-state preamp, and pumping it through a $20k tube power amp is just what you called -- a waste. However, when tubes are intimately involved in the sound production within the computer and are used for preamplification, you can hook it up to a $150 solid-state power amp and it will sound better than sound from a regular soundcard.

Right, but you're still paying extra for distortion. Now you may consider it sweet sounding, but it's still distortion. I don't have a problem with that, since you should enjoy listening to it.

I just find the juxtaposition of old and new very odd. That is, finding tubes that most people (OK, maybe just me :) associate with people who still cling to turntables and avoid CD players bundled onto a mobo for the next generation high performance (at least from the specs) AMD chip.

But I think that it may be more of a nod to the casemod crowd (and I guess I must belong having done the etching and neon for a computer for someone): it's aesthetically unique.

Re:Interesting

[p3d0]

Tubes do not theoretically provide for a cleaner sound. Theoretically, transistors can do a better job, but audiophiles have been drooling over tubes for decades now anyway. My theory is that they produce a kind of distortion that sounds good to the human ear.

Re:Interesting

[Zathrus]

Tubes have far worse SNR's than discrete amps do.

People who prefer tube amps do it because of the different sound they lend to the music - not because of SNR or THD, both of which are higher than modern discrete amps.

Re:Interesting

[Anne Thwacks]

There are only 10 kinds of people in this world... those who understand binary and those who don't

The original quote was from a British minister of education in the early 1960's who said "You can divide people into two groups: those who can be further divided into other groups, and those who can't!" Of course computers were all decimal then.

This chance remark led to the introduciton of binary arithmetic. Since there were eight computers in the country, this rapidly led to the invention of Octal. (Can I say 073?)

Re:Interesting

[Alizarin Erythrosin]

Actually I just recently bought a Turtle beach, and am entirely satisfied... so much better then my SB Live. Just thought the vaccuum tubes were nifty

Re:Interesting

[Dr. Spork]

I hope it's more than a gimmick. Somehow I am dubious about all in-case analog sound solutions because there is just so much damn noise. If you listen to your computer with headphones, you can actually hear things like the closing of desktop windows, because all that electricity swishing around in the case causes fields that mess with the signal once it's converted to analog.

It seems dumb to put those tubes on the motherboard. I would much rather see that space used for three more PCI slots--the sorts of things that audiophiles and amateur musicians always find some use for. No matter how you do it, doing the D/A sound conversion inside the case will always suck. I don't know why the market for PCI cards that connect to D/A-A/D break-out boxes is so small.

Re:Interesting

[PainKilleR-CE]

But obviously not everyone likes this sound. A tube amp clips softer - it's not quite like just chopping the top of the waveform off. Different tube amps have different clipping patterns, and this is part of what makes some people love amp A over amp B. To the best of my knowledge, this audio tube property hasn't been replicated in solid-state.

I doubt that it hasn't been replicated, given the number of overdrive processors available for musical instruments that are intended to do just that. Replicating the exact sound of a particular tube probably takes a bit more work (and costs a bit more), but a reasonable replication (with variable parameters) for most people is available in a $50-100 effects pedal. Realistically, people get so attached to a certain sound over a period of time (even though the sound of a tube degrades over time) that they could easily judge a cleaner sound as not sounding as good as what they had before.

Re:Interesting

[Faggot]

It's not just that though. Tube amps sound very different when clipping (ie, amplitude too high).

This is a preamp. No clipping should be going on at all.

You're right about the difference between clipping styles, but this is only an issue in guitar amps, or other amps where overdrive distortion is intentional. A preamp between the DAC and the sound-out port on a computer should not overdrive at all. If it does, it will sound like ass.

The style of amplification in use here, called Class A, is defined by the fact that the input signal is biased such that no clipping occurs.

Re:Interesting

[rmdyer]

"Tube power amps sound just a little bit better than their solid-state counterparts."

Here's a perfect example of...cave men clinging to the flat earth idea, creationists bashing evolution, and as P. T. Barnum said "There's a sucker born every minute".

These tube mobo's are made for people by marketing types who know there's a market out there of suckers to be sold to. A little electrical engineering and testing will show you that tube amps add distortion, filtering, and noise to any signal that needs to be reproduced by amplification. Here is the critical point...SIGNAL CREATION IS NOT SIGNAL REPRODUCTION.

Yes, tube amps are cool with guitar and other sound generating devices to add color and effect to the signal for the point of getting that nice sound. But, as soon as you've got the sound you want to chisel in stone, you don't want it trashed by some bad reproduction equipment. The art of reproducing sound is the art of not adding or changing anything about the original signal at all!

This is why tubes should never ever be used in mobo's or other stereo equipment where you want to reproduce the original recorded sound perfectly. A pure audiophile never ever drives their amps into the clipping region, that colors and adds distortion to the sound. Signal in, should be amplified signal out, that is all. There should be no noise, no harmonic distortion, no phase changing, etc. Everything should be 1:1 except for the gain.

I'm sure you may be right that tube amps just "sound a little better", but that's only if you are playing "Motley Crue" overdriven into a 1000 watt stack while the signal disappears into just square waves clipped at the peaks. Why don't you just convert the signal into square waves and put some muffs into you ears, that would probably sound a little sweeter too.

Get real.

Re:Interesting

[bmajik]

It's not a theory.

You're right, a solid state device of sufficient clocking and fidelity could provide a 100% accurate wave recreation, with zero distortion.

As far as what _audiophiles_ want, i dont give a shit - they're all insane and have too much money.

Where people _really_ like tubes is in guitar and bass amplication. And the reason is that tubes in overdriven conditions sound "better" than solid state "distortion" (which is really just clamping, fundamentally)

The technical reason most often cited for tubes sounding warmer has to do with the order of harmonics that tube amplification creates vs solid state. I beleive tubes make 3rd and 5th order harmonics that sound more "ear pleasing".

IMO, tubes for computer audio on a motherboard is one of the dumbest ideas ever, technically, but one of the best ideas ever, marketing wise.

Re:Interesting

[p3d0]

Where people _really_ like tubes is in guitar and bass amplication. And the reason is that tubes in overdriven conditions sound "better" than solid state "distortion" (which is really just clamping, fundamentally)

Hey, that's interesting. I didn't know that. Thanks!

Re:Interesting

[verch]

Did you click on mine? This is an older P4 board. The questions was has a tube audio MB been made before.

Vacuum?

[Trusty Penfold]

They have vacuum tubes on the motherboard for 5.1 surround sound.

Are they crazy?!? Everyone knows that sound doesn't travel through a vacuum.

Re:Vacuum?

[Anonymous Coward]

The electrical impulses go throught the vacuum tubes, not the sound!

Re:Vacuum?

[dubiousmike]

Are they crazy?!? Everyone knows that sound doesn't travel through a vacuum.

Neither do private parts, but that doesn't stop 1 in 10 of geeks who work from home.

:P

Re:Vacuum?

[CptNoSkill]

If only I could moderated that -1 painfull... er... that's what I heard, I wouldn't happen to know....

Re:Vacuum?

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't you mean the electronical pulses?

32 Bit PCI

[shoemakc]

What, still only 32-bit PCI slots? :::yawn:::

-Chris

Re:32 Bit PCI

[Jim Norton]

This is probably only a reference board, and one for a desktop user at that. 64-bit PCI slots are of marginal utility for a workstation user.

Re:32 Bit PCI

[Blkdeath]

What, still only 32-bit PCI slots? :::yawn:::

Yeah, wake me when I can properly accomplish fibre-channel and GigE.

100BaseTX is so passee...

Re:32 Bit PCI

[GonzoTech]

Better to have 32 PCIs than to live in the dark with ISA, MCA, and VESA. Eewww.. Mom, get it away from me!! GonzoTech Me

Re:32 Bit PCI

[shoemakc]

Yes I thought that too at first, but then why put audio onboard? And :::tube::: audio at that?

Also notice that the board was given a model name; "AK86 Tube". All very strange and atypical for a reference board.

-Chris

Re:32 Bit PCI

[Master Bait]

I was surprised that even the AMD 8151 chipset didn't have any 64-bit PCI. Surely, AMD has figured out how to do it with their older 760mpx chipset. So that leaves Serial ATA, GigaNics, and anything SCSI being I/O squeezed.

Re:32 Bit PCI

[drinkypoo]

Here's a hint, they don't put vac tubes for audio on the server boards.

Given that (aside from video which is handled via the AGP slot) PCI provides enough bandwidth for anything the average (or most above-average) home user will want to do within the next five to ten years, I can't see this as a problem.

Re:32 Bit PCI

[Jim Norton]

Yeah, I wondered about that too. However, the entire design screams "minimalist" (notice it only has 3 PCI slots) ... but 3 DIMM slots.

Either way, if it has that audio it's obviously not meant for the server market (so it's a Clawhammer board? An Opteron board?) I don't think the article mentions whether it is a reference board or a final retail board either.

Re:32 Bit PCI

[Jim Norton]

I believe, however, that PCI-X will be used in the mainstream, rather than just servers? I could be wrong in this, however, but a lot of companies are going to be backing the PCI-X standard.

Re:32 Bit PCI

[Anonymous Coward]

Whereas vacuum tube audio is of great utility to the workstaiton user ....

If AMD doesn't get some better boards than this joke, Hammer is doomed. Doomed I Tell You! DOoMED!

Re:32 Bit PCI

[Jim Norton]

Well it was made by AOpen. What do you expect? :)

Re:32 Bit PCI

[Hoser McMoose]

Uhh, you might want to check AMD's product line-up again, or more specifically, the AMD-8131 PCI-X tunnel.

I don't know if this chip supports 64-bit PCI, though I would assume that it does on it's "legacy" 33 and 66MHz PCI bus. Of course, the main use for it will be PCI-X, which is faster than even 64-bit/66MHz PCI.

The trick though, will be that you won't be able to (easily) connect both the 8151 AGP tunnel and the 8131 PCI-X tunnel onto a Clawhammer processor, which only has a single 16-bit Hypertransport link. The Sledgehammer, with it's three 16-bit hypertransport links should have no trouble here.

Re:32 Bit PCI

[aka1nas]

PCI-X isn't finalized yet, I believe, so that's why it hasn't been included. I don't really see what the fuss is about the board. They have had an Athlon board like this with the same tube amp for a while by the same company.

Re:32 Bit PCI

[Jim Norton]

I know, I understand why it hasn't been included. My response was to the poster who mentioned that PCI bandwidth will be sufficient for the next 5-10 years so I was wondering why PCI-X was even necessary.

The board itself is nothing special, but it IS the first Hammer board.

down

[(startx)]

fastest /.'ing of tomshardware.....ever!

this text added to avoid lameness filter

Clawhammer Mobo?

[burgburgburg]

I had a really bad case of that three years ago after eating glutenized squid.

No wait, wasn't he Darth Maul's second cousin?

No, I'll get it. Doesn't it attach to the Incus and transmit computer sounds to the ear drums?

Oh, I give up.

Re:Clawhammer Mobo?

[unicron]

I know what this is. It's a snow cone maker. Is it an espresso machine? Oh, I know. It's a water heater.

Tube Board.

[Deathlizard]

Interesting that Aopen is showing off another Tube Audio Board. This one with a three tube design for even more powerful sound.

I wonder if this trend is going to continue on more of aopen's boards. There must be a demand for the original tube board if they play on making a more powerful 3 tube version in the future.

Re:Tube Board.

[ivan256]

Seems like a waste to me. If I'm going to buy a good tube based amp I'd want it to be seperate so I wouldn't have to re-buy it for upgrades and I'd have more choice in the matter. I'd also not connect it to AC97 hardware. I like my A/D conversion electrically decoupled from my (electrically) noisy PC. When you have good headphones it's easy to tell.

Besides, people are just going to connect indpendantly (solid state) amplified speakers to this thing and cancel out the potential benifit.

Re:Tube Board.

[the way, you die]

Those tubes are there for the 'window in the side, rounded IDE cables, cold-cathode light' case mod crowd.

It's all about making it look like it performs well, which has led to a number comparisons between this crowd and another that does similar things to certain import sedans...

Actual performance of the product is not a real concern. It's all about conspicuous consumption. I bet you pay a nice premium for those tubes.

Re:Tube Board.

[ncc74656]

Actual performance of the product is not a real concern. It's all about conspicuous consumption. I bet you pay a nice premium for those tubes.

Most tubes aren't that expensive...Antique Electronic Supply has 12AX7s starting at $6.25 each (current-manufacture Chinese, quantity 10+). They have some more expensive varieties of that tube (NOS Amperex for $78.00 each, NOS Mullard for $67.00 each, NOS domestic-manufacture for $14.90 each), but how much you fork over for tubes depends mainly on how much audiophoole Kool-Aid you've been drinking lately. :-)

It's all about making it look like it performs well, which has led to a number comparisons between this crowd and another that does similar things to certain import sedans...

I definitely won't argue about the many similarities between the case modders and the rice boys. It's a wonder they haven't tried combining the two...how about a windowed hood on a Civic, or a nitrous bottle in an overclocked Celeron? (Then again, you couldn't see a windowed hood underneath the four-foot-wide "Type R" sticker...and it's not like there's anything worth looking at under the hood of the average rice burner anyway.)

Re:Tube Board.

[Hoser McMoose]

It's a wonder they haven't tried combining the two...how about a windowed hood on a Civic, or a nitrous bottle in an overclocked Celeron?

Don't joke too loudly, on a recent TV show which was showcasing a bunch of rice rockets, one of them had a plexiglass window on the hood so that you could look into the engine! No joke!

As for the nitrous, haven't quite seen that, but some of the wacky Japanese overclockers have used liquid nitrogen to super-cool their processors so that they could clock 'em higher! :>

Hmm.. still looking for a good "Type R" sticker to put on my Yugo!

memory

[hedley]

3 DDR slots? I know there are loading issues with lots of that ram but this chip needs RAM it has a 40bit address bus coming out of it. At least 12GB physical ram, then it will be a serious challenge to high end cad machines. It they aim at just replacing your desktop, it will not do very well in my opinion.

Hedley

Re:memory

[p3d0]

This is the Clawhammer. The desktop is exactly where it is aimed. If you want a server machine, you want the Sledgehammer.

Re:memory

[TheSunborn]

But I (Or more preciesly the dtp users I admin for) want more ram. Give them a motherboard that can take 12GB ram, and they will max it out, and then complain that there is not really enough ram.

Martin

Re:memory

[p3d0]

Well, by the time the Clawhammer comes out, you'll be able to buy 3 4GB DIMMs.

Re:memory

[TheSunborn]

Do you think that it will be THAT much delayed?
Don't look god for amd then

Martin

Re:memory

[p3d0]

Well, it was really meant to be a joke. :-)

Re:memory

[Hoser McMoose]

The interesting part about this is that the memory controller on the Clawhammer only supports TWO memory slots when using unbuffered memory! (4 slots with buffered DIMMs).

In other words, don't plan on actually USING the third slot, it's just there for looks (sorta like the vacuum tubes :> ). Actually the third slot MIGHT work sometimes, particularly if you use some sticks of single-sided memory.

If you want lots of RAM, look for the Sledgehammers. They'll support up to 8 slots of buffered DDR memory per processor. A dual-processor Sledgehammer system should have little trouble handling 16GB of memory.

Vacum Tubes

[mojowantshappy]

I am just curoius, wouldn't the vacum tubes tend to shatter somewhat easily? I carry my PC around quite a bit for LAN games and the like and if I were to ever drop my computer, that would really screw them up. Damn these weak, nerdy arms! -

Re:Vacum Tubes

[jhawkins]

As opposed to what happens when your drop your PC without vacuum tubes in it?
Does it just fire right up after you drop it?
I think, vacuum tubes or not, dropping a computer is not a good idea.

Re:Vacum Tubes

[panurge]

Personally I think the vacuum tubes are exceptionally stupid, and have been ever since MOSFETs could handle the power (and produce much less heat). Once upon a time people were "upgrading" their tube amps by replacing the input stages with higher quality, and lower noise, FET devices.
But no, they are probably more robust than the CPU is with the pressure of the heatsink on it. The remaining available tube designs are basically military in origin.

In fact, I once had a tube catalog which had a section on tubes for computers, though these were of course for digital applications rather than analog.

Re:Vacum Tubes

[Moloch666]

Mine fired up after dropping... 6 am after an all night LAN party can be rough. The faceplate on my floppy drive came off. That was the only visible and known damage.

Re:Vacum Tubes

[ackthpt]

You're more likely to knock your CPU (if it has a cooler on it) out of it's socket than damage the tubes (or valves as the brits call 'em.)

Assuming there's three tubes on the board along with all the other heat generating devices, you might want to think about better cooling.

There's some car-audio semiconductor-tube hybrids, but the word I've heard is avoid them. Go tube all the way or don't go tube at all.

Re:Vacum Tubes

[KodaK]

wouldn't the vacum tubes tend to shatter somewhat easily

Not really. I've got loads of amps that have tubes in them. Never had a problem with them shattering, even when things get a little rough. :) Now, they do burn out though, but that's so rare it's hardly worth talking about.

Re:Vacum Tubes

[Neon Spiral Injector]

You mention the pressure of the heat sink on the CPU. It seems AMD has changed the heat sink mounting. I wonder if that has to do with the cracking of CPUs?

Re:Vacum Tubes

[stuartkahler]

I'd be alot more worried about the torque on your CPU heatsink causing the die to crack if I dropped my computer. My uncle had an Athlon destroyed by a Dragon Orb when he just moved the computer to another room.

Try getting some strap on handles for your computer if dropping it is actually a possibilty. [Or mod it with some permanent ones.]

Re:Vacum Tubes

[GoRK]

It probably has less to do with incompetent idiots cracking the cpu dye because they can't put on a heatsink properly and more to do with the problems of heatsinks falling off during shipping. It's happened to two systems I have sent recently (to the DC area interestingly enough - i guess the FedEx and UPS guys are moving with a bit more haste these days) Trying to explain how to properly install a heatsink to someone over the telephone is *very* difficult, and since most must be installed with some kind of thermal compound, this is a really really large problem.

Large computer manufacturers usually use an external baffle/clip system to hold the heatsinks in place so they won't fall off during shipping.

Anyway, I'm glad for AMD's move to a bolt-down CPU heatsink. I've been missing the luxury of those secure slot processors...

~GoRK

Re:Vacum Tubes

[mojowantshappy]

Well, yes, I can drop my computer and it would be fine. That is why it is in a case and the case is screwed up. I might damage my harddrive, but everything else would work. The same can't go for my monitor though... or can it?

Re:Vacum Tubes

[Neon Spiral Injector]

I liked the threaded posts on the metal plate over the core on the Alpha CPUs. That served to do exactly what you want, to fasten the heat sink to the CPU, not the socket or the motherboard. But this probally will be better than the socket clip.

Re:Vacum Tubes

[bmajik]

Point 1) Dropping a computer is a dumb idea regardless of whats in it

Point 2) All musicians of any caliber with amplified string instruments use Tube amplifiers which are driven on shitty trucks in steel road cases thousands of miles every year. They dont remove the tubes before they box em up. The tubes in the amps are _quite_ difficult to get in and out of the sockets, and they hold up remarkably well.

The tubes on a motherboard are probably the least of your durability concerns, motion-shock damage wise.

confused

[omegakidd]

I am still confused about the three tubes.

Re:confused

[Anonymous Coward]

It's just like the three seashells...

Unfortunately, maybe 2h/2003.

[WittyName]

During AMD's earnings conference call they delayed the rollout of clawhammer/opteron AGAIN. This assumes they are still in business.. (They have been losing money for a while)

Re:Unfortunately, maybe 2h/2003.

[tsetem]

I don't want AMD to go out of business. But if they do, I hope Intel has the decency to buy the technology and use it, rather than let it completely die off.

Re:Unfortunately, maybe 2h/2003.

[Jim Norton]

If we are talking about the same thing, I believe they have stated they are DE-EMPHASIZING the Clawhammer ... in other words, its still on track for release in the first half of 2003 (still way off compared to their roadmap, of course) with Opteron in the 2H03.

Right now AMD is working towards profitability, meaning going after markets which are stronger (which are, right now, the value microprocessor market) thus the de-emphasizing of the latest and greatest.

Re:Unfortunately, maybe 2h/2003.

[druzicka]

If AMD did go under (God forbid), Intel would be likely to purchase a lot of AMD Intellectual Property, but I think that the motivation would be to keep it out of National Semiconductor's (or any other fabless chipmaker that wants to get into the Intel-compatible processor market) hands.

Re:Unfortunately, maybe 2h/2003.

[EastCoastSurfer]

If we are talking about the same thing, I believe they have stated they are DE-EMPHASIZING the Clawhammer ... in other words, its still on track for release in the first half of 2003 (still way off compared to their roadmap, of course) with Opteron in the 2H03.


Of course they are DE-EMPHASIZING the Clawhammer because it is running behind schedule. It has/was billed as their next savior - similar to the Athlon proc(which basically saved the company at that time). The problem is that each time the hammer is delayed things look worse and worse for AMD(and their stock price). They are trying to calm investors fears by saying the hammer is not that big of deal, but anyone with any sense knows that they need this chip out and soon.

Right now AMD is working towards profitability, meaning going after markets which are stronger (which are, right now, the value microprocessor market) thus the de-emphasizing of the latest and greatest.

There are no margins in the value market. Heck, I think AMD may sell more "value" procs than Intel does, but that doesn't make them profitable. The money is in high end business servers where people pay 1k+/proc. This is where Intel makes a ton of its money and it is where AMD wants/needs to be. AMD needs companies like Dell building poweredge servers around their proc in order to survive.

Re:Unfortunately, maybe 2h/2003.

[Anonymous Coward]

the stock has been steadily rising the last month?

amd also has a history of low spots followed by large gains.

the clawhammer isn't their only future product.

the fact that they sell 750million other chips a year is a more substantial part of their business.

Re:Unfortunately, maybe 2h/2003.

[Jim Norton]

There are no margins in the value market. Heck, I think AMD may sell more "value" procs than Intel does, but that doesn't make them profitable. The money is in high end business servers where people pay 1k+/proc. This is where Intel makes a ton of its money and it is where AMD wants/needs to be. AMD needs companies like Dell building poweredge servers around their proc in order to survive

Of course the margins are small in the value market. However, they are the products which actually sell a significant amount (compared to the high-end products) ... do you think that Intel sells a lot of P4 2.8 GHz machines? Not really. Are businesses lining up in droves to buy dual Xeons for their normal users workstations? It seems that what you're essentially saying here is that there is no money in the corporate desktop market (or, by proxy, the home desktop market) Sure, there is a significant amount of money to be made in the high-end server market. Is that the only market worth considering? How did AMD even get to where they are right now? By selling high-priced processors aimed at the server market? How many servers are you aware of which use Athlon CPU's (before the MP's)? Were Athlon CPU's known for being best-of-breed CPU's at a lower price point or extremely cost-effective CPU's which were competitive with Intels latest and greatest? And this was when the economy wasn't in the shitter like it is now.

These are also different times for AMD. AMD didn't have a significant share of the market with the K6 line of CPU's. The K6 series of CPU's were not nearly as competitive with Intels offerings in price OR performance compared to the Athlons (even now)

Re:Unfortunately, maybe 2h/2003.

[Anonymous Coward]

How did AMD even get to where they are right now?

Right now, AMD is losing money like a sieve and is running low on credit. However they got there, they might want to try going some other way next time.

Re:Unfortunately, maybe 2h/2003.

[Jim Norton]

In case you haven't noticed, there's a little bit of a recession going on here. Now, that's not to say that AMD isn't making some mistakes but that has a bit to do with it, don't you think?

The economy is slow. IT budgets are being cut. People aren't spending. I know! Let's make the fastest chips available and charge a mint for them! I'm sure people are REALLY going to go for that.

AMD is obviously having yield problems with their current line of CPU's. Does that have anything to do with Hammer being pushed back? Not really. If they were able to keep up with Intel with their CURRENT line of CPU's, which they are doing with unreleased Athlon (not Hammer) CPU's then pushing back Hammer doesn't really hurt them at all right now, does it? You think Barton and Thoroughbred-B will be able to remain competitive until Hammer gets here (with good yields, of course) Judging by the benchmarks of samples sent to a few review sites, I think so.

Clawhammer is based on a microprocessor architecture meant for SERVERS. It's not going to be another Athlon (that is, a leader in price/performance) ... it is designed for high-end workstations and enthusiasts with money to spend. NOT The majority of people buying PC's. That has always been the case, delays notwithstanding. Why do you think AMD is changing their strategy?

Re:Unfortunately, maybe 2h/2003.

[Hoser McMoose]

Ugg, I certainly HOPE that AMD doesn't fall to National Semi's hands, if it did they might botch things nearly as badly as they did with Cyrix!

Virtually every chip manufacturer in the world has already tried to make Intel-compatible chips, including National Semi on more than one occasion. Every single one of them has failed EXCEPT for AMD (even Cyrix is dead now, the chips VIA produced under the "Cyrix" name are designed by the old IDT/Centaur/Winchip design team).

Six more pictures

[loomis]

Here

Also has a brief blurb in German

Loomis

Why vacuum tubes?

[f97tosc]

Certainly the true audiophiles often use tubes for their systems, but this does not mean that these are superior for all situations.

What kind of sound will go through the system? A normal transistor has a 'snappier' sound to it, which is better for a lot of modern music, and I would imagine for sound effects in computer games.

I guess if you want the best for your classical LPs then maybe this is something for you, er, no, then you would be better of to get a real amplifier.

Tor

Re:Why vacuum tubes?

[kenp2002]

I don't belive this has to really do with sound quality. Vac tubes are a cost item that wear out after time (ohh money) and are probably provided so you don't have to buy powered speaker systems (I am sure Altec is going to be pissed about that). We won't know until they start selling to the general public. I hope that this is just a temporary fad and they'll come to their senses

Which tubes are these??

[Faggot]

For supposedly playing to the low-end audiophile market, AOpen isn't doing a great job. Nowhere can I find what kind of tubes they're using!

Since six channels are being amplified (5.1) and three tubes are present, I'm assuming they're using three double-triodes in Class A configuration. Maybe 12AX7s? Note to AOpen: people care about this kind of thing.

Re:Which tubes are these??

[kevinank]

When I saw the first picture of the motherboard with vacuum tubes I was a bit surprised; hey, those look like vacuum tubes. At first I thought the entire article might be a joke, but after reading the article for a bit it certainly seems serious enough.

I suppose they are playing to the home theater market, but I couldn't give a damn personally whether they are using double triodes or anything else. The Altec Lansing speakers I have hooked to my computer are sufficient for basic sound, but they aren't going to come close to filling a room like a real stereo system would. Besides, since when do you need a full amp instead of just a preamp in your computer.

Re:Which tubes are these??

[ianjk]

since when do you need a full amp instead of just a preamp in your computer. IMO don't think that is a full amp. Looks like a tube preamp to me. A full amp would probably be much larger/costly, not to mention hot.

Re:Which tubes are these??

[Doctor Memory]

Just what you need with a CPU that dissipates close to 85W -- a class-A tube circuit. I predict the market for 400W+ power supplies is really going to open up...

Re:Which tubes are these??

[Faggot]

Look at the link I posted above. Max plate dissipation for one side of a 12AX7 is 1.1W; therefore the total dissipation for the three 12AX7s is going to be under 6.6W. This is no big problem.

In general, Class A amps don't get too hot, because in order to keep the signal from distorting you can't push the tubes too hard. In Class AB, in which pairs of overdriven tubes are used to amplify the living shit out of a signal, you start to see more heat coming from the tubes. The tubes used in AB amps (usually the power amplification stage) are much larger, such as the venerable 30W 6L6 or the 40W KT88.

Re:Which tubes are these??

[Anonymous Coward]

It must be a joke. I've seen an old joke exactly like this (5.1 tube pre-amp, and I think it was Clawhammer too) long ago. I think Tom swallowed this with bait and all. Don't you really want your tubes so close to a gigaHertz monster?

Re:Which tubes are these??

[Hoser McMoose]

They aren't playing to the audiophile market at all, what they're playing to is the totally clueless consumer market.

"OHH, look, vacuum tubes! My friend has a guitar amp and says that tubes amps are the best, so this has GOT to be good!"

Vacuum tubes on a motherboard makes absolutely no sense at all. Tubes have their place in guitar amps, where the distortion they produce couples nicely with the sound of the guitar, but that's about it. At the best of times tubes really struggle to reproduce sounds as accurately as solid state amps, and when you throw them into the crowded confines of a PC case with all the EMI going around in there, they'll be piss-poor! Couple that with the fact that they're more expensive and use significantly more power, and you have an absolutely terrible solution for audio.

Re:Which tubes are these??

[packeteer]

Your are very right. Its really a marketing gig because they wont sound any worse but your not going to hear a differance. If you hook up your computer straight to a $10k audio system you might be able to hear it. But nto when your using regular comp speakers. And think about people playing mp3's on thsi system which is what its for. Also these arent fake as they arent the first board with vaccum tubes on them from AOpen. I dont have a problem wiht this because it might make some people happy but dont belive for one minute itll make a differance.

Re:Which tubes are these??

[Anonymous Coward]

Class A runs a hell of a lot hotter than AB since AB has tubes only operating on approx. half the waveform, in class A a tube is always on (thats why class A guitar amps eat tubes like popcorn) - anyway this is a preamp (can't see any output transformer) which always operates in class A as far as I know. I would assume its running the tubes at very low voltage which makes it hard to understand why you wouldn't just use mosfets or bipolars.

Older Link, Computex pictures

[ackthpt]

Mostly mockups, but here's some of what to be expecting in the future, at x-bit labs

Over on the Enquirer, a correction was made to an article overnight concerning shipment dates for the Clawhammer, it will not be further pushed back, to first half of '03.

Looking that stock quotes this morning I saw this: INTC INTEL CORP 14.0099 -1.5%
I assume Yahoo stock reporting is still using one of those weird old Pentiums

Gotta love the tubes

[WhiteChocolate42]

1. hack BIOS to utilize vacuum tubes in other ways 2. combine linux with ham radio technology 3. ??? 4. Profit!

Too bad that's really a dumb move.

[Inoshiro]

For those of us who like having a motherboard we can place into a system and not have to worry about parts failing on it, the wonderfully solid-state nature of passive cooling is impossible to beat. If I want more performance, I'll either pay more or wait a little while longer, thanks. I want stability and a minimization of moving parts in my PC, because moving parts = failing parts. Failing parts are expensive!

How many active-cooling north bridge motherboards have you owned? I owned one. Its north bridge fan failed after only 3 months of constant use. Compared to every other motherboard I own, none of which require a fan (most don't even require a heatsink, and they power 1Ghz systems!), it was a terrible mistake purchase. I've since replaced it with a motherboard bought specifically because its north brigde used passive cooling. It's given no problems in the year+ of service it's given.

Re:Too bad that's really a dumb move.

[Anonymous Coward]

I suppose you drive an air-cooled car then, with no radiator fan...? Perhaps you store all data in flash cards, instead of hard drives and optical discs and magnetic tape. And you probably have a membrane keyboard, instead of one with moving keys, yes...? Also, do you own a refrigerator, or do you keep things fresh by keeping them in the shade?

The part I've seen fail the most in the last 5 years is RAM, and if it moves, it moves damn slowly.

Re:Too bad that's really a dumb move.

[Anonymous Coward]

Listen genius. We sell hundreds of pc's and accessories. Sure solid state components fail. But percentage wise? Try like 1 bad RAM chip to 100 fans + HDDs + CD-R/RW's. They do not even come close. And one more thing: smaller fans account for about twice the failures of larger ones. What size of fans the mobos use? It is junk I tell you.

What are Vacuum tubes?

[or_smth]

Out of plain curiousity (and probably because of inexperience) I'm curious on what exactly vacuum tubes are in relationship to sound, what advantages/disadvantages they offer and anything else interesting to know. Also, if they are as good as they look, are there any PC sound cards that use vacuum tubes for audio? It is kind of funny to note that we have a consumer level 64 bit processor on the hand and all we can talk about is the vacuum tubes :).

Anyone care to answer?

Re:What are Vacuum tubes?

[f97tosc]

Out of plain curiousity (and probably because of inexperience) I'm curious on what exactly vacuum tubes are in relationship to sound, what advantages/disadvantages they offer and anything else interesting to know

Vacuum tubes were used before the invention of transistors. They serve basically the same function, but are much bigger, draw more power and are slower in their response. For these reasons, they are hardly used any more.

However, when they are used to amplify sounds, they give a somewhat different sound than do transistors. Many audiophiles argue that the vacuum tube sound is superior.

However, and now comes my personal opinion, recently something of a hype has started around tubes. People who don't really know much about sound systems take tubes as a guarantee for getting superior performance. They fail to realize that the sounds are just different and which one is superior is largely a matter of personal taste - and what type of sound is being amplified. I am not at all convinced that tubes are better for sound effects in games, for example (as they have a slower response).

Tor

Re:What are Vacuum tubes?

[nexthec]

Fully agreed, in addition I think people should note that good tube pre-amp setups have more than one tube element per channel, and multple stages and great deal of other design elements. basicaly, this tube is in the setup just to give the nice even order harmonics that people like to hear. This is in addition to the Odd order harmonics that the other transistors are creating. and to top it off, who would consider any onboard sound chip to be Hi-Fi. when your signal sucks, your sound sucks, there is no really good way to fix that. Get a nice sound card and it will sound much better than this setup

Re:What are Vacuum tubes?

[Animats]

The whole tube audio thing is a joke. First, the whole business of tube audio revolves around how clipping distortion occurs at saturation. If you're getting any measureable distortion from a low-power amplifier that follows a D/A, your circuit design is all wrong.

Second, if you want some specific transfer function under overload, you can get it by design. There's a famous story about this. Some years back, Bob Carver, the well-known amplifier designer, took a tube amplifier that was well-regarded by the "high-end" audio nuts, and characterized its response with the usual test gear. He then designed a transistor amp with the same transfer function. In listening tests, listeners couldn't tell the difference.

But his transistor amp didn't sell. He then, as a joke, designed the Carver Silver 7, the most overdesigned tube amp of all time. Three chassis per channel, chrome-plated everything, insane price of about $25,000. It got great reviews. "Amp of the Decade" from The Absolute Sound.

Re:What are Vacuum tubes?

[Anonymous Coward]

I would have to disagree on two points.

1. Although tubes are not readily seen in use, and have been widely replaced by semiconductors, they are still very much used. The main applications are for higher power radio transmission in the microwave range. In a search radar there are klystrons, tubes that modulate using electrostatic fields causing "electron bunching" There are also magnetrons, a tube that uses a magnetic field to produce steady, variable, oscillations. And good, old-fashioned, tube diodes, for a quick cutover between transmit and recieve. The tube will not go away any time soon.

2. A good tube amplifier will always sound better than a solid state amp. Tubes are, by design, less noisy. Transistors, have significant amounts of spurious, out of phase, electron drift. The signal gets degraded in random spots. Because tubes are controlled by voltage, there is less drift of electrons at unwanted times. JFETs and MOSFETs attempt to emulate this but still fall short.

This only applies to a good tube amp. A good tube amp will out perform a good semiconductor one. A bad tube amp can easily be shot down by good semiconductor amp.

Re:What are Vacuum tubes?

[scharkalvin]

Tubes are voltage amplifiers, transistors are current amplifiers.
Tubes and transistors produce different orders of harmonic distortion with the result that a transistor amp must opererate at a very low level of distortion to sound as good as a tube amp with a much higher distortion level. Transistor amps clip and go into distortion at very low levels of overload, tube amps enter this non linear region on a lower slope. Tube amps can be easier to listen to than transistor amps as a result of all of the above. However this mostly applies to bipolar transistors. Field effect transistors have transfer functions very much like pentode tubes and can mimic the sound of a tube amp, but most reference solid state amps have been bipolar.

I think most of the hype about tube amplifiers is greatly overrated. However the price of audio tubes and tube equipment on ebay proves how crazy some people are. We call them AudioPhools.

Re:What are Vacuum tubes?

[Anonymous Coward]

LESS NOISE?!!! You gotta be kidding!!! Tubes use a heated piece of metal to emit electrons!!! The thermal noise is ORDERS OF MAGNITUDE higher then that of solid state components!!! LOL!!

If you liked the vacuum tube sound system...

[Hayzeus]

... you're just going to love the relay-based video accelerator...

Re:Seems to me...

[Anonymous Coward]

Wrong story tard.

AOL

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey, how does AOL get it's own CPU pins?? It's along with PMU, whatever that is.

Re:Thats Awesome

[greymond]

Damnit I posted to the wrong article comments - WTF?!

Clawhammer platform?

[sharkey]

They've been around for a long time. Here's one that's component-based, so you can "roll your own".

754 pins?!

[qurob]

The socket of the future at AMD breaks a new record in the x86 world with 754 pins. The Intel Xeon is based on 603 pins.

Somehow, I don't think they WANTED to use 25% more pins than Intel.

Socket 7 has 321 pins, Socket A has 462...

Pins != Performance :o)

Re:754 pins?!

[Anonymous Coward]

Opteron (Sledgehammer) has, I think, 940 pins...

Re:754 pins?!

[questionlp]

A lot of those pins are dedicated to connect the DDR memory modules to the integrated memory controller. Another set of pins are used not only to provide power but also ground (considering how much power those things will take...).

The rest of the pins are used for the HyperTransport pipes to the AGP I/O controller and other devices that attach to the processor directly.

Re:754 pins?!

[Hoser McMoose]

The extra pins are essentially all going to be for power and ground. As these chips get more and more transistors, they're going to require more and more pins for power and ground. This, actually, could quickly start to become a major problem for chip designers, particularly when you look at the Sledgehammer, which has something like 940 pins already (note: the extra pins of the sledge vs. clawhammer are almost all I/O pins).

Oh man

[p3d0]

I'm literally weeping with laughter here.

Re:WTF?

[Anonymous Coward]

There's a band in the Allentown, PA area named "Bloody Stool"

Vacuum tubes?

[Lord Kestrel]

I was under the impression that they were for the audiophiles who want better sound. That sort doesn't use the onboard sound, no matter how good it may be. It's pointless to use them on a motherboard. If someone really cares enough about sound quality to use vacuum tubes, they'll have their own sound card to use.

Besides, they just look ugly. 3 big balls of glass sitting on your motherboard. And then when one blows, you'll have to replace it.

Take the damn things off please!

Re:Vacuum tubes?

[stuartkahler]

Don't they put out a decent supply of light? I bet case modders would color the glass and put in a view port so you can see it. It would be a rather unique sight at lan parties.

Re:Vacuum tubes?

[Anonymous Coward]

What's more, although I didn't check this one, the original audio-tube board used the AC'97 codec.

It doesn't matter how good the rest of your sound system is, if you send it through something crappy first, it's still going to sound crappy.

Re:Vacuum tubes?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes they do glow when power is put through the heating element. A sure way of seeing if they are working.

Re:Vacuum tubes?

[Lord Kestrel]

They tend to glow fairly brightly when they're in use. However, you may not want to put anything on them to color them, as you could trap the heat inside them, and cause them to shatter.

Now that I think about it though, it wouldn't look too bad to have some colored tubes in your box.

Sweet Review

[kirn_malinus]

Why do you bash the review for lacking benchmarks? This is still one of the sweetest reviews I've seen in a long time. The level of detail they get into about the hardware is awesome.

Almost certainly 12ax7s...

[Troy Baer]

Since six channels are being amplified (5.1) and three tubes are present, I'm assuming they're using three double-triodes in Class A configuration. Maybe 12AX7s? Note to AOpen: people care about this kind of thing.

12ax7s would certainly make sense, as they're still in production in several places (Russia, China, Yugoslavia) and thus relatively cheap. They're also widely used in preamps of guitar amplifiers, so you can find them at your local Guitar Center...

The EF86 was popular for hi-fi preamp applications like this in the '50s and '60s because they had lots of clean headroom, but they're not used as much any more because the ones still in production have a nasty habit of being microphonic. You'd also need twice as many of them, since they're a single pentode in roughly the same bottle as a 12ax7.

--Troy

Um... HEAT!

[ackthpt]

Here's another shot of the tubes. My immediate beef, besides the fact I thought this was an early April Fool, is that mounting this board vertically places the tubes below most of the electronics, including CPU. Tubes typically run hot, because heat from the filament is what makes them work and three of them are going to create quite some heat.

Looking at the sockets, I'm also a bit concerned about the heat cooking the board itself, since I've seen any number of PCB electronics over the years with tubes, where the board is blackish sometimes separating foil from board. Think about that with a 7 layer PCB.

Lastly, high voltage. Scary around all these low voltage things. I wonder why they didn't consider making a daughterboard and keeping things well isolated.

Pins == Performance

[Anonymous Coward]

More pins means more CPU bandwidth, therefore more performance.

Re:Pins == Performance

[Anonymous Coward]

Put down the crack pipe, and slowly back away from your PC.

Re:Pins == Performance

[Anonymous Coward]

It's true though! It's just like the VTEC emblems and Type R stickers on my 1987 Accord make it go faster.

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[account_deleted]

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[account_deleted]

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haha

[agnosonga]

at a first glance I thought THG was THC

Nuclear blast!

[Anonymous Coward]

At least in times of nuclear war, your sound will still work :)

Tubes vs. Transistors

[Andy Dodd]

I believe the main issue here is how both devices behave at the extremes of their linearity ranges. (i.e. where they distort) - Transistors tend to be pretty linear up to the point where they clip, while tubes have a more gentle gain compression, which is why their harmonics are different.

I wonder what the audiophiles would think of a truly linear amplifier. (Either using devices that are backed off far from their peak power - low efficiency warning!, or by using distortion-correction techniques similar to those used by manufacturers of CDMA RF power amilifiers)

hmm... An audio predistortion amp would be a cool hack. :)

Re:Vacum Tubes(the other reply)

[mojowantshappy]

Oh, and yes, I agree that dropping your computer is not a good idea ;-)

Step backwards to the future!

[spudwiser]

gotta love those big honkin vacuum tubes on the AK86. mmmmmmmm.... heat...

Corrections+Link

[Perdo]

This is a response to a bunch of posters who were modded up that misunderstand hammer architecture

"to have active cooling on the north bridge, too many new, high speed bus mobos are coming out right now with passive cooling that doesn't come close to making it easy to OC"

The chipset "Northbridge" does not get over clocked with the CPU using hyper transport. The memory controller is on the cpu. So you can increase the speed of the CPU and memory without affecting the chipset "Northbridge" at all. I used quotes around Northbridge because all the features that most people think of as being part of the Northbridge are in fact incorporated into the CPU.

"What, still only 32-bit PCI slots? :::yawn:::"

This motherboard contains a hyper transport to 32 bit PCI chip. Hyper transport runs at 6.4GB/s. PCI 32 is 133 MB/s. The manufacturer chose to use 32 bit PCI because this is a commodity board. Theoretically, a motherboard could include 6 PCI-X busses supporting 6 cards each before saturating the hyper transport bus.

Powerpoint Show about Hammer family architecture. "save target as".

Read the show notes! AMD did not edit them out.

Tubes are less noisy

[Cousin Dupree]

Not only is the sound of tubes often regarded as more pleasing to the ears than that of transistors, they also produce a lot less noise than solid-state amplifiers. This property might be more important than the sound characteristics since the amplifier is integrated in the extremely noisy electrical environment that a motherboard is.

I believe that this is the real reason tubes are used in this application.

32bit PCI. Where's the 64 bit?

[Kludge]

You'd think that people would want some 64bit PCI slots for their awesome 64 bit server, no?

just in case you're not trolling me

[Faggot]

Here's a perfect example of...cave men clinging to the flat earth idea, creationists bashing evolution, and as P. T. Barnum said "There's a sucker born every minute".

I want you to go to an audio boutique, pick a piece of music, and listen to it on both their best solid-state system and their best tube system. Have you done this before? It certainly sounds like you have, as you are putting forth a very strong opinion about it. Anyone who puts out such an opinion must be very sure of themselves, sure enough that they've actually checNO WAIT YOU DIDN'T. YOU ARE JUST A FUCKING ASSHOLE WHO DOESN'T KNOW SHIT ABOUT SHIT YET BELIEVES HE SHITS ICE CREAM AND DROPS KNOWLEDGE AT EVERY BELCH.

Eat a bag of shit and shoot yourself in the head. While you're at it, read up on tube amplification (theory, not product reviews) and listen to a few.

Re:just in case you're not trolling me

[Anonymous Coward]

Umm... yeah... Solid-state amps reproduce the input with higher fidelity than tube amps ever can. I find the sound produced by tube amps to be just marginally (i.e., unnoticeably except for during a side-by-side test) more pleasant than that produced by a solid state amp, but which output sounds better has nothing to do with the fidelity of the reproduction.

Tube amps may produce a better-sounding signal than solid-state amps, but the output signal of a solid-state amp is closer to the input signal. Period. You may want to listen to a bit of your own advice.

Re:just in case you're not trolling me

[Faggot]

Tube amps may produce a better-sounding signal than solid-state amps, but the output signal of a solid-state amp is closer to the input signal. Period.

I've been saying this all along. If a dirtier signal sounds better, who cares about fidelity?

Re:It's happend...

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Overclocking 101

[adolf]

I've been overclocking 9 or 10 years years, with no stability issues. I don't do anything anything extreme with cooling, and in fact have a P100 which has been running at 133 for several years with only a passive heatsink (it is an extremely quiet computer).

I started long before any of this was trendy, with an AMD 386SX/33 which I always ran at 40. I've now got 300 and 333MHz K6-2s, each running at 350. And soon, I'll add an unlocked Athlon XP to the mix. These machines don't crash. Ever.

It's trivial, and simple: Don't go to far. Don't up the voltage beyond manufacturer specification for the speed you're trying to achieve. If anything seems at all funny about the scenario, back down a notch and try again - don't try to "fix" it with fans and peltiers and waterblocks. Once you've found a speed that seems to work, it might not be a bad idea to step it down another notch to help with future operating variables.

The next step is rather simple: Leave it the fuck alone. You've already had all of the overclocking joy that your particular hardware combination will yield. Enjoy your pennies saved and be done with it.

CPUs are rated in the factory using similar methods. They all come off of the same line, and are tested at a high-ish clock speed. If a core fails a test at a given speed, it is retested at consecutively lower speeds until it passes. The resultant number is stamped on the package and/or burned into the multiplier.

In theory, anyway. The reality lately is that toward the end of a given core's life, there's a point at which lower speed chips simply aren't produced anymore, while there is still market demand for them. So, there's a lot of lower-cost, factory-underclocked chips on the shelf, so that AMD and Intel can stay competitive with eachother in the mid-to-low end markets.

This is evident from the price structure of commodity OEM CPUs. When there are 3 or 4 mid-range speeds are within a few dollars of eachother, they're quite likely to be exactly the same part, and may even be from the same batch.

It is inarguable that running some of these chips at faster-than-marked speeds is not in any way overclocking.

And, at any rate, it's heat that destroys CPUs, not clock speeds that are within the design parameters of the core. For this conservative approach to overclocking, added heat very nearly at non-issue status.

Therefore, I strongly suspect that my machines will last forever, as far as I'm concerned, just like every solid state device should (obvious exceptions for dried-up capacitors and flaming power supplies may apply), and that they will always have an extra month or two of useful life in them before they're deemed too slow for the tasks at hand -- for free.

Very interesting

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, you can always tell a good CPU from the number of pins in the socket. If they added more pins, I bet it would be even faster.

BTW, if pedophiles are child molesters, what exactly do audiophiles do to the valves...?

I think you missed something

[Anonymous Coward]

If you listen to your computer with headphones, you can actually hear things like the closing of desktop windows

Go to the Control Panel, then "Sounds and Multimedia", then select "Scheme: No Sounds".

You're welcome.

Just add a larger heatsink to the northbridge, duh

[xtal]

Even on chipsets that come with so-called "Active" cooling (laughter), that piddly little fan doesn't do much except make noise. You could add a new fan, but small fans are all likely to fail and mainly just add noise.

I have a heavily overclocked abit mobo running at a bus of 152mhz, rock solid. The processor is watercooled, but the chipset isn't. All I did was take off the joke heatsink it comes with and do some mods.

If you want to cure northbridge woes forever, you need:

- A athlon heat sink (I used a volcano-II)
- A saw, dremel, or other primitive machine tools
- Goop-brand adhesive
- Some alcohol and arctic silver

Take the stock heatsink off. Cut the large one so it can fit on the motherboard. Clean the northbridge off with some alcohol. Put arctic silver on the chip, and a good pile of goop around the outside of the chip. Goop can be worked off, it is a weak bond against the metal of the heat sink. Put the sink on and smoosh it down. Put something heavy on it for 24 hrs, presto. If you have any airflow through your case whatsoever your northbridge will stay at ~29-30C even heavily overclocked.

Last Post!

[alpg]

I'D LIKE TO BE BURIED INDIAN-STYLE, where they put you up on a high rack,
above the ground. That way, you could get hit by meteorites and not even
feel it.
-- Jack Handley, The New Mexican, 1988.

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