Athlon 64 Motherboard Triple Threat Round-Up

SpinnerBait writes "Soon after AMD released the Athlon 64 to the public, eager motherboard manufacturers unveiled their latest motherboards for AMD's new baby. Some are offering basic packages that boast features and performance, yet forgo the extras found in premium bundles. Other manufacturers are offering snazzy new packages with all kinds of extras and unique features. The only thing left to do is decide which one is for you. HotHardware has an article posted up, that showcases and benchmarks three top Athlon 64 motherboards, from Asus, MSI and Shuttle. These boards are looking more refined every day."

Comments

Re:Exploding Motherboards

[Ark42]

This is stil a problem. My nforce2 boards (Epox 8RDA+) are only 8 months old, made in Jan 2003, well after this was known to all the motherboard manufacturers, and already have buldging capacitors. I am currently sending them back for free repair. It only costs me $9 to ship it there and $11 for them to ship it back each time.

Re:Note to self:

[hattig]

Tyan already have at least *six* different motherboards for AMD's 64-bit platform.

Most of them are for Opteron though, but that means that there is a lot of experience within Tyan for the platform, so the A64 boards will be good from the get go.

Re:How about some more pro features?

[hattig]

Sounds like you want something like the Tyan K8W which has AGP 8x, PCI-X and supports 16GB of memory.

Sure, it is dual processor, but if you are wanting PCI-X and 16GB of memory support, then you probably want dual processors. I suppose you could live with one processor and 8GB of memory though.

Re:run 64bit with less than 3G memory ?

[dvdeug]

64bit CPU is a lot slower than 32bit CPU with the same technology anyway.

It depends on what you're doing. If you're handling a lot of 64 bit integers, then it isn't. In any case, AMD64 is not the same technology as ix86; the massive increase in registers and additional parallel processing units can add a lot of speed in certain situations.

3 more socket 754 boards reviewed

[heli0]

Chaintech ZNF3-150, FIC K8-800T, and MSI K8T

Chaintech ZNF3-150 = nVidia nForce3
FIC K8-800T and MSI K8T = VIA K8T800

We have already reviewed 5 Athlon 64 motherboards

[ruiner5000]

So why no link to our reviews. :)

Re:3 GB?

[afidel]

Actually the memory controller is on the CPU so there any limitation should be with the CPU and be common to all three boards. I really can't see where the artificially low max memory counts are coming from, the Athlon64 supports either 4 registered DIMM's (8GB total), or 3 unbuffered DIMM's (6GB total). Of course most people who are buying an Athlon64 instead of an Athlon64 FX or Opteron are not going to spend the huge sums necessary for 2GB registered DIMM's =)

Re:3 GB?

[afidel]

Doh, hate to reply to myself but now that I have read a bit more into the Athlon64 data sheet I see where things are happening, for DDR400 DDR the Athlon64 is limited to 2 unbuffered DIMM's:
-- Up to three unbuffered DIMMs according to the loading described in Table 3 on page 16
-- Up to four registered DIMMs (note DDR400 not available on registered DIMMs)
The controller provides programmable control of DRAM timing parameters to support the following
memory speeds:
-- 100-MHz (DDR200) PC-1600 DIMMs
-- 133-MHz (DDR266) PC-2100 DIMMs
-- 166-MHz (DDR333) PC-2700 DIMMs
-- 200-MHz (DDR400) PC-3200 DIMMs (unbuffered DIMMs only, two maximum)

So with cheap unregistered DIMM's you are only going to get to either 2GB at DDR400 or 3GB at DDR333. I guess AMD's engineer's didn't figure it was worth the cost to support more ram on their lower end chip where the typical user would never get near the limit due to costs anyways.

This is all from http://www.amd.com/us-en/assets/content_type/white _papers_and_tech_docs/24659.PDF