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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."
Nick, wait 'till your favorite distro is out (64 bit Debian) before you spend your hard earned cash. The prices will have come down a bit, the 1.0 bugs will be out and hopefully fixed, and your favorite motherboard maker (Tyan) will be out with a nice non-overclocker but extremley stabel and quiet 64 bit motherboard solution.
Thanks.
Non of three motherboards supports more than (max) 3G memory, what is the purpose of using 64bit cpu?
Let's keep it scientific: did you do any measurements, or just you just reckon you have a better eye for heat dissipation than the folk at Asus?
I just can't help but feel that the manufacturers are missing the boat on what features should actually be present - and features that at least some folks would pay more for...
* Faster PCI. How about PCI-X? or 66mhz/64bit? Something that lets a power users do more without saturating the bus.
Of course, it'll be a moot point when PCI express arrives...
* More PCI. More than one bus would be nice - even two standard PCI busses would be useful to a lot of folks.
* More memory slots! Um, these CPUs can address more than 2/4 gigabytes. At least 6, and preferably 8 slots would be a good thing - let folks get to some really large RAM sizes inexpensively.
At least they got gigabit right (but probably hooked to the PCI bus, not good), and Firewire (but not the new faster kind, and again, hooked to the PCI bus).
I'd think that a properly outfitted board would be a video enthusiast's dream, or a hpc dream, or whatever. I'd expect that once MS actually ships XP 64, you'll start to see prosumer boards that address my gripes. But I'd sure like one now, price somewhere between these low-enders and higher-end "server" boards.
Jonathan
If you consider a 0.5% lead in a synthetic benchmark to be "schooled", I suppose. And ignore the other 3 graphs on that page.
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
why, oh why they don't they remove the most fucking stable thing in my fucking PC...
I bet the PS2 keyboard I'm using is older than you bitch.
By stronghold I mean, that a user must go there to perform some task. There are very few areas now that are not covered pretty well in the Mac space. For office style stuff you have the authoritative source (Microsoft) or a host of other smaller choices. For DTP you have Quark and Adobe. For graphics and video of course the choices on the Mac are just as good, and I think FCP is better for most users than anything on the PC.
For programming you have just about any tools you like, XCode especially is a really nice new environment. Java is integrated into the system the way it was meant to be originally when they were thinking of doing desktop Java apps.
What I am saying is that given almost any application space the Mac has either the gold standard programs or really good alternatives. Gaming is the only area where the PC has an absolutely compelling lead - if you are a dedicated PC gamer, no way are you going to be able to live without a PC. I decided I could live without some of the leading edge games (having a console anyway to scratch that itch), bought a Mac a few years ago, and have found no lack of software since then. Almost any hardware you can name now works on the Mac as well, so it's not even like I'm missing out on many cool gadgets (well, there are the Sony Palms...) and Bluetooth is really well supported on the Mac instead of an afterthought.
I really can't think of what else to mention. How about Photoshop CS requiring activation on the PC but not on the Mac?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Athlon 64 was never speced for multiprocessor, in fact it will probably come out cheaper to build a dual processor Opteron board than a dual processor Athlon 64 board (which doesn't have a chance in hell of being in any other way better). AMD created the Opteron with three HyperTransport buses just for this purpose, and the Athlon 64 is handicapped with only one for the same reason. There are lots of Opteron multiprocessor boards out by now.
Qu'on me donne six lignes écrites de la main du plus honnête homme, j'y trouverai de quoi le faire pendre.
The problem is multi-faceted. Entry level is a little higher in the Mac world, and the bigger problem is that people just don't understand what advantages they would get by switching. It's rather hard to explain because all the most pleasing things are seemingly little things, that reduce a lot of stress in day to day use of the system. I know what I'm talking about here because I use XP all day for work and have a Powerbook at home. Sometimes I swear Windows is determined to annoy you for no reason. I have felt the same from 98 to NT to XP (pretty much skipped W2K era) and really I think things are worse with XP.
Another issue is that a lot of the sort of people that are early adopters are, in fact, really into games - so the PC having a stronghold in that one area really slows down general adoption more than you would think.
The biggest issue is perhaps corporate support. The great thing about PC's is that you can get all this free software from work (which most people seem to do from my observation). So switching to the mac entails even more cost for a lot of people since they can no longer steal the software they need! And of course people will be comfortable buying what they use at work because they don't have to learn as much.
So really, it's pretty incredible that Apple is growing as much as it is given the number of things which work against it being adopted by anyone. I am seeing an increasing number of iBooks/Powerbooks at work and often people drop buy telling me they are thinking about buying a mac for the next computer. Using iTunes for Windows might help people feel even a little more comfortable, and get word of mouth to people directly instead of percolating through the traditional power users who are so reluctant to switch.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
What's wrong with PS/2? It's great to hook keyboard and mouse to, and that is their only use! I've got other things to plug into my USB ports, like a tablet, printer, scanner, joystick, and lots of other things I might buy in the future.
General purpose ports are nice and all, but I'll have a keyboard and mouse for many years to come. I keep the keyboard and mouse PS/2, and voila, two extra USB ports.