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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."
What ever happened with the exploding motherboards?
1. Why are all three "64bit" boards limited to 4GB of memory?
2. Why are they being evaluated solely with 32bit applications/operating systems? Can't we at least get a kernel compile time benchmark? RedHat's RHEL3 has a free set of beta iso's available for AMD64 so there really wasn't a good excuse for not finding out how well they perform in their native mode.
3. What was the reason for the reviewer's obsession with having six-channel audio as analog outputs without a dongle? Isn't that what SPID-F plugs are for?
4. Since Linux is currently the ONLY supported OS for AMD64 in native mode, information about how well the boards are supported driver wise would have been helpful.
Democrat delenda est
Can't they leave off the serial/parallel and ps2 ports? Removing the floppy connector, ata-133 and on-board audio would be great. They're totally unneccessary in this day and age for me, probably many others too. For those who need them, they should be an option. Even Abit's KV8-MAX3 has ps2 ports, which is a shame.
I'd probably drool and swipe the credit card if I could get an A64 board with 8 DDR slots, PCI Express, dual Gb LAN, 8 usb2 ports and 4 FW800 ports on the backpanel. 8 SATA connectors would sweeten the deal.
"Why do you consent to live in ignorance and fear?" - Bad Religion
And theyre all so good, the p4 guys would get pissed off :)
but seriously, I love your site, I first turned up there in about 1856 looking for information on K6-2's...yes, that long ago, and ive been back ever since. you guys are legends, keep up the good work!
You aren't the only person stuck in the dream for a more efficient motherboard. I want none of what you want on a motherboard and am confident people will agree with me to not want any of my desires on their motherboard. The ISA Legacy design ensures an architecture to be compatible with previous *ware as well as provide a medium for growth. On a modern motherboard, you have The Old mixed with The New.
Look at a simple motherboard of the past 80x286 or 80x386 era, where all the parts are your enemy due to cost constraints and not necessarily efficiency and stability reasons. On the Stability Perspective, if a part becomes defective and can't be removed immediatly then the bad part(s) can and usualy cause undesired affects unto other parts and resources in a non-harmful yet annoying way (Part 15 B of FCC rules...bullshit yada-yada). When defective parts can't be removed, an entire system is often rendered non-operable. I have a suggestion for mtoherboard designers and vendors...
Return to the cheapskate/dark-age of computing! Build a motherboard with only RAM slots, a CPU slot, a BIOS, and 10 PCI slots! Wait, I have a better idea, scratch the previous request...build the motherboard with no integrated circuitry! Give us a breadboard; we'll know what we want on the breadboard and Build(TM) it ourselves! It's been a long time since geeks and consumers have been distinguishable when they rant "I build computer(s)" A real geek uses a soldering iron and a brain, while a consumer goes for the modular pre-assembled devices that connect together like Duplo blocks. Yeah, let the firmament be divided!
Realistically, the old design of motherboards was superior...a Bus with many expansion slots. This will resurrect the market for expansion cards such as those implementing multiple RS232 and RS422 interfaces. It'll also let people build a better Green PC(TM) such as not to have unneeded integrated hardware operating idle.
I can't wait for the Wheat Bread / White Bread flamewar on what the best homebrew breadboards are constructed with.
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Cray Picks AMD Chips for New Line
Red Storm System to Offer Supercomputer's Speed
And Low-Cost Components
By DON CLARK
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
Cray Inc., which pioneered the market for supercomputers, hopes to blaze another trail with machines based on a new line of microprocessor chips from Advanced Micro Devices Inc.
The Seattle company developed the technology under a $90 million contract with Sandia National Laboratory in New Mexico, which is installing a system dubbed Red Storm that will be one of the most powerful in the world. Cray plans to announce Monday that it also will sell systems based on the Red Storm technology to other customers.
Cray's plans have spurred interest in the scientific community, because the company is addressing a technical bottleneck that has prevented systems based on inexpensive components to be applied to the most demanding computing tasks.
"This is an exciting development," said Horst Simon, director of the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center in Berkeley, Calif. The center, which provides computing resources for research funded by the U.S. Department of Energy, may consider the Cray machines for its own future requirements, Mr. Simon said. "This type of technology is the correct approach to the current issues in high-performance computing," he said.
The term supercomputer is generally applied to the largest machines available, which are typically constructed from hundreds of microprocessor chips. Cray, the successor to a company formed by the late computer designer Seymour Cray, is known for augmenting those chips with proprietary circuitry that allows the chips to exchange data at very high speed. It sells a machine called X1 that uses a custom-designed microprocessor along with its communications chips.
Another approach, stressing low price over speed, uses standard chips from Intel Corp. or AMD along with circuit boards that are similar to those in personal computers or low-end server systems. Such low-price machines, called clusters, often use the free Linux operating system, further reducing costs.
But clusters aren't suited for some kinds of challenging tasks, because of delays in passing data among the many microprocessors. Wayne Kugel, Cray's program director for the Red Storm project, compares the problem to planning housing and transportation. "The more houses you add near the freeway, the more of a bottleneck you get," he said.
The Red Storm system combines the speed of proprietary supercomputers with low-cost components found in clusters. Cray says it designed communications chips that exchange data at close to the peak speed of AMD's Opteron microprocessor, or 6.4 billion bytes a second. That is about 20 times the speed of connections often used with clusters. The company hasn't set pricing or a precise delivery date, but expects to begin selling the system next year.
Cray's plans are good news for AMD, which is a much smaller player in server systems than rival Intel. But AMD is making some progress with Opteron, which was introduced last spring and competes with a high-end chip called Itanium 2 that Intel has been selling for high-end applications.
Oct 27.
When reading the title I thought "Shit! AMD already have 3 problems with the Athlon 64". Shouldn't it be "Athlon 64 Motherboard Triple _Treat_ Round-Up"?
"The obvious mathematical breakthrough would be development of an easy way to factor large prime numbers." Bill Gates,
Here's an (abbreviated) article (German!): http://www.heise.de/ct/03/22/146/
"I love my job, but I hate talking to people like you" (Freddie Mercury)
Just curious, does anyone know if the AGP / PCI buses on these babies are 64bit? It seems to me that they are just the same old slots as the older motherboards. Wouldnt a true 64bit mobo require a radically different AGP/PCI slots in order to take advantage of the added bus width?
... any comments ?
or maybe im just plain wrong
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You don't seem to understand. More features = higher cost.
The Athlon 64 does not have dual memory controllers, and the typical maxiumum per controller is 4 DIMMS, 3 with performance memory ( 166 DDR ), or 2 with high-performance ( 200 DDR ).
So, to begin with, YOU WANT a chip with dual memory controllers so you can easily break the 2GB ram barrier. This is going to cost you.
Second, dual memory controllers means a SECOND memory bus, which means the complexity of the board goes up ( more traces, possibly more layers ). They also aren't going to sell as many high-specced boards, so they have to price these higher to turn a profit on the production run.
Finally, in order to APPEAL TO PROFESSIONALS, these boards have fancy PROFESSIONAL features lkike PCI-X and Gig Ethernet, just to name a few. The whole board is also designed to pass more rigorous stability testing than your average POS $99 motherboard.
So let's see, you want AMD to GIVE AWAY their highest-performance feature ( dual memory controllers ), AND you want motherboard makers to build a no-frills professional board that lacks the features and tolerances that most customers expect.
YOU ARE NUTS.
Face it, anyone who needs 8GB of memory TODAY is a PROFESSIONAL and CUTTING-EDGE, so far as the workstation market is concerned. You can get a mainstream 8GB machine powered by AMD, Intel, SGI, Sun, IBM, etc, but you will pay through the nose for it.
If you need the power, then pay for it. Otherwise, compromise, or wait until the technology filters down.
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And occasionally whores for Karma.