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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."
Now I can finally run... uh... 64 bit Linux, and uh... ummm... SSE2 programs on an AMD chip! Yeah!
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.
I'm waiting for the Athlon 128.
What ever happened with the exploding motherboards?
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
It's only fitting since the last x86 system I bought is also able to serve as my college apartment's central heating system in the winter time....
Click here or a puppy gets stomped!
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
Also unfortunate is the price - AUD$1000+ down under. What good is a well-performing dollar when you still get these prices, I ask you?
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
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"?
Chaintech ZNF3-150, FIC K8-800T, and MSI K8T
Chaintech ZNF3-150 = nVidia nForce3
FIC K8-800T and MSI K8T = VIA K8T800
Whenever the offence inspires less horror than the punishment, the rigour of penal law is obliged to give way...
mine didnt come wiht the wifi or the ram (but its the same ram I bought..very nice) but the onboard networking is incredibly fast and low resource for onboard networking...nice job asus!
Bottles.
I heard that just installing Mandrake linux causes 32 of the 64 bits to fall off...pass it on...
So why no link to our reviews. :)
ignorance is bliss. googlefiberatx.com
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!
Those are "2GB kits", which is marketing-speak for a box with two 1GB DIMMs in it. Real 2GB DIMMS are $1600 each, which is beyond the budget of the hardware review sites and most of their readers.
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.
The last one is actually a single 2 gig stick, costs $1175.
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
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 =)
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
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:
e _papers_and_tech_docs/24659.PDF
-- 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/whit
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
Yes and AMD is going to make things REALLY confusing by introducing and Athlon64 FX on Socket 939 which will be a single channel version of the Opteron, so there will be three socket formats for new AMD chips, the 754 for the Athlon64, 939 for the Athlon64 FX, and 940 for Opteron and older FX chips (geeze, talk about confusing, I'm a tech and I hate this kind of stuff). Add in the older boards for Athlon XP's and MP's and you can see where most mere mortals would throw up their hands and have someone else build their PC despite the fact that it's cheaper and fairly easy to actually put your own PC together.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
Intel won't do it for some time because they don't want to make corporate customers feel like idiots for buying Itanium or Itanium 2.
Intel's 64-bit processor will be hotter and slower clock for clock, and will use YET ANOTHER x86 instruction set extension, if ever implemented. (I would be presently surprised if they also supported amd64 extensions, however).
Yuck.
And if you don't think there isn't and 64-bit software out there right now (there is a ton!), or software that needs to take advantage of it (MATLAB anyone? DRAGGING THEIR FEET), then you'll probably NEVER need it for the next 5 years.
Fuck Beta. Fuck Dice
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.
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.
Secured Party, Without Prejudice, UCC 1-207: Creditor
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.
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
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,
"how many AMD cpus have you killed?"
....well... is non-existent."
I've installed hundreds without having damaged a single one. The ones I've seen die in the several years I've worked with them were always due to fan failure or power problems. I've seen at least two Celerons suffer heat death also.
" what good is performance if it's more fragile than a paper chain tethering a bull in a china shop? If it's dead, performance
That's quite the large 'if'. Are you installing your CPUs with a hammer? I've had plenty of mishaps installing CPUs before, but never had one damaged because of it. I'm truly at a loss as to just what it is you could possibly be doing to have so many problems.
"And the warranty policy about thermal grease and non-stock heatsinks, well...that's just bs."
This is like saying that Ford should warranty repair the engine in your 2003 Mustang after you replaced the motor oil with Diet Coke following a reading from some website. The warranty states that the product will perform correctly under normal operating conditions. That you have altered said conditions inately voids any warranty. Any warranty work provided thereafter is simply a curtousy. Your misuse of AMD's (or anyone else's) product is not AMD's problem. Either adhere to the warranty conditions or do not expect to receive warranty work; it's that simple.
"Besides, I like my P4 that has thermal throttling that works and responds fast to the temp."
This is such a lousy idea. Let me ask you this: when your CPU is overheating, what will you do to correct it? The correct answer is: nothing. Why? Because your CPU gives no indications of overheating. Assuming you have an issue with your CPU fan, your computer will simply seem slower and slower over time, making you think it's time for an upgrade. On an AMD or PIII system, the computer crashes when there is a problem. This is known as a 'symptom'. If you do not have any symptoms, chances are that you will never solve the problem because you simply won't know about it. I'd rather have chronic crashing which leads me to the source of the problem than to have some vague problem such as: 'it's running slowly'.
"Of course, I don't plan to abandon AMD cpus forever; I'm just more cautious and less enthused about new products. (I still have my dual athlon XP->MP (Barton core) project in the works but it's been slow)."
Again with your CPU modification. You expect to be able to modify the product yet continue to receive warranty assurance on it. Let me let you in on a little secret: if you modify your P4 in any way, you will void your warranty - just like an Athlon.
"Hell, I've love to have that P4 3.2 with the 2MB of L2 cache."
I'd love to have one as well, if such a creature existed. Unfortunately, if it did, it would cost an enormous amount of money. Thus, Intel's compromise was to remark a Xeon with 2MB L3 as a run-of-the-mill Pentium 4 EE (Extremely Expensive). On the other hand, I could buy an Athlon64 FX-51 for about $150 less and get far better performance which will increase over time as applications are better optimized.
And just so you don't think I won't address the quality issue, I'd be happy to do so. Just take a look here. Recall after recall, bug after bug, Intel proves beyond any doubt that good marketing erases years of ineptitude.
-- "Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else."
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)
Thanks guys. We also have the first DDR400 cas 2 benchmarks with Athlon 64 FX. Previously registered DDR400 would only run at Cas 2.5. :) We compare with the same OCZ memory at Cas 2 and Cas 2.5.
ignorance is bliss. googlefiberatx.com
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
Electronic Music Made Using Linux http://soundcloud.com/polyp
$399 for Athlon 64 3200+ on pricegrabber.com...so no real difference there except more RAM addressing for the Athlon. :-)
BTW, I'm sure Intel is pissed at that price for the P4 3.2 GHz. Most of them are still priced over $600, and several were over $700. ;-)
Those kind of dollars are reserved for Athlon64 FX and Opteron these days...
Galileo: "The Earth revolves around the Sun!"
Score: -1 100% Flamebait