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

Yes!

[Anonymous Coward]

Now I can finally run... uh... 64 bit Linux, and uh... ummm... SSE2 programs on an AMD chip! Yeah!

Note to self:

[niko9]

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.

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:Note to self:

[Anonymous Coward]

Amen to that!

What with recent posts on 300+ Mbyte fixes for the latest Mandrake release and LG CD-ROM destruction because of firmware bugs, it always pays NOT to be on the (b)leading edge! Nobody tests their products before release anymore, counting on customers to test their latest products. I refuse to be guinea pig!

Exploding Motherboards

[Davak]

What ever happened with the exploding motherboards?

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.

run 64bit with less than 3G memory ?

[ticktack]

Non of three motherboards supports more than (max) 3G memory, what is the purpose of using 64bit cpu?

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.

From the article

[1984]

"The Northbridge comes with passive cooling, however, the design is not the most effective for dissipating heat. We think a taller, more extruded heat sink like MSI's is more effective at wicking heat away from the chipset."

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?

How about some more pro features?

[hirschma]

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

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:How about some more pro features?

[default luser]

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.

HotHardware?

[ShatteredDream]

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....

I'm left with Questions!

[jmorris42]

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.

Sure.

[Namarrgon]

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.

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. :)

why, oh why..

[ffsnjb]

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.

KEEP YOUR FUCKING PAWS OFF MY PS2

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

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

Re:Yes. Cray thinks so too

[abhisarda]

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.

c't tested 9 AMD64 boards...

[Lazy Jones]

Here's an (abbreviated) article (German!): http://www.heise.de/ct/03/22/146/