Athlon64 Motherboards And Chips Compared

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Athlon64 Motherboards And Chips Compared

Posted by timothy on Sunday January 25, 2004 @07:56PM from the just-us-oranges dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Just noticed that OverclockersClub has a new article (free, no reg, blah blah blah) that describes the AMD64 processors. The article talks about the differences in each processor and compares them as well as puts everything in a nice easy to read chart. Pretty nice article if you aren't familiar with all the new tech." Makes a good match for Johnny-boy's submission. He writes "HardwareZone has a 46 page article out that compares many of the Athlon64 motherboards out on the market now. If you are planning to get that Socket-754 motherboard, maybe this article is worth a look."

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Don't get socket 754 by DarkHelmet · 2004-01-25 19:56 · Score: 5, Interesting

Now really isn't the time to get an Athlon.
The 939 pin athlons are just around the corner, which is the migration path of most of the athlon sets.
754 series sets will still only have a single channel 128 bit pathway. It's not worth it.
Wait until the 939 pin, and get dual channel memory transfer in a non-FX Athlon64. Even if you're only getting half the cache (1 meg vs 512kb) on the 939 pin versions, chances are you will be able to overclock it more because it's a smaller die space.
46 pages... I wanted a motherboard review, not a dissertation :)

--
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1. Re:Don't get socket 754 by lakeland · 2004-01-25 19:59 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  And lemme guess, just around the corner from 939 pin athlons is ...
  
  C'mon, we all know that the week we buy the latest gizmo it will be obsolete.
2. Re:Don't get socket 754 by OverlordQ · 2004-01-25 20:11 · Score: 4, Funny
  
  Humm I suppose I can't break off a pin to make my 940 Athon a 939 now can I? :)
  
  --
  Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
3. Re:Don't get socket 754 by vollmerk · 2004-01-25 20:14 · Score: 4, Funny
  
  Everything always gets outdated... I'm still holding out on getting a car. I figure I'll wait for one of those quantum teleporters...
4. Re:Don't get socket 754 by steveha · 2004-01-25 20:33 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  I used to worry about sockets and the future.
  
  Then I noticed that I never swap CPUs out anyway. Motherboards are cheap enough, I swap an entire motherboard with its CPU. In fact, usually I swap out entire computers.
  
  Since we use all our computers, I usually build a complete new computer, get it working, swap it for the older one, and keep the older one handy for a while as a hot spare in case something goes wrong with the new one. Then later I find a good home for the older computer.
  
  (Now that I'm buying Lian Li aluminum cases, I'll probably start swapping motherboards into cheaper steel cases, and putting new motherboards into the Lian Li case.)
  
  But anyway, I might get a socket 754 motherboard and chip. It will outperform any computer I currently own, and it should have adequate horsepower to play Half-Life 2 and Doom 3.
  
  steveha
  
  --
  lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
5. Re:Don't get socket 754 by Sivar · 2004-01-25 20:49 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  Socket 745 Athlons have a single 64-bit memory bus, not a 128-bit memory bus. (probably just a typo)
  
  In any case, it is important to remember: Athlons are not Pentium IVs. Athlons do not have the performance hit that P4s have with lower bandwidth. Currently, very few applications care whether you have single or dual channel memory--the performance difference is in the low single digits. After Athlon64s significantly ramp up in clock speed, we wil begin to see a greater advantage of having more bandwidth, but not before.
  
  Also, I wanted to note that currect 512K Athlon64s DO NOT have a smaller die space. They are more or less 1MB chips with half the cache disabled. Future revisions will actually cut out the cache, but for the time being AMD needed to market a cheaper Athlon64, and didn't have the time or money to modify manufacturing equipment to manufacture a third completely different die. That said, die space doesn't directly have anything to do with how overclockable a chip is.
  
  --
  Computer Science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes. --E. W. Dijkstra
Well..... by agent+dero · 2004-01-25 20:03 · Score: 5, Interesting

I was actually looking into Athlon 64's today; and i'm not seeing the price benefit compared to a PowerMac G5.

Right now, there's no GREAT 64 bit OS out there (linux, forget XP 64bit) I think we should treat Athlon64 like MacOS 10.0 (sorry, i'm a mac guy) for early adopters only

Give it another 6 months, then it'll be a great server/workstation solution

--
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1. Re:Well..... by steveha · 2004-01-25 20:37 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  And I was actually looking into buying some oranges today, but I'm not seeing the price benefit compared to applesauce.
  
  Or, to put it less obliquely, that's a strange comparison. A PowerMac G5 is for someone who wants a Mac. An Athlon64 motherboard is for... well, not someone who wants a mac.
  
  Hope this helps.
  
  P.S. The Athlon64 actually offers great price/performance in plain old 32-bit mode. It gets even better in 64-bit mode, but there's no reason to wait for ready availability of 64-bit software. Just as there's no reason to hold off on buying a G5 for a fully 64-bit MacOS.
  
  steveha
  
  --
  lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
2. Re:Well..... by Moraelin · 2004-01-25 22:12 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  I'll give you a price benefit all right. I've built an Athlon 64 system, with a Radeon 9800 XT and 512 MB DDR400 RAM. I did keep most of my old computer components, like hard drives, DVD drive, etc.
  
  It was less than _half_ the price of an 1600 MHz G5 Mac with a Radeon 9800 Pro (i.e. previous generation), 512 DDR 333 RAM (yep, slower), a smaller hard drive, etc.
  
  Even after changing the Mac's DVD writer to a DVD/CDR drive, it still stayed more than twice as expensive, and offering far less horse power. Go figure.
  
  And if I'm to factor in the cost of buying all my software again, if I were to "switch"... well, you get the idea.
  
  So there you go. Maybe you can't see it, but half the cost for _more_ power, sure looks like enough of a price advantage to me.
  
  --
  A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Speed for speed's sake by ObviousGuy · 2004-01-25 20:11 · Score: 4, Interesting

Back a few years ago, these speed increases really meant something. It meant the difference between waiting for the OS to finish some task and being able to use the computer without much noticeable latency. These days, the difference just isn't as staggering.

I will admit, though, that if you use KDE/Linux there are some things that could definitely use a speed-up like switching between apps and loading the GUI shell. However, beyond that, modern operating systems work just fine with today's processors.

The argument to this is always "what if you're doing serious number crunching or graphical rendering?", but the answer to that is that there are dedicated DSPs out there that can perform those computations much more efficiently than the CPU. Relying on the CPU to give good Quake framerates is like relying on your auto-body shop to soup up your ricer. Yes, there are some increases in performance, but the real horsepower behind these things lies in the video card and engine, not in the CPU and rice spoiler.

I'm all for improvements in chip technology, but software lags so far behind the capabilities of modern CPUs that it's preposterous to climb on the upgrade cycle, regardless of the circumstances.

--
I have been pwned because my /. password was too easy to guess.
1. Re:Speed for speed's sake by Sivar · 2004-01-25 21:04 · Score: 4, Interesting
  
  I have to disagree.
  First of all, games are not necessarily limited only by the video card. Certainly if you run the latest games in the highest resolution with 8x AA, your video card will be the bottleneck, but often times only these extreme situations make that true.
  
  Morrowind, for example, doesn't really care much about your video card. If you have a Geforce 3, it is happy. It does, however, care about your CPU. If your CPU is not god incarnate, your frame rate will be limited, particularly in some of the more dynamic scenes. The fastest CPU at the time of release, the P4 2.53GHz, could not muster much of a frame rate regardless of video card.
  
  Any 2D game will be CPU limited as well. Baldur's Gate 2 still chugs on some of the extremely large fights even on my AthlonXP 2500+.
  
  In Starcraft, I assure you that my carrier attack will slow your frame rate regardless of your CPU. ;-)
  
  Other than in video games, I am currently transcoding a Babylon 5 video from MPEG-2 to DivX (using Xvid) on my laptop. It is an Athlon64 3200+--the fastest laptop processor money can buy (well, strictly for video transcoding, the highest end Pentium IVs are actually slightly faster) and it takes about 6 hours for a 2hr movie, 3 hours for an episode. If I had a 20GHz Athlon64 it would still take forever.
  
  To come to a point, yes, modern operating systems do tend to run fine on modern fast processors (with the possible exception of WindowsXP and anything running KDE or Gnome2 ::ducks::), but there exists quite a bit more software than old games and operating systems.
  
  A few other examples:
  
  - There isn't a computer on the planet fast enough to install Gentoo Linux quickly.
  
  - FreeBSD's make world will be noticeable non-instantaneous for many GHz to come.
  
  - Waiting for Visual C++ in Windows to compile... Well, anything at all, is not instantaneous even on an 8-way Xeon.
  
  - Waiting for Regedit in Windows to search for a certain key or value will NEVER be fast on ANY computer. I don't know what search algorithm Microsoft chose for that thing, but it's damn slow for searching through just 10 or so megabytes of data.
  
  - Anything ever written with SWING in Java. It was slow in 1996 and it's slow now. To avoid flames, I love Java as a language, but SWING is slower than a dead slug stuck in frozen molasses.
  
  The opinions expressed in this post do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the poster.
  
  --
  Computer Science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes. --E. W. Dijkstra
2. Re:Speed for speed's sake by jmv · 2004-01-25 21:21 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  Actually, current DSPs aren't *that* fast. With x86 CPUs that have a *theoretical* performance in the order of 10 gflops, the DSPs have lost ground. Not only that, but they're much more complicated to program. Believe me, I'm doing all kinds of audio processing and if you give me a CPU that's 10x faster, I'll make use of it in a minute. There's still so many things you can't do right now with audio (even more true with video) because it would be too slow.
  
  --
  Opus: the Swiss army knife of audio codec
Another article by ValourX · 2004-01-25 20:14 · Score: 5, Informative

I wrote an AMD64 article a while ago... something a little simpler, for those not so technically-minded:

AMD 64 Explained

Someone said above that there are no good AMD64 OSes... bullshit... SuSE 9.0 AMD64 is more than usable, and FreeBSD 5.2 AMD64 is almost perfect; in fact I'm typing this from Mozilla Firebird on FreeBSD 5.2-RELEASE AMD64 right now.

-Jem
Would someone mind telling me the difference... by double-oh+three · 2004-01-25 20:14 · Score: 5, Interesting

Would someone mind telling me the difference between the 939 pin and the 940 pin? What difference can that one pin make?

--
"For years, I struggled with reality... but I'm happy to say I finally won out over it." -- Elwood P. Dowd
1. Re:Would someone mind telling me the difference... by 10Ghz · 2004-01-25 20:33 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  939 = Single-CPU only. 512KB of L2-cache, 128bit mem-controller
  
  940 = 1-8 CPU's. 1MB of L2-cache, 128bit mem-controller.
  
  --
  Lesbian Nazi Hookers Abducted by UFOs and Forced Into Weight Loss Programs - -all next week on Town Talk.
2. Re:Would someone mind telling me the difference... by Sivar · 2004-01-25 20:43 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  Socket 939 will allow motherboard manufacturers to easily make 4-layer designs.
  In English: Cheaper motherboards for the dual channel Athlon64s.
  
  Athlons are efficient with their use of memory bandwidth, so current Athlon64s don't really care about the second memory channel much at the moment. It has a minimal effect on performance. However, since processor technology moves more quickly than memory technology, future 3+GHz processors will start to see a significant benefit from the added bandwidth. Of course, by then, DDR2 will be readily available so we'll just have to see how it all turns out.
  
  --
  Computer Science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes. --E. W. Dijkstra
3. Re:Would someone mind telling me the difference... by Imperator · 2004-01-25 23:22 · Score: 4, Funny
  
  Wow, the 941-pin socket must be really something!
  
  Cheers, :)
  
  --
  
  Gates' Law: Every 18 months, the speed of software halves.
Athlon64 Motherboards And Chips Compared by Anonymous Coward · 2004-01-25 20:15 · Score: 5, Funny

Let's see the Motherboards are about 8 inches square but the chips are much smaller ...
Re:!opteron == no dual proc by runderwo · 2004-01-25 20:32 · Score: 4, Insightful

As much as I love AMD, I would recommend against the Athlon64 chipsets, unless you *must* have a 64 bit chip.
Why? They are much faster at running even 32-bit code than Athlons. They dissipate less power. They have safety features built in to prevent overheating, and power throttling built in to prevent less wasted energy when idle.
Perhaps the only reason not to move to the AMD 64 platform is the entry price, currently. The early adopters will take care of knocking that down for the rest of us.

--
LRC, the best-read libertarian site on the web
Re:Are the apps there? by Anonymous Coward · 2004-01-25 20:34 · Score: 5, Funny

Of course.
Starfox 64
Mario Cart 64
Random Nintendo Franchise 64
Oh wait... for the computer then no.
Re:Are the apps there? by ValourX · 2004-01-25 20:40 · Score: 4, Informative

Most open-source projects are now in the process of, or have completed AMD64 compatibility. I'm typing this from Mozilla Firebird on AMD64 FreeBSD 5.2-RELEASE. I have a whole bunch of programs from the Ports system that work perfectly... the ones that aren't ported yet are the proprietary clones, like the Flash plugin, GAIM, and Java. Opera doesn't work in 64-bit mode yet either, neither does TextMaker.
-Jem
Re:Sometimes I wish I were stupid... by WIAKywbfatw · 2004-01-25 20:44 · Score: 4, Insightful

AMD's roadmap is simple: faster processors as soon as possible.

All you have to do is worry about how much computational power you want and how much money you want to spend on a CPU and motherboard.

Let's face it, if you hope to see an appreciable speed bump when you upgrade, buying a first-generation chip and plugging it into a first-generation motherboard with the expectation that you'll get that big speed bump when you plug in a second- or third-generation chip a couple of year's down the line is the wrong way to go about it. Yes, the new CPU will have a faster clock speed but the rest of the motherboard will be two years out of date.

Take my AMD Athlon motherboard as an example. When I bought it a couple of years back, together with an 1200MHz CPU (then the second fastest chip in the range), it had all the latest bells and whistles. But today, its support for USB 1.1, DDR2700 RAM and even PATA RAID make in far inferior to the vast number of motherboards out there that support USB 2.0, DDR3200 and 3500 RAM and SATA RAID, not to mention IEEE 1394 (FireWire), Gigabit Ethernet, better POST reporting, etc.(I won't even start to debate the performance benefits of newer nForce2 Ultra chipsets over their older counterparts.)

To match the features of the latest AMD Athlon/Athlon XP motherboards with my older motherboard I would have to add in at least two, maybe three or four, PCI cards. This would work, but it would be an inelegant (taking up valuable PCI slots), costly (PCI cards aren't free) and inefficient (PCI cards require drivers, configuration, etc) solution. Far better and cheaper to upgrade the motherboard along with the CPU in one go, allowing me to put the older motherboard and CPU combination into another machine/my spares box/the charity bin.

Seriously, when buying a motherboard and CPU, look past the upgrade path. It's a serious red herring, even for PC enthusiasts such as ourselves.

--

"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
No 64bit Linux OS??? by _Pinky_ · 2004-01-25 20:56 · Score: 4, Interesting

If I do recall there is a gentoo live CD out right now.. In fact the gentoo page has a Athlon 64 faq out here:
http://dev.gentoo.org/~brad_mssw/amd64-tech-note s. html
Now, like all new technologies, there maybe certains apps that don't work, compilations errors, and other problems... But how will they be fixed unless people try it, and send back bug reports?
1 MKB of L2 cache! by Anonymous Coward · 2004-01-25 21:37 · Score: 5, Funny

According to the side by side comparasion chart there's 1 megakilobyte of L2 cache on the 64-FX! With a gig of memory on die, no wonder it's so expensive.
Athlon64 Coming Along Slowly by gbulmash · 2004-01-25 22:20 · Score: 4, Interesting

I wish I'd done more research on hardware compatibility, particularly motherboards, because installing 64-bit Linux has been a bitch. I'm only now getting to the point where I can have a fully-working installation without having to add in redundant devices to compensate for onboard chipsets that AMD64 Linux distros couldn't work with.

Nvidia Nforce drivers only got released in the last month so my onboard LAN on my ASUS SK8N works. Mandrake 9.2 RC1 recognizes my Promise onboard SATA RAID controller, but SuSE doesn't, and even then the driver in Mandrake is an 0.83 release.

I haven't played with the Fedora Core release candidate test version for Athlon 64 yet.

IMO, If you want to run 64-bit Native Linux on AMD64 without a lot of headaches and weeping, wait another 6 months until the distros and drivers have solidified more. In 6 months, you'll probably be able to get a CPU a generation or two higher than you can today, but for the same money, and you'll be able to install AMD64 native Linux much more easily... It's win-win.

- Greg

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