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AMD and Intel CPUs Supported On Same Motherboard
Kez writes "We haven't seen AMD and Intel CPUs since Socket 7, but ECS have created a motherboard sporting both Intel LGA775 and AMD 939 sockets. An Intel chip will sit in the board itself, whereas an AMD chip can be used through a daughterboard. HEXUS.net has the scoop from CeBIT." While this is pretty slick, I do wonder who is actually gonna buy this board in place of their usual favorite, since it's not like people are swapping their processors around every chance they get, unless they don't actually use the computer they've built.
mildly sweet, but what I want is a true dual proc with different types. (both running concurrently) the OS then could be smart enough to route certain tasks to whichever processor excels in that area, making for one VERY quick machine.
Hexus seems very excited about this, and I guess if I were a hardware reviewer that was benchmarking chips it would be pretty handy to have an apples-to-apples comparison by using the same motherboard between AMD and Intel chips. Beyond that, I don't see many end users implementing this.
I'm a big tall mofo.
I too am perplexed.
It's like having 2 PCs without the benefit of having 2 PCs.
"I do wonder who is actually gonna buy this board in place of their usual favorite, since it's not like people are swapping their processors around every chance they get, unless they don't actually use the computer they've built."
/.
Says the businessman from
So you won't be buying this then?
I do wonder who is actually gonna buy this board in place of their usual favorite
I suspect this isn't aimed at DIY types. Instead, it lets manufacturers and stores offer a range of configurations in both AMD and Intel without having to create two separate PC lines and without having to increase their inventory.
It'll be very interesting because CPU benchmarks will be more "neutral" on that motherboard
I don't know about the rest, but my experiences with ECS boards (K7S5A mainly, a hidden gem) have been very positive. Nice prices aswell; if they price this one right it could sell like hotcakes among OEM sellers.
For the rest (end users who build their own systems), it's a fix to a problem that doesn't really exists.
Here, wait while I change CPU's... okay, that's better.
With the AMD, this would have been mod'ed -1, but with the Intel, it's only -0.9999999998.
Great, so two irrelevant branches of an obsolete architecture are once again pin-compatible. But what about better architectures? What I would like to see is an architecture-independent motherboard so I wouldn't have to lock myself in the world of endless register spilling (do they have four general purpose registers already?) and 16-bit bootstrap process from the stone age every time I buy a half-decent motherboard. What I would like to see is a good implementation of MMIX with 256 general-purpose 64-bit registers that each can hold either fixed-point or floating-point numbers, i.e. a real 64-bit platform, not a fake one like those from Intel and AMD. That is something I will pay some extra $$$ for. (Do you hear me, Intel? Do you hear me, AMD? I said extra $$$!)
Sincerely,
Pan Tarhei Hosé, PhD.
"Homo sum et cogito ergo odi profanum vulgus et libido."
You can now buy one board and test processors from different systems. Instead of having 2 boards dedicated to testing you can now have one. I don't thisnk I want one of these in my system however.
OEMs have plenty of reason to like this board. Now you can offer both AMD and Intel systems and don't have to bother about buying separate motherboards in bulk for both - with separate support.
That's a decieving blurb. I was pretty excited at first. Bad slashdot =)
That's two motherboards, not a board and a processor daughtercard. Reminds me of Apple with the "DOS Compatibility Card". If pretty much EVERYTHING I need for AMD64 is on the "daughtercard" it's a motherboard in itself. Not to mention that the article doesn't say whether or not that card is a buy-in add-on, which it probably is.
So, you'll shell out X for the Intel board, and X for the AMD sub/conversion/daughter-board.
I can see how it's cool technology, but who's gonna adapt this? And how hard would it have been to intergrate and TRULY have one board?
Blacker than my baby girl's stare. Black like the veil that the muslimina wear. Black like the planet that they fear...
Now retailers can build boxes that can be sold to the public with either Intel or AMD CPUs without having to carry different motherboards for each. This would be great for the places that make low-end to mid-price systems for those who are afraid to open their cases.
I don't think most folks don't know as much about the branding of their motherboard as they do their chipset. With this motherboard, the customer can come in and say "I want AMD" or "I want Intel" and get basically the same setup. This reduces the inventory of the retailer without reducing sales, which would theoretically increase profit, all else being equal.
Or I could be wrong.
Ok, This has to be a Joke Right? Flamebait or just plain foolish, You decide.
We all float down here.
I think they've made one crucial mistake in their implementation.
Look at the pictures in the article and you'll notice something annoying about the position of the AMD daughterboard slot.
It blocks the top PCI slot, turning it into useless space when there is an AMD CPU mounted on the board.
I wonder why they didn't make the AMD daughterboard slot the uppermost slot on the board?
His name is Robert Paulsen...
The point is, when you upgrade your computer and if you decide to change from AMD<->Intel, you can save money by not needing to buy a new motherboard.
If all the new motherbaords start coming out with this as standard in a few years, then computer upgrades will be less restritive for the same cost.
If you put the second processor on a daughterboard, are they really on the same motherboard? By that logic a graphics board is on the same motherboard as the main processor, too, and that's all the more cool because they're completely different kinds of processors.
Call me when they get the two chips sitting side by side and running an OS.
...Can you put linux on it?
May be it can comes in handy, while testing software...
Spank that Sjembek
I do wonder who is actually gonna buy this board in place of their usual favorite, since it's not like people are swapping their processors around every chance they get, unless they don't actually use the computer they've built.
The problem is that by the time you'd want to upgrade your processor and want to have the choice between AMD and Intel, both will have changed their socket designs and u'd need a new mobo anyway.
The following statement is true
The preceding statement is false
But what kind of optimization will the motherboard have? Will it run better with an INTEL chip than an AMD chip, even though the AMD chip is better? Or vice versa?
"Somebody please explain me...."
Ok, if you have one COB (Chip On Board) CPU and it fries, say, oh, because the fan fails and lets the smoke out of the cpu then you have a second chance by plugging in another CPU. Witthout this ability you can do nothing else than throw away an otherwise good motherboard. And it's good to have options as to what CPU you can plug in.
As somebody who had this happen on a 3 month old mobo last week for this exact reason, I'd buy one.
(and yes I vacuumed the dust out tiwce since I got and and checked the fan, it seemed fine during regular PM)
This may not be the intended use but that's how I view this.
Need Mercedes parts ?
Doesn't matter - the Intel customer gets intel, and the AMD customer gets AMD, and both get it cheap. Both will run (presumibly) good enough for OEM.
If i buy Intel, i get the daughter card in addition? Well personally I can only see the advantage of easy upgrades, but a less savvy buyer who buys intel will wonder: What is this thing, and why did i pay for it?
Somebody please explain [why this article is on Slashdot to] me....
Well, Taco's got to pay the bills...
We recently had heard in the office over one of the Yellow Machine that's made by Anthology Solutions.
With the Intel setup, the processor north bridge and RAM are directly connected to the board. On the other hand, the AMD daughterboard is on a card. This means that the system has to go out to the card to communicate with the processor, RAM and north bridge.
I fail to see the allure.
As an OEM, I would want to have seperate models for my AMD offerings versus my intel ones for many reasons.
1. AMD chips are 64 bit.
2. Customers who prefer one manufacturer over another do not get confused.
3. Don't accidentally ship the wrong chip. I mean if someone was looking for a 64 bit chip and was accidentally shipped the Intel one, that could get problematic.
The OEM will want to make obvious destinctions between AMD and Intel offering just so that they ship the right processor to the right customers. Once you have to make that point, the idea that an OEM would want to streamline thier system to the point where you could use the same motherboard would seem pointless.
I miss the Karma Whores.
Major OEMs like Dell that traditionally use Intel Processors exclusively will now be able to let the customer decide whether to get an Intel or AMD processor without having to buy separate motherboards. Hopefully, this will eliminate Dell's excuse on why they use Intel exclusively.
That's a great idea.
Now instead of buying a higher quality but slightly more expensive board (like an nForce type or its Intel-compatable cousin, whatever that is) you can buy a cheap-ass ECS board with gimpy AMD support for the same price!
This wouldn't even be good for reviews, like someone else posted about earlier. Think about what the AMD must now go through besides just an ordinary socket. Hell, even if you made the ordinary 6 inches tall it would probably be faster than this solution!
Job? I don't have time to get a job! Who will sit around and bitch about being broke and unemployed then?
The comp mod community is about to go off with that daughter board. "Hey look, if you run wires from the pins, you can finally upgrade your Nintendo!"
A few years ago I built half a dozen computers based around the ECS K7S5A motherboard, and they all performed (and still are performing) flawlessly. In fact, it was my early success with the K7S5A that led me to try a few other ECS motherboards, mostly with disastrous results. I don't recommend ECS motherboards in general, but in the past I have suggested the K7S5A board to lots of people that were building an AMD system on a tight budget.
The only problem I experienced with the K7S5A was the incredibly tight AGP socket. You couldn't correctly seat the graphics card unless you set the case on it's side and pushed with both hands. I was always afraid that I was about to crack the motherboard... But once you got that sucker in there, everything was fine.
I had 4 or 5 people e-mail me from a discussion forum about the K7S5A. Seems they would boot the machine, hear 8 beeps, and then nothing. (blank screen, no disk activity) The problem was that the AGP card wasn't seated properly. I'd tell them to lay the machine on it's side and really push, and they'd write back saying that they were sure it was already in correctly. But lo and behold, when they actually tried my method, the card dropped another 1/4 inch, and then the system would boot!
The really bad part was that you could insert the card normally and be able to tighten the screw on the back of the card until everything looks just fine, yet the card would still be too high in the socket and the system wouldn't boot. You had to lay it over and really push, and then you'd feel it go "thunk" as it dropped into place.
Back on topic though - I agree that the whole idea of supporting two different CPU's on the same motherboard seems to be aimed at the retailers, not the do-it-yourselfers. I would expect performance to suffer when running one or the other processor. (Try to tweak it in favor of Intel and AMD performance suffers, and vice versa...) A good compromise means they both run slow!
I'm much more interested in what the article didn't cover - does this system, in Intel mode, have three working PCI-E x8 or x16 slots? The connector for the daughterboard looks to be the same as another PCI-E slot (but offset) - does it have to be enabled by jumper, or can you get three PCI-E devices to run at once?
Why not buy a socketed motherboard instead? They you can just plug in another CPU of the same type/brand as you just fried? Really, how likely is it that if you're an Intel guy, that you're going to have an AMD CPU lying around? Or vice versa?
Granted, you might not be a rabid fan of either company and thus may have spares of both makes available... But again, why not just plug in another Athlon when you bake the first one vs plugging in a Pentium IV?
I don't see this motherboard being of much use to the hobbyists. More likely it's aimed at retailers.
Definitely won't be popular among performance/gamer types as the daughterboard appears to impede both of the PCI-E ports leaving you to find a graphics card with a slim cooler - I certainly wouldn't want my brand new X850 stuffed in so close to the CPU. Also your choice of 939 coolers is restricted by the lack of space around the socket. I doubt my arctic freezer 64 would fit in there.
Still it's a good idea. Personally I'd prefer a quick motherboard release system so I could pop out my socket 939 board and slide in the Intel without having to fark about with 50 billion cables and screws.
This could be useful. I work as a hardware tech, and it's a pain to find a motherboard to test CPUs on. If the daughterboard could be made to support other processors, and preferably have some sort of protection, so it wouldn't damage the rest of the system, it could save a ton of time and money.
"Cats and dogs living together!..."
Well, there came a point some years ago when your mother and father performed a common mating ritual. They may have engaged in this particular ritual many times, and may have even engaged in it outside of marriage, but you were conceived on this one occasion. Nine months later, you popped out of your mother and began wailing...
Oh wait, you wanted someone to explain the article to you...
It's a very interesting design which seems to work well, but the main problem is, it's made by ECS. Unless they try to prove they are a reputable manufacturer or license the technology (do they need to do that?) to another company that's more reputable (such as ASUS) and have them manufacture them. Everytime I hear about ECS it's "God damnit, my ECS motherboard failed again!" or "Not again!! The damn capacitors on my ECS board exploded again!"
Am I the only one to find it quite amusing how he appearantly couldn't find the print-screen button?
I think we can keep recursing like this until someone returns 1
Because I honestly can't understand why this is here otherwise.
Yes, but by then, this motherboard will not be able to handle the upgraded processor's speed.
This is great as a concept design to prove that it can be done but even oem's wouldnt have much use for this as is, It could be the start of the modular pc though.
Imagine having a generic motherboard that had the usual ports/expansion slots but needed an additional intel/amd daughterboard, OEM's could build all their pc's with the same motherboard then add the required daughterboard at the end of the process.
Or home users could buy the best motherboard for their needs without having to consider whether its designed for intel or amd processors.
Yawn, did anyone else see the bit about amd ruining him? or is he trying to say all pirates use amd processors?
dude wait until the next piracy related story comes up... I'm sure someone will listen to your whining then.
What is the most stable motherboard to run the 64 bit AMD processor? Can someone suggest one please. Thank you!
Now they can sell AMD machines without selling AMD machines. IT directors who are locked into buying from Dell can buy these with cheap Celerons, then drop in AMD upgrade cards for people who do actual work. Then, when the PHBs notice their IT people have better PCs, they'll hear "Well, we could have bought AMD machines from the get-go for less money, but you said we had to buy from Dell".
At which point there will either be a revalation that Dell sucks, or the IT guy gets fired. Or a PHB with just enough knowledge to be dangerous makes the IT guys configure Pentium 4's instead of Celerons, causing the company's electrical wiring to turn into plasma.
But, yeah, I bet Dell buys these.
Without knowing how much this product will cost I'm skeptical. From other peoples' comments it looks like the daughtercard is just a mini-mobo. Will the savings from having to only stock one type of motherboard and the daughtercard be enough to outweigh charging for features their customers don't need or want? If I was looking for an AMD or Intel system, I probably wouldn't look to be paying a premium for a system I won't use. Will Intel buyers get the option not to take the AMD compatibility with the daughtercard? Will AMD users have to pay an Intel tax?
It was one of those boutique record stores that sell obscure, independent releases that no-one listens to, not even the people that buy them.
This evening, my daughters asked me. "Why do the other kids laugh at us?"
I wanted to tell them the truth - it's because they wear old clothes and have cheap haircuts. I can't afford anything better for them right now.
I vaguely recal asus pimping something like this in the past, a small slot where you could put a 56k modem or some other media perhiprial, but it always baffled me why it was there - you almost never actually heard of anyone carrying the card, and even if they did, why would you ever want it?
The only theory I could come up with was an OEM customer wanted it and it was cheaper to leave it there for the retail version of the board than take it off.
..don't panic
If the point is to allow the motherboard to support two different processors, why not have different daughterboards for each processor instead of having one on board and one off board?
If you were to swap out your processor and replace it with the other kind, how "big" of a "change" would that look like to programs that use product activation - like Windows for instance? Would the change be big enough to require re-activation?
1) This is a troll/comedy.
2) I don't support piracy.
3) I do support p2p and bit-torrent.
FYI: Most small business owners (record stores) have gone out of business due to the competetion from:
a) BestBuy
b) Walmart
c) K-Mart and whoever else.
"Why do the other kids laugh at us?"
Because of your parents unsual gentic makeup. Part Jackass and part Troll.
1) Newer Intel Pentium 4s are compatible with AMD's x86 64 bit implementation
2) If they can have one board and then choose whether they want Intel or AMD, isn't that going to make them _less_ confused?
3) If you can't ship the right product to the right person then you have bigger problems than this
Would be to bring back the PCI X86 card for my mac so I can run Virtual PC emulation at a decent speed!
Is there anything better than clicking through Microsoft ads on Slashdot?
Yea, then they just start stealing/borrowing them from people.
I wonder what happens if you try to use both sockets at once...
To begin with, it's an ECS (which stands for Extremely Crappy Stuff, I believe, although the S may stand for something else).
Who is this for exactly? People who don't know enough to build their own systems most likely don't care if it's AMD or Intel, just that it's inexpensive and it works well (that leaves out ECS), in which case AMD would be the obvious choice anyway...
Like I said, I don't get it.
-- This sig for rent.
Global symbol "$deity" requires explicit package name at line 2. - If only $scripture started "use strict;"
Because I honestly can't udnerstanding why you're posting here otherwise.
I support the Center for Consumer Freedom
3) If you can't ship the right product to the right person then you have bigger problems than this
My thoughts exactly.
You are inexplicable.
-- If no truths are spoken then no lies can hide --
The Idea is nice but I think it won't work without performance losings. We'll see when first benchmarks are made..
I thought Intel and AMD were compatible? You need separate boards for them? Suddenly, the screams of "Macs use proprietary hardware" make less sense.
sounds like a good deal for those who do benchmarks. wanna benchmark processors? do like we did with the Socket 7 days.. just take identical machines, and swap processors.
"Champagne for my real friends - and real pain for my sham friends!" http://ericblade.postalboard.com/
"Why not buy a socketed motherboard instead? "
Like I had a choice. "Here's three computers, make them work". Great.
I had no idea you could even buy a new contemporary working computer for $300 CAD. Gosh they're light. They don't even make good doorstops or boat anchors any more.
No more PC's for me, I'm sick of cheap crap and a well spec'd PC cost more to make and more hasle to build than a decent used mac, so I'm going Mac from hereon out anway.
I just wish they hadn't deviated from the one true (SCSI) path. IME over a two decades of futzing with drives SCSI is more reliable if not generally faster.
Need Mercedes parts ?
This will be great for barebone systems. It'll alow them to now sell them without a processor necessarily. The customer can decide whether they want an AMD or an Intel processor. The only problems is the unnecessarily large daughter board that the AMD chip will sit in...
Come on... Dr. Pantyhose?
I doubt the new Slashdot crowd in our midst has ever seen any venture before this ECS motherboard, and I know of one for having awe-full(good) merit; PANDA. That PANDA was a excellent architecture put into production that was verry standards-compliant to allow an interchange of daughterboards interface to the main adaptor plane to allow ease of upgradability. At the time, the architecture was implemented for cross-use between Intel PENTIUM PRO and the DEC ALPHA 21164. The designs were further built to allow interchange for a PowerPC host, and many more were being completed in the draft. Here is the google cache with some pictures of the gaudy PANDA. Every once in a long while, there is an auction posted on eBay with this computer. Verry durrable computer, as anything graced by DEC employees tends to have value that goes beyond the forecasted market consumption.
The PANDA architecture is such a extensible design that it scaled beyond its time. There were dual and quad CPU implementations and the like; the enclosure's gaudy color was over-looked by the step-fastended media drivers. More google cache with details on the Archistrat computers.
This design dies quick, for obvious reasons; it is as though its a forum for competitors to engange intercourse between their products, and they don't want consumable hardware and not something that can last a long time: atourn; replace the CPU, the whole computer needs a new spine to match; like grapting an orange tree sy-Stem and an pink grapefruit sy-Stem onto a Lemon Tree(TM) for use as a more regenerative computer like an old mobile car.
without prejudice
(puts on anti licensed-lawyer/attorney button)
Christ commands me that the thought be expressed in such a way easier comprehensible to information farmers: a sy-Stem of another Tree is graft onto the mainboard (trunk), causing the Executive branch (in this case an Intel CPU), to wither and become dormant until necessary energy moves through its Circuit warranting a vital Court to begin session.
In other words, that daughterboard is bipassing the Intel CPU for a defacto forum just as the Judiciary Department impunes the original cognizance of the de-jure Judiciary! To remind you, the original Judiciary is part of the Tree and its this other Judiciary Department that refers to the original as a peculiar part only because one is original and ther other is detracted by Contract; you need to pay extra monies and appoint the AMD daughterboard than you would for the original Intel CPU implimentation.
The persecution rests, your honor.
without prejudice
Not nessicarily. Every processor since the K5/Pentium Pro has been a RISC processor with a RISC-to-CISC translation layer. Essentially a really good x86 emulator. If you check benchmarks of the Itanium it was actually faster clock for clock at x86 than an equally clocked Xeon. The only huge difference was price.
The PANDA architecture was great!
Interchange between Intel Pentium Pro, DEC Alpha, PowerPC, et al
Great design; the implementations are still power-ed up today and they can run MS Win NT 4 or LINUX.
I posted previously, and to serve food for your diet visit
here and here. PANDA, when it arrived, was quite expensive. As you can see, ECS is reaping the benefits of a better market and better technology of today. Perhaps, the holders of PANDA intellectual property should be made aware of ECS' interests on this Claim.
without prejudice
Panda was expensive because:
A) It was designed as a graphics workstation in a day and age when something like the Radeon X800 was but a dream and a Voodoo cost $2500.
B) Weighed 75 pounds, had motorized doors, and SCSI drive arrays stored NASCAR grade roll cages.
That's why Panda died.
I've had a K7S5A for a long time now (three years? started out with a Duron 750), and never had problems with this board. It's been my main system the entire time, and has had various forms of Linux, Windows 2000, and XP installed. Very compatible system with all of the operating systems I've tried so far (everything just WORKS), and I believe I paid about $60 for the board when it was new.
It was upgraded to an XP1600, and finally a mobile Athlon XP2600 (45W version, Barton core).
It is currently running with 512MB of PC2100 memory, two IDE drives, a DVD-ROM, and CD-RW, the mobile Athlon XP2600, and an ATI Radeon 9600 w/256MB of RAM.
No, it's not the cream of the crop, but it IS a very stable system that has worked at advertised speeds, and then some. I have no need to upgrade at this point, but when I do, I will be looking at ECS motherboards in the future.
Well I don't know about your experiences with the board, but mine mostly positive.
I came across one after a flood took out my system. When everything is ruined you need to assess how much money you are willing to put into a computer. In my case it was free (thanks scot). I had problems with it, stability etc., but they have been cleared up. It was very picky as to driver install order.
I'll second that the sound is crap, but I don't really like onboard sound as a general rule. A SBLive can be had for ~20, so it is a non-issue, and it isn't hard to find a second hand sound card if you have friends.
I know it hated my 1400 MHz thunderbird, but it likes the XP1600+ I traded it for.
I haven't had any memory problems at all, I have 2 Crucial PC2100 sticks in it, running on max setting, and I have passed MemTest86 Loops over and again. It is Stable for me in Win2k and Debian, which is all I care about.
The real reason I like the system is that SiS chips are Linux friendly.
The bottom line is it wouldn't have ever been my first choice, but It didn't bite me in the end. I'm happy with it, and don't plan to upgrade for some time, and will keep this board in service until someone else needs it or it dies.
My inner self is ineffable, so don't eff with me.
My thought: it's actually cheaper this way. In the majority of cases this board will sell in an Intel-based system. So you just use a normal Intel chipset plus an normal Intel CPU... and you have a few extra dollars in cost for the relevant glue for the alternative-CPU option, but that cost is offset by the flexibility (for the whitebox shop) of being able to add the daughterboard instead of keeping a whole new MB in inventory... To build a system that could take either CPU on a daughtercard pushes up the cost of the most common configuration (the Intel) and could add complexity and cost to the basic board (some custom design capable of supporting either daughterboard).
You want version 5.0 of this motherboard, and then get a honeyx OC bios and update it to that to get IO APIC. After that, it should be pretty rock solid, I run a 1.33ghz at 1.47ghz, which is the equivalent of 1800+ apparently (i hate their system).
I've never had any problems with the board and I'd recommend it to anyone who needed a look-end workstation(by todays standards).
Of course I don't use the onboard video/sound and most of the things I don't use are turned off. It's important to read around and find out if there are any things in your bios that can enhance the performance/stability. Usually it's a tradeoff.
Anyways here's a link to a useful read on the K7S5A
[cx]
NCR sort of beat them to the finish line. Sure, it's not PCI-E or even ISA, but it appeared to cross 3 architectures (8086|8088/Z80/68000) IIRC. The CPU was added in via a card in the back. Z80 by default, 8086/8088 or 68000 if you had it.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
"They have fought the War on Drugs with skill"
hilarrrrrious...
Insightful???? come on! Funny maybe, but insightful - how can sarcasm be mistaken for insightful?
The mantra of impending doom: "Cooperate and Graduate"
ECS and PC-Chips are one company. I do hope I don't have to remind anyone here of the "write back cache" scam that PC-Chips pulled in the 90's, or how criminally horrible their boards are in terms of quality and stability.
I think of the ECS and PC-Chips logos are warning labels that say "RUN AWAY!!!"
If this board were being made by a more reputable and ethical vendor then I might find it somewhat interesting. As it stands the only way I'd tell anyone to buy this board, or any other from ECS/PC-Chips, is if I had some reason to really hate them. If they stole my girlfriend, for example, or killed my cat. If they were a democrat I'd be torn between recommending a PC-Chips board and telling them they should buy a Mac. It's a shame I wouldn't be able to tell them to buy a Mac with a motherboard made by ECS.
You think they got the idea from this bitchin' video card?
I'd rather they build a board that takes both an Athlon64/Opteron & a PowerPC. It should be easier too since both are using HyperTransport unlike the Intel/AMD case.
"We haven't seen AMD and Intel CPUs since Socket 7"
LOL. I guess most of us have been using PPC CPUs all along and not even realize it.
B) Weighed 75 pounds, had motorized doors, and SCSI drive arrays stored NASCAR grade roll cages.
And the drivers are alive, to this day; thanks to that roll cage. Problem is, their logical clock thinks it's the year 1905. Memory loss, or the effect of not shunning alcohol: you decide!
without prejudice
well, I like this news I can search more about this mobo only for curiosity, although I personally prefer MSI mobo's for instance.
"I'm proud to have one of the most extensive Christian rock sections that I know of."
Yay!
Christianity has failed you.
Given the crappy chipset I'd say the Intel chip is going to suffer more - the AMD doesn't need to use it's northbridge.
We haven't seen AMD and Intel CPUs since Socket 7
Dude, speak for urself, you have got to have been sleeping for a really long time.....
The following statement is true
The preceding statement is false
By the time you'll want to change processors, the motherboard will be obsolete anyway. Plus, it has good chances to have middle to poor performance compared to a AMD or Intel-only motherboard. I just don't see the point... To stay ahead of the competition, you have to provide high-performance products, not products that make people talk a lot but that no one will actually care about.
How the hell are they using a Sempron Processor on that thing? The board is socket 939 and the sempron 2200+ is socket A afaik. Also, If you look at the last image, it says its an AMD Athlon 64 2200+, which don't exist. This is really weird. Unless I am missing something like Semprons being 64-bit or them being in 939 as well, something doesn't add up.
I need a sig.
Who else would spend all this time in R&D?
Why would anyone add more power consumption without adding performance (assuming that - at least in my universe, Intel isn't going to allow concurrent processing with the competition.)
I haven't recently needed to cure my insomnia by reading my Windows EULA, but I'm reasonably sure they will get additional license fees if you run the OS on more than one processor.
Just buy two boxen.
Blade type systems aren't really the same as what I was thinking as they lack the NUMA and (native) virtual machine capabilities that would make it truly interesting.
Imagine a system with 4 video cards and 4 CPU cards in it. With NUMA and VM capabilities, it could be one 4-CPU system with a 4-head video system. Or two dual CPU systems with dual video. Or 4 systems. Or even more if you were willing to partition the 'smaller' systems through the VM with less access to the CPU.
I honestly don't understand why Intel or AMD aren't doing more to improve the virtualization of their CPUs. VMWare is really good, but the ability to truly virtualize all the hardware without massive emulation penalties is a big problem.
this reply is not necessarily directed at parent, just at this portion of discussion in general. i wish people would stop giving emotional reviews based on the one board they tried! even the best companies have some failures, so don't blame the whole brand just cuz yours broke! what's more, if it worked for years, that's great. but it's like Chris Rock said... 'people are always trying to get credit for what they s'posed to do!'. It's great that it worked for years, but it supPOSED to work for years ya big dummy! my experience is 2 ECS boards. 1 K7S5A & 1 K7SEM. basically i had such bad luck w/ VIA KT133A boards (ASUS A7V133 & ABIT KT7-RAID) that i wanted a replacement which took PC133 ram & there weren't many that were not based on the same KT133 chipset. my k7s5a was unstable w/ 2 slots of PC133 but stable with only one (either one). newsgroups confirmed this so i upgraded to pc2100. since then it has run like a champ. stil my main box at work (soon to be ugraded to Athlon64, gigabit spare no expense this time!:). i compile a lot, rip dvd's, multitask & generally run it pretty hard every day. never a problem. mind you the a7a266 w/ the ALi chipset was one of the only other boards that offered either DDR or SDR ram for the athlon. (i'm typing this on one & it has been good for me so far but did need bios & driver updates to get stable.) K7SEM gave me no problems from day 1. but it was not used real hard that much. so i was certainly dissapointed by the inability to run 2 simultaneous srd sdram slots & the fact that it was endemic to k7s5a in general & not just mine means that the boards were simply not well enough tested.... no way around that. so while many of their boards run ok, from my perspective it's clear that ECS at the time was not testing their boards enough. this was of course evident in their rock bottom prices. Now the guys who have seen the returns should know better b/c they have seen bigger numbers. but remember that it's all proporional to units sold. ECS sells a lot of boards cuz they're so cheap, so you need to expect a lot of returns. Remember too that every manufacturer has had bad lots. We bought a batch of the old IBM deathstars & go screwed! almost every single one broke! Internal IBM leaks later revealed that they knew the disks were bad! Top of the line enermax 350w power supplies also screwed us. every single one broke! the fortrons, however, are still kicking! so really you need statistics, everything else even if you bought 10 bad ones is just anecdotal. really, newegg & monarch should list the return rates on the products, but i bet the manufacturers wouldn't like that! aargh i keep going! there's no way to win w/ pc parts. b/c by the time you know if a model is reliable it's obselete by definition. all the review guys test for a week put out some benchmarks & move on! doesn't tell you how well it will last for 3 years of heavy use! ok done now :)
bye