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AMD and Intel CPUs Supported On Same Motherboard

Posted by CowboyNeal on from the stupid-mobo-tricks dept.

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.

9 of 212 comments (clear)

  1. the point is... by idlake · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:the point is... by AndroidCat · · Score: 3, Insightful
      No, it lets them claim that it's swappable.

      It'll come in the Intel configuration, and the extra AMD card will cost more. And then, six months later when you really do want to switch to AMD, you'll find that they don't make the AMD card any more and you're SOL.

      It's aimed at people who can't make up their mind and want expensive training wheels (that don't really work, but have a high feel good factor).

      --
      One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
  2. Interesting stuff... by Lisandro · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

  3. Re:What's the point? by Lisandro · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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.

  4. Re:benchmarking by AndroidCat · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Really? The AMD CPU sits out on a large seperate daughter-board. With a selection of daughter boards, you could probably plug a Z80 into this thing -- but only the Intel chip is going to be "native".

    --
    One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
  5. When It's upgrade time... by Chris+Kamel · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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
  6. Re:dual... by nxtw · · Score: 4, Insightful

    It would be a waste of engineering time and money. The effort needed to make the thing work would not be worth it, IF they could get it to work reliably and fast enoguh.

  7. Re:Who cares? by andreyw · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Apparently being a PhD doesn't imply being able to RTFA. Pin-compatble? Not. Read the damn article. Hell, screw the article - READ THE /. SUMMARY, at least.

    Obsolete architecture? No. Clearly not. Look up the meaning of the word 'obsolete.' Being a so-so architecture with a convoluted design (if you had to write a software opcode decoder for anything > 8086, you know what I am talking about) doesn't imply obsoleteness. Register spilling? What ISA, exactly, are you complaining about anyways - 8086? 80286? IA-32? IA-32 >= 80486? IA-32 >= Pentium? IA-32 >= Pentium Pro? x86-64?

    You conmplain about the boot process.... likely about the non-integral 8086 compatibility mode found in all consumer IA-32 and x86-64 processors. I hope that a smart cookie like you can figure out that the existence of such support is purely market driven? You _do_ realize that Intel manufactures _purely_ 32-bit IA-32 processors, for embedded, industrial and military purposes, that do not support the 8086 ISA?

    And another question. Are you complaining for the sake of complaining? Because I can tell you that from an average-joe, or even HLL programmer perspective, the ISA isn't particularly important, assuming you stick to good programming practices. (Yes, I am looking at you, morons who whine "SIGBUS" after running their broken code on a Sparc).

    You're a PhD at freakin' Stanford. You tell me. Does there exist a motherboard and a matching set of different CPUs with the same pinouts? Wait, this is obvious. Of course not. You realize that the pin differences aren't due to some PHB thinking that having 123123 pins is better than 4242424? If someone DID come up with such a compatibility layer... say... allowing a PowerPC (with whatever bus), to operate on say... the Athlon/AlphaEV6 EV6 bus... then the performance overhead would be heinous.

  8. Re:dual... by ergo98 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Great idea! We can dedicate chips to graphics coprocessing, sound tasks, network relating things, input/output. I hope they build this soon!