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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.
It isn't the same motherboard though. As far as I could tell from TFA the only shared bit are the PCI-E and PCI buses.
I can't see it being cheaper to buy the AMD daughterboard than to buy a real AMD mobo - all this saves you is the hassle of moving your cards across.
If you could use both at once it would be cool but as it is it seems extremely pointless.
I guess today is a passable day to die.
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.
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.
That's what I'm seeing. If they wanted to support both chips, why didn't they just cut the MB in half and support the Intel proc the same way they do the AMD one?
You buy the "lower half" of the board standard (I/O ports, SATA/IDE ports, expansion slots, etc) and then you can build a different "upper half" (Chip socket, RAM, northbridge, etc) for almost as many different processors as you like. Upgrading to a different proc would then be as easy as buying just a new upper half, and you wouldn't have to worry about keeping the new proc compatable with your old mainboard since all that gets swapped out at the same time - and all your existing cards would still work (and not even have to be removed!) Apparently the performance hit would be nill since all the "critical" components are still on the same board.
Having the proc sitting on a perpendicular board might also lend itself to better cooling strategies and more compact designs...
=Smidge=
"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 ?
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?
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!
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.
Why not take this one step further and have the "motherboard" be a bus backplane with your I/O ports and slots, and the daughterboards housing a CPU+RAM. Add in some NUMA and a VM achitecture and you could have an interesting system, kind of like a real computer.
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.
What is the most stable motherboard to run the 64 bit AMD processor? Can someone suggest one please. Thank you!
I know someone who once bought a Compaq laptop because it had a slot where you plug a at some future date plug in a card with a DEC Alpha chip. I don't think that looks too likely to happen...
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
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.
Industrial PCs have been doing this for years... I have one at home sitting in a 4RU case.
Inside the case is 2 x Celeron 366 systems. The CPU sits on a PCI card, has it's own RAM and 3-4 PCI/ISA slots dedicated to that CPU card. The 'mainboard' is basically a PCB with PCI & ISA slots on it. The PSU plugs into the mainboard, and both PCs run side by side in the one case.
Handy to have 2 PCs for different OSs inside the same case, but getting kind of aged now. Don't know if they make these things for new CPUs, but it wouldn't suprise me...
Sendmail is like emacs: A nice operating system, but missing an editor and a MTA.
You, and all the replies below which claim "serious design flaws" with this system really have absolutely no idea what you are talking about..
I went through several tens of these boards and they all ran stable (from several differetn batches over about a year period...
i have seen ALL of these probs on this board... they always end up being either bad ram (not flaky mobo, just crappy generic ram) or an underpowered PSU... It usually is because people who tend to buy an ECS board tend to be cheapskates and buy the cheapest TRASH on pricewatch in both PSU and RAM... and it always ends up being that cheapness that gets in the way...
the MOBO is solid tho. They are almost never flaky when used with a decent PSU and decent RAM.
Your ignorance is infinitely greater than you realize.