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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 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.
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.
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.
Umm can't you get that from Apple?
Blacker than my baby girl's stare. Black like the veil that the muslimina wear. Black like the planet that they fear...
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.
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.
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.
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
"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 ?
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.
By the way: Athlon-64 has 16 64-bit GPRs, not 4.
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There are a lot of alternatives out there, and your inability to find/use them is not a problem which AMD and Intel are overly concerned with. For instance, here are a few of your options:
64-bit RISC:
http://www-1.ibm.com/servers/eserver/pseries/
http://www-1.ibm.com/servers/eserver/iseries/
http://www.pegasosppc.com/tech_specs.php
http://www.apple.com/powermac/
http://www.sun.com/servers/index.html
http://www.hp.com/products1/servers/HP9000_family
http://h18002.www1.hp.com/alphaserver/index.html
64-bit CISC:
http://www-1.ibm.com/servers/eserver/zseries/
http://www.hp.com/products1/servers/integrity/ind
Now why would Intel/AMD want to make it any easier than it already is for you to switch?
Phil
I guess today is a passable day to die.
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.
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.
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!"
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.
or it will all be uddnerly irrelevant
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/
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.