Gigabyte K8NNXP-940: Built on Athlon64 FX51 Strengths
by Wesley Fink on October 9, 2003 11:52 PM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
Things were quite strange in the month before the Athlon64 launch. That was about the time reviewers received first details of FX51 — the Enthusiast version of Athlon64. For those who had been following AMD's slow progress to A64 launch, it certainly looked like AMD was worried and wanted to make absolutely sure that A64 would outperform anything Intel could throw at the launch. Perhaps the EE chip info leaked to AMD, and the FX was the insurance just to make CERTAIN Athlon64 would maintain a performance lead. Perhaps AMD was concerned that lack of Dual-Channel memory support on Athlon64 might make consumers think A64 was a slower chip. It isn't, but perceptions sometimes matter more than facts. We don't know the real reason for the FX launch, but whatever the reason, it is clear that it was a last minute decision.
FX51 is basically an Opteron with a different name. It works with a BIOS update on many Socket 940 Opteron boards, and will not work on any of the Socket 754 boards being introduced right now. Like Opteron, it also suffers (or benefits, depending on your perspective) from the requirement for Registered Dual-Channel memory to operate. The only concession is that while it can use Registered ECC memory like Opteron, only Registered is required on FX51.
The even stranger part was AMD's positioning of FX51. They refused to even sample Athlon64 chips, forcing review sites into a position of begging their Advertisers for Athlon64 chips to review anything. Athlon64 launch partners were frustrated because many review sites could not review their new boards because they had no Athlon64 chips. The only sampling that was done by AMD was the very limited sampling of FX51 chips in an AMD prepared system. AMD was clear in their actions and words that they wanted the Launch to be with Athlon64 FX51 processors.
Even now, we have to wonder why. Athlon64 is fully competitive with Pentium4 3.2GHz. It enjoys both a price advantage over the P4 3.2 and the Athlon64 FX51, and, maybe even more important to buyers, it is available while there are almost no FX51 chips to be found. There were also many, many Athlon64 boards at launch, and only the Asus SK-8N board for the FX51 — a board first released as an Opteron motherboard. In addition, AMD was clear in its plan to move FX51 as quickly as possible to Socket 939 in 2004, which is capable of using regular unbuffered memory like most enthusiasts already own. AMD also announced very small production numbers for Socket 940 FX, leaving little incentive for manufacturers to produce Socket 940 boards for the desktop.
Thankfully, the major players — like Gigabyte, Asus, and MSI – have delivered or will deliver Athlon64 FX boards. We were glad to see Gigabyte's K8NNXP-940, which continues Gigabyte's recent stretch of high-end “Dual-Miracle” motherboards. The name is the same as Gigabyte's nForce3 Athlon64 board, with the addition of “940” to the name. As you will see, however, the differences are much deeper than just a different socket.
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Anonymous User - Friday, October 10, 2003 - link
64-bit tests running Linux and hand-compiled programs would be:a) Really time consuming
b) Artificial
c) Not relevant to the real world
Anonymous User - Friday, October 10, 2003 - link
It is odd that NO 64-bit tests has been made. Why don't people fire up Linux and compile a few programs like MPEG encoding, video/divx processing etc etc?Anonymous User - Friday, October 10, 2003 - link
Has anyone tried decreasing both the memory speed and the LDT speed when overclocking an athlon 64 board via the fsb?The reason I ask is that being able to set the memory, and hypertransport ratio's, may make an independant CPU multiplier adjusment redundant.
(obviously it would be nice to rule CPU frequency out of such a test)
PrinceGaz - Friday, October 10, 2003 - link
...almost forgot, why was the P4EE 3.2 not included in the benchmarks?PrinceGaz - Friday, October 10, 2003 - link
Very very nice board and CPU, and impressive benchmarks throughout (you can't expect it to match the P4 for encoding). But next year's 939-pin FX is definitely the one to wait for.#4- QDR is just as unlikely as RDRAM but for different reasons, a key point of the A64/FX is the on-die memory-controller but that means you can't just add another couple of memory-channels to it without a total socket re-design (and for QDR a ridicoulously high pin-count). DDR2 is the way forwards in the future rather than more channels.
I'd really expected the fastest CPU nearly two years after getting my XP1700+ to be more than just 85% or so faster than it (the Barton 3200+ is barely over 50% faster, and the A64 3200+ about 70% faster). Unfortunately I can't justify an upgrade until its over 2x, preferably 3x as fast so I'll wait into next year and see what speed increases the shift to 90nm brings.
Anonymous User - Friday, October 10, 2003 - link
Very impressive board, We've used Gigabyte boards almost exclusively for the past few years at our computer shop and they just keep getting better with every revision. What I'm looking forward to is what they're going to have coming out early next year for the FX, by that time, having an FX system will become a reality for those of us who can't pay an arm and a testes.Anonymous User - Friday, October 10, 2003 - link
I want to know whats up with Gunmetal. Otherwise, great review. I just hope that the prices come down, alot, by spring for my upgrade.Anonymous User - Friday, October 10, 2003 - link
If anyone had doubts about the A64 and FX performance there should be no questions now!FX is intended to satisfy the extreme demands of power users who want the best and they want it now. A64 is a more cost effective solution for those who want outstanding performance at a consumer price point.
As A64/FX ramp all prices will drop as is normal. You'll likely find that the FX series is quite affordable to the enthusiast market and a Helleva value as things ramp.
And there are some more goodies on the way from AMD and it's partners to make all consumers very happy. Stay tuned!
Wesley Fink - Friday, October 10, 2003 - link
#5 - Regular Opterons are locked - at least that is what we found in the 2 we tested. The FX is unlocked.#6 - Yes, this is the first 1394b 800mb/sec Firewire board.
mcveigh - Friday, October 10, 2003 - link
is this the first PC board with firewire800?