AMD Motherboards: Processor Support
by Wesley Fink on June 28, 2005 1:00 PM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
The Processor Factor
Another concern has raised its head in the last few months that should be a consideration for anyone shopping for an Athlon 64 motherboard - the processor factor. When we tested the nForce4 SLI boards we used the 4000+ clawhammer chip as our standard CPU. We also had done some testing with the early Winchester chips which were based on the 90nm production process instead of the 130nm process used for clawhammer. Overall these early 90nm chips were mainly a die-shrink, and performance - and compatability - were much the same whether clawhammer, winchester, or newcastle.Recently, however, we have some new choices from AMD in Revision E chips and dual-core. These new Revision E parts support SSE3, are based on the 90nm process, and they do not always behave as earlier chips did in the same motherboard. We saw this for ourselves in our Gold Editor's Choice MSI K8N Neo4/SLI. While we experienced outstanding overclocking with a clawhammer chip, users with Venice chips were experiencing perfectly miserable overclocking results. It has taken MSI some time to find a solution to this problem, but we are happy to report that a new BIOS has just been released that claims to fix the Venice issues on the MSI. The point of this is that the newest Athlon64 Revision E chips, code-named Venice and San Diego, do behave differently than earlier Athlon 64 chips in some boards. This is likely a temporary concern as the market adjusts to the newest CPU architectures, but it is a factor that should be considered.
This becomes an even larger issue with the new Toledo dual-core processors. The Athlon 64 X2 joins two Venice or San Diego cores on a single CPU. These Revision E X2 dual-core CPUs - the 4200+, 4400+. 4600+, and 4800+ - theoretically will work in any Socket 939 board. However, you will certainly need at least a BIOS upgrade. Most of the major manufacturers have quickly brought the needed BIOS upgrades to market, but if you plan to run a dual-core chip you need to check before you buy.
It should also be mentioned that AMD has implemented a hidden feature in Revision E processors, namely additional memory ratios that can be implemented in BIOS. We saw a Revision E chip mounted on the Abit Fatal1ty AN8 motherboard. Adding the new processor gave the additional options of 433, 466, and 500 to the available memory ratios. This has to be coded in the BIOS to be available, but the new asynchronous ratios are a feature of the Revision E Memory Controller.
The good news, unlike the Intel dual-core, is that just about any Socket 939 motherboard can run dual-core. But you will definitely need a BIOS update and you will definitely need to check to make sure the board you are looking at has an available BIOS supporting dual-core.
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Den - Tuesday, June 28, 2005 - link
Both the ASUS A8N-E and A8V support the E4 (in addition to E3 and E6) stepping according to AMD's page though your article just lists E3 and E6. See cut and paste below...Asus
A8N-E
# 2.0 ATX nVidia nForce4 Ultra Cool'n'Quiet
# PCIe™
# Supports up to processor stepping: E3
# Supports up to processor stepping: E4
# Supports up to processor stepping: E6
xeizo - Tuesday, June 28, 2005 - link
You forgot to mention in the text that there are indeed older K8T800Pro/agp-boards that supports dual-core, in fact they are on your list, like the Abit AV8 2.0 and the Soltek K8TPro-939 ....Olaf van der Spek - Tuesday, June 28, 2005 - link
> Date: June 28th, 2005> Topic: Business
> Manufacturer: 3Com/U.S. Robotics
> Author: Wesley Fink
Did someone do too much copy/pasting?
BTW, _new isn't a valid target for an anchor.
Houdani - Tuesday, June 28, 2005 - link
Is there any value with including which SFF designs are X2 / Rev E compatible?I'm fairly certain the Shuttle SN25P does support the X2.
Aikouka - Tuesday, June 28, 2005 - link
Just as a note, Gigabyte released the BIOS update for the GA-K8N Ultra-9 nForce 4 motherboard today.Wesley Fink - Tuesday, June 28, 2005 - link
$6 - While AMD did not officially support DDR400 with 4 dimms on earlier Athlon 64, the fact is almost every board we tested ran fine at DDR400 with 4 dimms. Check our earlier roundups. The boards that would NOT do DDR400 with 4 dimms stood out, since most would. Also 2x1GB has never been a problem at 1T in our testing.#7 and others - It's good to hear there are new BIOS' to support x2 on nForce3. The websites did not list any nF3 with x2 support when we suveyed the last few days, but readers with nF3 boards will be happy to know some are becoming available.
#10 AMD says that if the board supports Rev. E the X2 chip should run in single core mode to allow BIOS update. If the board does NOT support Rev. E chips you will need a new BIOS chip or an earlier A64 to flash.
arswihart - Tuesday, June 28, 2005 - link
this is what one user that I know of reported when he installed an X2 in an Epox 9nda3+ (NF3) mobo.elpheer - Tuesday, June 28, 2005 - link
Nice article.I'm unclear on one particular point though; am I correct in assuming that if you mount an X2 on a motherboad that has an outdated BIOS, it will successfully boot on just 1 core, thus allowing an OS installation?
This in-case there is no immediate second hand PC available to make a BIOS disk to flash..
bigtoe36 - Tuesday, June 28, 2005 - link
#62x1gig dimms have been doing 1T for a while already with winchester and Clawhammer proving easliy capable of supporting the feature, it was however not guaranteed.
4x double sided will always be 2t in my books, but E die seems to allow some good overclocking so much of the speed can be clawed back.
Wesley Fink - Tuesday, June 28, 2005 - link
#5 - You're Correct and this has been updated.