Athlon 64 Revision E: Unofficial DDR500 Support
by Anand Lal Shimpi on July 11, 2005 12:05 AM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
Enabling Support for the new Dividers
BIOS support for the new dividers must be enabled by your motherboard manufacturer. Apparently, AMD has been sharing the information with motherboard manufacturers if they ask, on how to implement it, but it is not given out by default.For our tests, we used DFI’s LANParty UT nForce4 Ultra-D, whose 704_22V6 BIOS dated 7/06/2005 supports the new dividers.
Not all of the configurations are supported by the LANParty UT nForce4 Ultra-D. Below is a table of what is supported by the board:
| CPU | Clock Speed | Memory Dividers Supported by the DFI nF4 Ultra-D | |||
| 13/12 | 7/6 | 5/4 | 4/3 | ||
| AMD Athlon 64 FX-57 | 2.8GHz | 215MHz | - | 233MHz | - |
| AMD Athlon 64 3800+ | 2.4GHz | - | 218MHz | 240MHz | - |
| AMD Athlon 64 3500+ | 2.2GHz | - | 220MHz | 244MHz | - |
| AMD Athlon 64 3200+ | 2.0GHz | - | 222MHz | 250MHz | - |
| AMD Athlon 64 X2 4800/4600+ | 2.4GHz | - | 218MHz | 240MHz | - |
| AMD Athlon 64 4200/4400+ | 2.2GHz | - | 220MHz | 244MHz | - |
The dividers appear in the BIOS based on your selected clock speed, and appear as both an estimated DDR frequency as well as the actual memory divider that you are selecting. Because of the variation in actual DDR frequency, the estimated frequency is often wrong. For example, the FX-57 using the 5/4 divider results in a DDR466 speed, while the BIOS incorrectly refers to the 5/4 divider as enabling DDR500.
There are other motherboards with BIOS support for these new dividers, such as the ABIT Fatal1ty AN8-SLI with its latest BIOS. You can expect most enthusiast motherboard manufacturers to follow suit, if they haven’t already.
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ElJefe - Monday, July 11, 2005 - link
Well, I could say this would have been a great test if only one thing: to show the effect of TIMINGS on this. I know the OCZ had sickest tight timings, but im talking about the difference of say, using 4 single gig memeory modules and then messing around with the timings, showing which is best. I know at 1 gig, most of those l33t ram flashy types of dual channel matches drop off and kinda go into hum-drum land.If i had an X2 system it would have 2 gigs on two chips or 4 gigs on 4 chips. I couldnt see a dual proc system built for simply faster gaming, it's meant to be a cookie monster of processes.
KristopherKubicki - Monday, July 11, 2005 - link
bupkus: DDR2 comes with the M2 socket next year. At least, thats according to the roadmap.Kristopher
fishbits - Monday, July 11, 2005 - link
"The ceil() function is a pretty basic mathematical function that returns the smallest integer value greater than its argument..."Think that should be "greater than or equal to." ceil(10.0)=10. Not that it exactly matters much in this context. Anyhoo...
I'm glad AMD is further ahead of supporting mem speeds than needed, as opposed to playing catch-up. Additional options and capability for their future items will pay off down the road if not now.
brownba - Monday, July 11, 2005 - link
#1"keeps getting better and better."
huh? did you look at the benchmarks?
what is better?
Anand just showed us to save our money, we don't the very fastest ram, so I guess that is better.
Wesley Fink - Monday, July 11, 2005 - link
#2 - The OCZ PC3500 GX is specially binned BH5. Anand had planned to use VX memory but it was out of stock as this article was being developed. OCZ binned some BH5 at 3.3V for 2-2-2 operation at DDR500 to meet the requirements of this review and turned it around in a few hours. The point is that OCZ PC3500 GX will NOT all operate at 2-2-2 at DDR500. The OCZ VX and Mushkin Redline, on the other hand, are both rated 2-2-2 at DDR500 at 3.5V. The VX/Redline are based on Winbond CH5 blanks.Wesley Fink - Monday, July 11, 2005 - link
#20 - There is a new official DFI BIOS in the works that is to post soon. However, as I mentioned in the nF4 Ultra roundup there are over 60 BIOS revisions avaialble for the DFI nF4 boards. Oskar Wu of DFI has posted many of the BIOS' at www.dfistreet.com, the DFI Forum website, or in the Forums at www.xtremesystems.org.yacoub - Monday, July 11, 2005 - link
[In keeping with our recently growing practice,] "We chose three CPUs to investigate the impacts of these new memory dividers: [The three you are least likely to own]: the Athlon 64 X2 4800+ (2.4GHz/1MB L2), the Athlon 64 X2 4200+ (2.2GHz/512KB L2) and the Athlon 64 FX-57 (2.8GHz/1MB L2)."hehehe
ksherman - Monday, July 11, 2005 - link
I know this is going to sound like a dumb question, so here it is. Where did you get the BIOS update for the DFI board? I have that board, and their website only lists an update throung March, nothing as recent as July...Stinger22 - Monday, July 11, 2005 - link
One small correction..There is also an Athlon 64 3000+ that is a Socket 939 and is Revision E.
Hacp - Monday, July 11, 2005 - link
#13, I know of one other mobo that supports 3.3 volts and many other ram sticks can get 2-2-2-5 at ddr500.