Conroe Buying Guide: Feeding the Monster
by Gary Key & Wesley Fink on July 19, 2006 6:20 AM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
Chipsets
At launch the only chipsets available for Conroe are from Intel. These consist of an updated 975X that must clearly state it is "Intel Core 2 Ready". There is also a brand new Intel 965 chipset, and all 965 chipset boards will support Conroe.
NVIDIA has also shown Conroe chipsets, but they will not be launched for at least several weeks. NVIDIA chipsets will support SLI on Conroe, first as dual X8, which is being shown today with the ASUS P5N32-SLI, which is an updated nForce4 chipset board for Conroe. There are not any NVIDIA nForce 500 boards available at this time that support Conroe, but they are reported to be coming in early August - in both dual X8 and dual X16 flavors.
ATI is also launching chipsets for Conroe. RD500, which supports dual X8 PCIe slots, is expected in early September. We are told the pricing will be very attractive, offering a multi-GPU solution at a mainstream price. Later this year RD600 will be launched, with full support for dual X16 PCIe on Core2 Duo.
On the low-end, some vendors have managed to rework some boards with the VIA P8T880 chipset to support Conroe. Those updated boards are already starting to appear and an ASRock version is included in this Buyers Guide. However, the VIA PT880 PRO chipset does not fully support PCIe graphics, and the boards are a hybrid supporting AGP 8x and PCI Express 4X. PCIe graphics performance is compromised in this solution, but it does allow the use of a low-priced board for Conroe with an older AGP card or low-end PCIe video. Finally, we are awaiting delivery of budget to value performance boards based upon the Intel 945P, 946PL, SIS662, and ATI RS600 chipsets.
Intel P965 Express
At launch the only new chipset for Conroe is the Intel P965 Express. The labeling is a bit confusing since we have had the high-end Intel 975 chipset available for over 6 months. Intel's usual practice is the lower numbered chipset pair is mainstream, while the top chipset is aimed at the Enthusiast. P965 Express is supposedly different because it features a new, faster, and lower latency memory controller than the 975, and it is the only current Intel chipset to support the new ICH8R south bridge.
This would lead us to believe that the P965 Express is the natural choice for Conroe, but there are some other odd things about the P965 architecture that tell us it will still be second choice for many Conroe buyers. The 975X for Conroe has two X8 PCIe slots that support ATI CrossFire: The 965 has at most an X16 PCIe slot and an X4 PCIe slot and does not support CrossFire. At present no Intel chipset supports NVIDIA SLI, and only the 975 chipset can support CrossFire.
In addition we have found that in real-world testing the 975X is still faster than P965 with the current immature BIOS revisions. What's more, the P965 often does not support the overclocks we see on 975X chipsets, and the P965 boards we test in this roundup do not allow higher multipliers to be selected with X6800 Core 2 Duo processors; the 975X boards for Core 2 Duo allow multipliers both above and below the rated multiplier to be selected on X6800.
Intel claims P965 Express is the chipset with the improved memory controller, but our latency measurements in the Core 2 Duo launch review last week showed the 975X also fares very well with the new memory intelligent pre-fetch design used for Conroe. Where P965 Express does appear to have a distinct advantage is in the use of the ICH8 south bridge.
ICH8 increases total USB ports to 10 and High Speed (3Gb/s) SATA 2 ports are increased to 6. The additional USB and SATA2 ports are welcomed, but ICH8 may become more famous for what it eliminated. There are no IDE ports at all on ICH8, which means the only support for optical drives is SATA2. Since SATA2 optical drives are still very hard to find and more expensive than IDE optical drives, most manufacturers are including an additional chip like the JMicron JMB363 PATA/SATA controller to add the missing IDE support.
At launch the only chipsets available for Conroe are from Intel. These consist of an updated 975X that must clearly state it is "Intel Core 2 Ready". There is also a brand new Intel 965 chipset, and all 965 chipset boards will support Conroe.
NVIDIA has also shown Conroe chipsets, but they will not be launched for at least several weeks. NVIDIA chipsets will support SLI on Conroe, first as dual X8, which is being shown today with the ASUS P5N32-SLI, which is an updated nForce4 chipset board for Conroe. There are not any NVIDIA nForce 500 boards available at this time that support Conroe, but they are reported to be coming in early August - in both dual X8 and dual X16 flavors.
ATI is also launching chipsets for Conroe. RD500, which supports dual X8 PCIe slots, is expected in early September. We are told the pricing will be very attractive, offering a multi-GPU solution at a mainstream price. Later this year RD600 will be launched, with full support for dual X16 PCIe on Core2 Duo.
On the low-end, some vendors have managed to rework some boards with the VIA P8T880 chipset to support Conroe. Those updated boards are already starting to appear and an ASRock version is included in this Buyers Guide. However, the VIA PT880 PRO chipset does not fully support PCIe graphics, and the boards are a hybrid supporting AGP 8x and PCI Express 4X. PCIe graphics performance is compromised in this solution, but it does allow the use of a low-priced board for Conroe with an older AGP card or low-end PCIe video. Finally, we are awaiting delivery of budget to value performance boards based upon the Intel 945P, 946PL, SIS662, and ATI RS600 chipsets.
Intel P965 Express
At launch the only new chipset for Conroe is the Intel P965 Express. The labeling is a bit confusing since we have had the high-end Intel 975 chipset available for over 6 months. Intel's usual practice is the lower numbered chipset pair is mainstream, while the top chipset is aimed at the Enthusiast. P965 Express is supposedly different because it features a new, faster, and lower latency memory controller than the 975, and it is the only current Intel chipset to support the new ICH8R south bridge.
This would lead us to believe that the P965 Express is the natural choice for Conroe, but there are some other odd things about the P965 architecture that tell us it will still be second choice for many Conroe buyers. The 975X for Conroe has two X8 PCIe slots that support ATI CrossFire: The 965 has at most an X16 PCIe slot and an X4 PCIe slot and does not support CrossFire. At present no Intel chipset supports NVIDIA SLI, and only the 975 chipset can support CrossFire.
In addition we have found that in real-world testing the 975X is still faster than P965 with the current immature BIOS revisions. What's more, the P965 often does not support the overclocks we see on 975X chipsets, and the P965 boards we test in this roundup do not allow higher multipliers to be selected with X6800 Core 2 Duo processors; the 975X boards for Core 2 Duo allow multipliers both above and below the rated multiplier to be selected on X6800.
Intel claims P965 Express is the chipset with the improved memory controller, but our latency measurements in the Core 2 Duo launch review last week showed the 975X also fares very well with the new memory intelligent pre-fetch design used for Conroe. Where P965 Express does appear to have a distinct advantage is in the use of the ICH8 south bridge.
ICH8 increases total USB ports to 10 and High Speed (3Gb/s) SATA 2 ports are increased to 6. The additional USB and SATA2 ports are welcomed, but ICH8 may become more famous for what it eliminated. There are no IDE ports at all on ICH8, which means the only support for optical drives is SATA2. Since SATA2 optical drives are still very hard to find and more expensive than IDE optical drives, most manufacturers are including an additional chip like the JMicron JMB363 PATA/SATA controller to add the missing IDE support.
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Gary Key - Thursday, July 20, 2006 - link
Thank you for the comments. Our focus on the first cooler roundup will be on units that cost under $25 but the Tuniq will be included as a reference point along with the retail Intel unit. Our follow up will include the high end air coolers and some water cooling units.The Tuniq is considered to be one of the best air coolers available at this time although we are starting to see this design being incorporated by other suppliers quickly.
biggersteve - Tuesday, September 19, 2006 - link
Hope you can get an Arctic Cooler Pro 7 into that cooler review. Quiet as a tomb and mighty cool.jonmcguffin - Thursday, July 20, 2006 - link
A feature built into the Core 2 Duo processors is this new Digital Thermal Sensor that supposedly has the ability to provide much quicker and more accurate thermal information about each processor. The key with this though is that it requires support from the motherboard. Why did you guys not mention this feature in any of the motherboards you tested?My guess is that since the P965 was "built" for Core 2 Duo, my guess would be that it supports this feature while the older 975 does not. In going back and forth between pro's and con's of the P965, if this feature is in fact built into the chipset/motherboard, it is worth pointing out. I'm not really an overclocker though I do want to buy a system that will be rock solid in stability for many years to come. Quite PC's that are very reliable and stable are critical and this is a good feature.
Also, you reviewed the Abit AB9 Pro motherboard a few weeks back but somehow it was left out of this overview. At $160 on the street, despite it's layout issue's, this looks to me like perhaps the best board right now for the guy who isn't rich and just wants a very solid Core 2 Duo mobo.
Hope you get a chance to review and respond.
Jon
Gary Key - Thursday, July 20, 2006 - link
Jon,The Gigabyte DQ6 actually has the ability to select readings from either sensor (Digital/Legacy) on the CPU in the power management settings. We will go over this in detail in our full review of the board or other Conroe capable boards in the future. These type of features along with audio and storage performance are not generally not reviewed in the guide articles but covered in the full product reviews.
The Abit AB9-Pro is shaping up to be a very good mid-range board (prices around $142 already) once the bios is complete. We are due to receive bios B6 next week that is optimized for Conroe and allows full memory configuration from both a timing and ratio viewpoint. The board was not ready to be included in the buyers guide until Abit had a final bios to us. We will report the results as soon as we complete testing.
Wesley Fink - Thursday, July 20, 2006 - link
We had planned to include the Abit AB9 in our roundup IF Abit got the memory issue fixed before the review. Unfortunately even the latest beta BIOS we received on Tuesday does not fix the issue. There is no means on the current Abit board to change memory speed or timings. It supposedly reads the SPD and boots at DDR2-533 5-5-5-15 with every dimm we tried. You can't run Value Ram at DDR2-800 for example or run DDR2-800 at rated speed. Or change timings to 3-2-3 at DDR-533 even if you know the ram can run at those timings. We did not think it fair to make a big deal of this in a review since Abit is supposedly working on it, but we see they are now also selling the board at some retailers and memory is still broken as far as we know.We consider this problem, if not fixed, to disqualify the Abit from consideration by any Enthusiast. We plan to do a full review of the Abit AB9 Pro if and when Abit fixes this major problem.
supremelaw - Thursday, July 20, 2006 - link
Jon,Why would more accurate thermal sensors
have high priority, if the Conroe runs
much cooler and more efficiently?
Are you planning extreme O/C, perhaps?
Wouldn't a superior HSF have higher priority?
e.g.:
http://www.supremelaw.org/systems/heatsinks/warnin...">http://www.supremelaw.org/systems/heatsinks/warnin...
Just curious here.
Sincerely yours,
/s/ Paul Andrew Mitchell
Webmaster, Supreme Law Library
http://www.supremelaw.org/">http://www.supremelaw.org/
falc0ne - Wednesday, July 19, 2006 - link
The usual best from Anandtech..I was in a bit of fog if switching to conroe or not, but now I have a mutch more clearer picture. After the part2 of this suite, it will all be clear to me.P.S. Your articles on Nvidia's NForce 4 platform made me choose that platform and AMD64.
My sincere thanks, I owe you a lot
wackypete - Wednesday, July 19, 2006 - link
Thanks for putting this article together. Your effort has not gone unnoticed.Howard - Wednesday, July 19, 2006 - link
Anybody know what chips it uses? The 5-5-5-15 DDR2-667 variety, that is.Gary Key - Wednesday, July 19, 2006 - link
We still have additional memory selections from a variety of suppliers arriving for further memory reviews at this time.