AMD's 760MPX Chipset - Multiprocessor for the Masses

Motherboard Support

Obviously a chipset is nothing without support from motherboard manufacturers and luckily the 760MPX will enjoy much broader support than the original 760MP chipset did.

Originally AMD worked very close with one and only one motherboard manufacturer in developing the 760MP platform - Tyan. Thus it was no surprise that Tyan had a pretty hefty production lead on the competition when they released the Thunder K7. For the 760MPX launch, AMD prepared their own reference design under the code name Paulaner.

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The Paulaner board can be seen above and is clearly just an engineering test board and not a basis for other products. The external/removable voltage regulator modules bring back memories of the Pentium Pro days and also ruin the otherwise perfect ability to fit into a 1U chassis. Like we mentioned before, this reference design is for testing and validation purposes only and won't be used as a layout template for third party motherboards.

In our Motherboards in 2002 preview we showed off 760MPX solutions from ABIT, ASUS, EPoX, MSI, and Tyan among other manufacturers. While a few of those boards have started shipping already, you won't see them in great supply until next year.

The goal of many motherboard manufacturers for the 760MPX chipset is to bring it down to the workstation level in order to gain acceptance for the platform; with motherboards supposedly being priced in the $180 - $300 range that should be a feasible reality. These motherboards will also work off of regular ATX power supplies and not require the custom 460W units that the original 760MP and 760MPX reference boards needed.

Although we've seen reports contrary to this, we noticed no USB 1.1 compatibility problems with the reference Paulaner board. Using the only two ports available on the board we captured video from an Intel USB web camera while constantly using a Microsoft USB Intellimouse without any compatibility issues. While this is clearly not exhaustive testing, we thought it was worth mentioning.