AMD Athlon 64 motherboard

MogyBear

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Oct 21, 2002
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Will these chips need new motherboards, or will they work with the Nforce 2 Ultras? I am about to purchase an A7N8X, but I might want to wait if the price goes down due to a new motherboard on the market for the 64. Thanks!
 

Aenslead

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Sep 9, 2001
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If you are interested in high-end hardware, then you should read and inform yourself a little bit more.

Socket A is nothing like socket 754 that Athlon 64 will first use when launched.

Sheesh!
 

DAPUNISHER

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Originally posted by: Aenslead
If you are interested in high-end hardware, then you should read and inform yourself a little bit more.

Socket A is nothing like socket 754 that Athlon 64 will first use when launched.

Sheesh!
I have to agree, you've been out of the loop too long and it's time to read up so you can make better informed purchasing decisions instead of relying on having it spoon fed to you ;)
 

Iron Woode

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Originally posted by: MogyBear
Will these chips need new motherboards, or will they work with the Nforce 2 Ultras? I am about to purchase an A7N8X, but I might want to wait if the price goes down due to a new motherboard on the market for the 64. Thanks!
The simple answer is you will need a completely new MB not based on the current Athlon setup.
 

MogyBear

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Oct 21, 2002
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Sorry, yeah I thought I had read that somewhere, and I tried to look again today for about 1/2 hour but for some reason couldn't find anything. Well thanks for the obvious answers, I guess I will wait to get a new MB until the prices drop.
 

Aenslead

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Sep 9, 2001
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Kinda surprises me... you do seem to have a nice rig...

You *should* know about these things... however, if you wish to be as updated as possible, try reading on a daily basis http://www.theinquirer.net
 

ragazzo

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Jan 9, 2002
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AMD supposedly will equip QuakeCon '03 with Athlon64 rigs :)

From HardOCP:

Athlon64 @ QuakeCon 2003:
I put the year on the headline, just so we would be clear. A little birdy told us that the QuakeCon tournament machines this year would be powered by Athlon64 boxes and that Opteron servers would be put to use in the BYOC area. We will of course be attending QuakeCon so put your party hats on and follow us down. The ardOCP/QuakeCon workshop will be this Saturday at 1PM at the Adam's Mark Hotel in Downtown Dallas, Texas. Entry is free, registration is required and will have to be done on-site this week if you are not yet regged.
 

Vette73

Lifer
Jul 5, 2000
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There are going to be 3 boards as of right now.

940 socket = Opteron
939 socket = Athlon FX
754 socket = Athlon 64
 

Macro2

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May 20, 2000
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----------------
The simple answer is you will need a completely new MB not based on the current Athlon setup.
----------------
 

tcsenter

Lifer
Sep 7, 2001
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You *should* know about these things... however, if you wish to be as updated as possible, try reading on a daily basis http://www.theinquirer.net
That is....after you can sort through the Inquirer's 'tabloid-style' interpretation of the facts and their seemless mixing of commentary with "reporting", then you might be better informed by reading The Inquirer on a daily basis (a truly fitting name for their publication).
 

carpenter

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May 31, 2003
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Your question isn't stupid. I've taught my daughters that there is only one stupid question in the world, the one you don't ask. The processors and motherboards are totally different.
 

Aenslead

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Sep 9, 2001
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The Inquirer is the daily publication I enjoy the most... specially their humour. British humour.

carpenter: Sure, I agree, but you cannot ask how to multiply or make an addition on math when you are supposed to be in 6th grade, no? Same goes here...
 

KF

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Dec 3, 1999
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>You *should* know about these things... however, if you wish to be as updated as possible, try reading on a daily basis http://www.theinquirer.net[/q

The Inquirer is completely unrealiable in matters of fact and completely useless for understanding the underlying technology, as befits the newspaper style it emulates; where merciless ridicule, fawning Chauvansism, and fantasy humor are the attributes considered of any value. British readers, I suppose, will be accustomed to this by reading printed British newspapers. Americans attempting to inform themselves will be hard put to find information.


As for not being up on things that "you should know" being a fault, that is one of those effete, British-upper-crust, horse-sh*t affectations, and I respectfully request the purveyors to buzz-off and drop dead. This is a forum where information from the informed is passed to the not-yet-informed. That is its function. If you don't want to participate on one side or the other; leave.

Beside needing a different motherboard, Athlon 64s will need a new OS to use its 64-ness, and it is still not clear if MS is going to offer a Home version any time soon.

Motherboards have already dropped in price, and I would not expect them to drop a lot when Athlon 64s are introduced. There may be more boards with less features in the value segment.

 

Aenslead

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Sep 9, 2001
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Well, KF we can quite easily see your appreciation for English journalism, and for the same matter, doubt then you have been reading it as of late...

Secondly, just to correct your mistake. You said:

"Beside needing a different motherboard, Athlon 64s will need a new OS to use its 64-ness, and it is still not clear if MS is going to offer a Home version any time soon."

That's a negative: see, AMD64 is compatible, as it name implies, with 64bit software, but still able to process any 32-bit code, hence, any, and I mean ANY current software, therefor, you will be able to still use any version existing version of Windows-

If you read the Inquirer on a daily baisis, you should know this. ;)

 

What is teh difference between an athlon FX and Opteron? FX's don't have multi-proccessor support or what? Also, now that the memory controller is built in, what will really distinguish these boards? PCI-x? Hell I don't think I'll be using a pci card at all!
 

KF

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Dec 3, 1999
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Sorry about the tone of my initial post, but when people take a superior attitude, I sometimes get ticked off, and I take a superior attitude (as far as I am able) in turn.

Originally posted by: Aenslead
Well, KF we can quite easily see your appreciation for English journalism, and for the same matter, doubt then you have been reading it as of late...

Secondly, just to correct your mistake. You said:

"Beside needing a different motherboard, Athlon 64s will need a new OS to use its 64-ness, and it is still not clear if MS is going to offer a Home version any time soon."

That's a negative: see, AMD64 is compatible, as it name implies, with 64bit software, but still able to process any 32-bit code, hence, any, and I mean ANY current software, therefor, you will be able to still use any version existing version of Windows-

If you read the Inquirer on a daily baisis, you should know this. ;)

So what is the mistake, Aenslead? Maybe it is because you are "challenged" by technical info, while having an exceptional appreciation of humor, that you think that malodorous pile of execration is worth frequenting.

I don't know if you got the wrong idea from the Inquirer, so I'll spell it out. You let me know where you think it's wrong:

With present 32bit OSes (such as the released Windows XP Home), you cannot ever run a single new 64 bit instruction at any time under any circumstance. You cannot use any of the new 64 bit registers, any of the added registers, or the direct 64 bit addressing. Why? Before you can get at these things, the OS first has to run in a new mode, unique to AMD's Hammer series. To do so, the OS has to be completely revised, because the Athlon 64, when in the new 64 bit mode, always uses flat 64 bit addressing in ring 0, (where the OS operates), and cannot use the selector system that is now used. Since memory management is one of the primary tasks of the OS, and something which it is constantly doing, this is not a trivial re-write. Drivers will probably need to be rewritten for the new OS too, although maybe there is some way MS can make the old drivers work. Rewriting a driver is not a trivial task. It is not likely that many manufacturers will do so, and it is almost garanteed that they won't for products they no longer make. That means running the new 64 bit OS will not be easy, or it might not be, depending on what can be done about the drivers.

Now if you had been reading this forum regularly, you might have seen this before.

What aspect of 64bit-ness is the Inquirer claiming is available in MS XP Home? How about a link to one of those super-duper Inquirer blurbs that explains it?

IAC, if some company writes a 64 bit game taking advantage of the Athlon 64s new features, you will not be able to run it in 64 bit mode, even if you have an Athlon 64, unless you get a new OS.

BTW, current processors from Intel and AMD can address beyond the 32 bit address space (32 bits = 4 Gbytes), provided the OS uses a certain mode for selectors, but only indirectly. You can select a particular 4G segment by using selectors, and address within that segment. In the new AMD scheme, a 64 bit address space is always directly addressable.

You can be sure that however successful the Athlon 64 is, Intel will never go along with AMD. Marketing would never permit it. It would be like admitting AMD was worthy of respect. If Intel puts out a 64bit processor besides Itanium, they will do it differently than AMD. It is not a question of patents or copyrights. Instruction sets are not protected under any law.





 

"IAC, if some company writes a 64 bit game taking advantage of the Athlon 64s new features, you will not be able to run it in 64 bit mode, even if you have an Athlon 64, unless you get a new OS."

yea, but how far away can that be considering the broad acceptance of the opteron?

"That means running the new 64 bit OS will not be easy, or it might not be, depending on what can be done about the drivers."

you don't need a 64 bit OS. Look at what Macintosh is doing. They're just editing their 32 bit OS to take advantage of the 64 bit ummm, I think it was registers but considering that I have little clue as to how memmory is addressed by the OS it might have been something else, but my point is that it is in fact a slightly modified 32 bit OS and does not take full advantage of the full 64 bit capabilities f the G5.
 

How does the performance of tunnel chips compare to having it integrated in the northbridge?
 

Peter

Elite Member
Oct 15, 1999
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What northbridge?

In case you haven't noticed yet, northbridge is no more. The RAM controllers are in the CPUs, one each, and from there it's all HyperTransport links.
Them tunnel chips are on an HT chain, and produce non-HT busses from there. The south bridge is the end of the chain, and does all the legacy I/O busses (IDE, PCI, LPC et al) and the x86 system essentials like interrupt and DMA controller, RTC, and whatnot.