DDR Chipsets/Motherboards In October

[NFS4]

Got this from Ace's:

http://www.ctech.com.tw/d-news/news/tech/89090509.asp

DDR chipsets for the AMD platform are starting to ship this month
Volume production of DDR chipsets from AMD, VIA, and ALI will start around end of September, beginning in October
Currently AMD's DDR chipset leads the other two in terms of production: Gigabyte will release a DDR board in October based on AMD's DDR chipset
AMD is giving ALI technology transfer to help ALI in DDR K7 chipset
ALI will release DDR chipset for K7 first, in "limited quantities" by October, and an Intel DDR version will follow later
VIA, on the other hand, will release an Intel DDR chipset first, with the Athlon DDR chipset to follow about a month later
Gigabyte, Asus, and MSI will all have DDR boards out in October

 

[Howard]

yay!

 

[randomlinh]

good

 

[Caliber]

wow, i was expecting them in november/december!
October will be a pretty good month for me, ddr boards will be out and il be getting my new BMW convertible

 

[NFS4]

<< and il be getting my new BMW convertible >>


Bastard

 

[Adul]

While you are at it. get me one too.

 

[KDOG]

I wouldn't hold my breath. Though I am very pleased to see this happening, we have been through this before....delay, delay, delay...

 

[XMan]

Hey, this is AMD we're talking about here, not Intel.

 

[Ferocious]

After 2 and 6 months (in Nov.), I think I will finally replace my current 350 P2 system.

I think I got my money's worth out of it.

 

[Rudee]

I dunno, first generation DDR boards might not be all that stable.

As far as performance goes, don't expect much more than a 8-12% increase in performance. You'd be better off upgrading to a 7200 RPM harddisk if you're looking for a noticable overall performance performance increase.

 

[Digobick]

I'll be replacing my 400Mhz PII soon; October sounds like a good month.

 

[Soccerman]

&quot;I dunno, first generation DDR boards might not be all that stable.&quot;

yeah when overclocked, at default, it'll be stable as a rock. why? cause Micron has had this DDR chipset for a LONG time.

the memory part of AMD's chipset AFAIK, was based on Micron's chipset. Tom had one of them a long time ago (like a year). it was an alpha version, and it ran rock solid! hmm.. I wonder what they did with all that time. oh I know, tweak the hell out of it!

all I can say is, I'm looking forward to ALi and AMD's DDR chipsets. if Via doesn't start producing chipsets that perform, I won't recommend them at all. I only recommend them for the Athlon now, because they're the best one (out of two, AMD 750 and Via's KX133) in terms of compatability with RAM, power supplies, video cards etc.

I'm wondering if I should start planning to make a DDR SDRAM based system for my friend instead of this KT133 one.. I just hope the costs don't skyrocket any more then now (cause I'm at the cost restraint already).

 

[XMan]

Rudee,

Ace's recently benchmarked a Pentium 3 chipset (I believe the Micron DDR one) with PC1600 memory. It improved overall performance by as much as 31% in many benchmarks. And that was with the lower end of DDR-SDRAM. The Athlon should benefit even more as the disparity between it's FSB and memory bus is so great, the Athlon is literally starved for bandwidth at times.

A question - how will a PC2100 DDR setup coordinate with a Thunderbird? Will I be able to buy an 850 MHz T-bird and run it at 8.5x133 (an overclock to 1133, which shouldn't be out of the realm of reason). Or will the memory bus and FSB be asynchronous?

 

[OneEng]

Xerox man,
The FSB and memory bus of the EV6 based chipsets have always been asyncronous. This is what allows PC133 and PC100 memory to be used while the FSB is running 200Mhz. This is also why it was so easy for VIA to move from PC100 to PC133 on the Athlon.

From what I have heard, it is more efficient if the FSB runs at some even multiple of the memory bus (this makes sence). The new EV6 based chipset's FSB will be 266Mhz .... yea, 133 X 2. This will really smoke!

As pointed out, the Athlon is severly starved for memory bandwidth. This is even more true as the clock speed increases. The 1Ghz+ processors will benefit greatly by this increase in bandwidth. It should be a real generational change in system performance!

Personally, I will stick with my A7V and Duron600@900 for a while now. Seein how there isn't a video card out now or in the foreseeable future that can keep up with my current setup, I will save my pennies for other toys......like my new digital camera. Time to fill up all that unused hard drive space!!

 

[MGallik]

Will I be able to use my PIII 650e's with a new DDR board, and what
might I be looking at in performance?

I do a lot of Seti@Home which is VERY memory intensive. I would think
the increase could be dramatic as long as the latency is low.

 

[NFS4]

Yes you will with a PIII DDR board

 

[Lurch]

Yeah, but when are the athlon multi-processor boards coming out?

 

[Templeton]

The Amd 760 chipset will allow for 2 way smp, if more is desired, multiple northbridges can be placed on board, each allowing 2 processors.

 

[Sohcan]

This is just speculation, but the 760MP chipset will probably be released on November 15th to coincide with the release of the Mustang based processors.

 

[RagingGuardian]

I'm now stuck in a predicament. I'm wondering if I should go with the KT7 and thunderbird and try to overclock the hell out of it or wait just two months for the DDR boards. Anyone know's if the DDR boards will have clock multiplier options cause I'm sure the FSB overclocking may be almost impossible.

I wonder which will give me the most performance? Hmmmm......

 

They'll have multiplier adjustments, at least some manufacturers will put them on there as they always have (abit, asus, whatever...). The real question is will AMD have ripped off those multiplier adjustment pins by then, TRULY locking the cpu. That wouldn't be cool.

 

[Soccerman]

&quot;The FSB and memory bus of the EV6 based chipsets have always been asyncronous&quot;

actually, only Via has implimented this in their chipsets, it's the same tech brought from the grave of the Super 7 chipset, the Via MVP3.

anywho, SOME of the high end DESKTOP processors (the ones replacing T-bird, formerly corvette), have 133mhz FSB support, in other words, they have the correct multiplier for running at 133mhz without being overclocked.

naturally, many of us people here at Anandtech will get the 100mhz versions and see how high they go!

anywho, the MUSTANG only supports the 133mhz FSB, so to run it, you need a pretty good mobo.

now, I don't know for sure, but I heard a while ago that there will be 2656meg/second DDR SDRAM dimms available for motherboards that support the 133mhz FSB. if other chipsets support the asynchonous memory architecture (I support it 100%, as long as it doesn't DEGRADE speed) then we might actually see some 166mhz DDR SDRAM. (133mhz FSB, PLUS 33mhz for Asynchonous RAM, you get 166).

that'd be nice.. you have RAM to spare for other devices such as the soundcard, or more importantly Ethernet, or hard drives.

I just hope that AMD speeds up the FSB to 166mhz+ to compete with the willamette. I wonder if it would require more expensive motherboards to keep the signal clean..

 

[DarK SagE]

That sux, it brings my rig onestep closer to extinction.

 

[RagingGuardian]

Now I'm wondering if I should buy a thunderbird now. This SUX.