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Is there any X2 motherboard that fits my needs?

M

mcmikemc

Senior member
Well I was about to order it today but I decided to check and make that there were no issues with it. Boy am I glad I did because look what I found.

http://www.msicomputer.com/product/p_spec.asp?model=K8N_Neo4_Platinum&class=mb

It only supports DDR400 with all four slots filled if you use single sided RAM. Even if I were to find 1gig DDR400 single sided sticks of RAM, which I can't seem to find, the motherboard will only recognize 3gb of RAM.

This motherboard went from being exactly what I wanted to being worthless to me.


So to all you motherboard experts. I need a motherboard that meets the following requirements.

1) Athlon 64 X2 support
2) Supports 4 sticks of DDR400 double sided RAM
3) Can recognize all 4 gigs of RAM when all the banks are filled
4) Has a firewire port on the back plus a port for a front firewire port
5) SATA support
6) ATX form factor
7) Is not a SLI board

It would be nice if it supported PCI express but that is not a requirement.

Right after I post this I will go back to looking for a board that has everything I want but I was just hoping that some of the people here, that know much more about motherboards than I do, would know of a board off the top of their head.
 
As has been explained numerous times over, the RAM controller will RECOGNIZE the entire four gigabytes. You just don't get to USE all of it since four gigabytes is the entire address space in 32-bit mode where EVERYTHING needs to fit into - system RAM, graphics card RAM, system essentials, AGP aperture and/or PCIE configuration space, and other misc I/O.

If you use a server grade operating system or a 64-bit one, you'll get to use all of it.

The speed restriction with double-sided DIMMs is an electrical limitation. The DDR1 bus electrically just doesn't take 32 chip loads (two double-sided DIMMs) at 200 MHz - at least that's what the standard says. YMMV.
 
Originally posted by: Peter
The speed restriction with double-sided DIMMs is an electrical limitation. The DDR1 bus electrically just doesn't take 32 chip loads (two double-sided DIMMs) at 200 MHz - at least that's what the standard says. YMMV.
Click to expand...

So there is no way to get all four banks filled fill double sided RAM, on any motherboard that supports DDR, and get it to run at DDR400?

Could I just bump up the voltage on going to the RAM in the BIOS?
 
DDR400 is already voltage-bumped straight from the start to even work at all. Two double-sided DIMMs just isn't electrically sane at that frequency. The standards demand fallback to DDR333; rev. E processors have a tweaked memory controller that has added some headroom over that standard, which MIGHT let you run DDR400 with relaxed timings even if you have two DIMMs. Everything has to be excellent to get there - you need a perfect board layout, no-nonsense DIMMs, a narrow temperature range and very stable voltages.

In other words, you might be tempted to try, but if you want the machine to be a stable workhorse, go to DDR333 for something that's been calculated to be safe. The speed loss in real world apps and gaming isn't nearly as big as raw memory benchmarks suggest, btw.

You can mask the RAM slowdown by choosing a processor with larger caches, too.
 
Well I will not be gaming on it at all.

I will be solving very large equations, 3D image correlation, compiling programs and some other scientific and programing stuff I come up with.
 
As Peter said AMD's specified behaviour is for the memory controller to default to DDR333 with that setup & the mobo mfrs only guarantee that - anything better is a bonus.
E3 or later cores often will run at DDR400 but you have to set it manually & it almost inevitably means 2T.
 
I've got 4 sticks of 512MB DDR400 ram, and my Abit KN8 Ultra wanted to default to 333 for them too. I was able to force it to 400 in the BIOS, and I have had no problems with that.

Joel
 
Originally posted by: Heidfirst
As Peter said AMD's specified behaviour is for the memory controller to default to DDR333 with that setup & the mobo mfrs only guarantee that - anything better is a bonus.
E3 or later cores often will run at DDR400 but you have to set it manually & it almost inevitably means 2T.
Click to expand...

AFAIK it's not AMD's specified behavior - it's JEDEC's (the DDR spec group).
 
That is correct.

mcmikemc, if that's what you will be doing, get an Opteron instead of the X2, and put "ECC unbuffered" memory into the machine. You want your data to be protected from soft errors, however improbable these might be.
 
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