Reliable, mature AMD MB which has 3 or 4 rams slots ?

[JJFlash]

I wish to buy a solid reliable AMD based (T-bird and above) MB which will provide at least 3 and much preferably 4 ram slots.

Raid is nice but not as important as number of ram slots. I will probably move an existing 1.3 Mhz AMD CPU over from a 2 stick board to the newer board.

I am not too concerned about being economical in the cost of the board, but recognized stability and quality of manufacture and having seasoned enough that the presumably revised Bios has had some kinks worked out - is most important, along with the capacity for 4 or 3 ram slots.

Thanks much in advance.

 

[Elcs]

This may not be perfectly suitable for you but from my experience, the ABIT NF7-S Revision 2.0 is rock solid in terms of stability.

It has SATA RAID onboard however it only has 3 RAM slots. Just look at the ABIT NF7-S sticky post at the top of the page to see what people make of it.

 

[Peter]

If you want reliable 4-DIMM operation, you'll need to look into using Registered DIMMs. Which is only supported by AMD and VIA chipsets, and even with those, not implemented on all mainboards that use these chipsets.

4- or even 3-DIMM operation at high clocks with unbuffered DIMMs always is somewhere between questionable and fragile. Remember the DDR400 specification allows just one unbuffered DIMM, DDR333 allows two, DDR266 allows three. Everything above that is luck of draw, basically.

 

[JJFlash]

Thanks, I am working on studying these, now. With PC133 Dram, 4 slots were common. For those doing a lot of graphic / Photoshop and rendering work, 3 Gigs of ram is the right sweet spot. Photoshop will only address 2 gigs, but seems to do well in that the operating system, etc. will make use of the other gig of ram.

Thus the question of how one gets larger amounts of ram onto a standard MB. The leap from 512mb to 1 gig ram stick is a quantum leap in relative price. Then to go to 2 gigs of ram on 1 stick, in order to get to a preferred amount of ram on a 2 slot board becomes a challenge.

Further suggestions and recommendations re a MB of choice are appreciated.

 

[Peter]

When you want to build a Photoshop box, go with an Opteron. You get two RAM channels for two DIMMs each, problem solved.

Tyan Tiger K8WS or K8W (for optional 2nd CPU to be added later, bringing two more RAM channels, four more DIMMs), or, if you want to take it a step further and get real fast storage controllers and put them onto a suitably fast PCI-X bus rather than desktop toy 33 MHz PCI, Thunder K8W.

Once Microsoft and Adobe get off their arses on this, that'll also spell 16 GBytes of RAM and 64-bit math for Photoshop ...

Yes that all costs money. But you wanted a proper workstation, didn't you?

(btw, PC133 was specified for three DIMMs with relaxed timings, two at full speed - unbuffered. Four registered DIMMs no problem.)

 

[Peter]

But if you need to stick with that 32-bit Athlon, how 'bout the Tiger MPX? That'd be halfway there - AMD chipset with strong support for lots of RAM and a fast 66 MHz PCI bus, plus sort of an upgrade path to dual Athlon MP. Yes it runs a non-MP Athlon too - just not two of those.

Given that the days of the 32-bit Athlon as a server platform are numbered, you should be in for a bargain here.

 

[JJFlash]

Thanks, Peter, I am now chewing on this.

 

[Peter]

Finally, of course, if you're just after more RAM, can your current board not use larger DIMMs? That'd be the simplest solution. What board do you have there, and what chipset does it use?

 

[JJFlash]

Peter, thanks, sorry for the delay. I have two MB's in a networked system, one has 1.5 gig of PC133 ram and I will leave that one alone. The other, and the one I am interested in using for Photoshop work, is a Biostar M7VIG with 2 slots. It has a VIA VT8233A . VIA KM 266. Phoenix bios. It supports unbuffered DDR200/266 SDRAM and possibly higher with a BIOS upgrade.

It supports up to 2 GB of ram, which is, actually, enough for me. I was also incorrect about the leap in relative price of 1 gig ram sticks, it is not that bad a leap after all. Your knowledgeable advice re ram brand/types of 1 gig sticks could well hold me over...

I look forward to your suggestions.

 

[RFJ]

Actually, this is something I am also intested in, right now. 'Giving it a bump.

 

[Peter]

KM266, being an integrated-graphics chipset, does not support Registered DIMMs.

1-GByte unbuffered non-ECC DIMMs are starting to appear on shelves now. My local shop has them for 220 euros each (PC2700), the 512-MByte sticks of the same brand and specification being 70. So yes, it ain't THAT bad anymore, certainly not worth ripping apart an otherwise working system.
PC2700 will be good enough to migrate to an Athlon-64 box come the day