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AMD Upgrade Questions?
There have been allot of post with questions regarding upgrading to a AMD64
system not just on this board but all over the net. I have been around and OCing since the 486 days and have seen some wonderful improvements in computer hardware. What I have noticed over the years is that before the release of a totally new system design that there are some prerelease designs that hit the market. 1. 286 to 486 same design but faster ISA 2. Pentium to K6 same design PCI 3. Pentium III to first Athlon same design Slot / APG enhancement 4. P4 to Athlon XP same design lots of changes to memory bus better APG north/south bridge enhancements 5. P5 ? to AMD64 ????? changes to memory bus better PCI removal of south bridge north bridge enhancements When hardware changed from the 486 to the Pentium/K6 there were some board designs that were old technology with a new processor it took about one year for the motherboard technology to catch-up. From Pentium/K6 to the Pentium III/Athlon again it took about one year for the motherboard technology to catch-up. From the Pentium III/Athlon to P4/Athlon XP it took about 6 to 8 months for the motherboard technology to catch-up. The time frame during this transition period was reduced due to the input from AMD and Intel. Intel became a major motherboard manufacture. Between each major change new motherboard designs were released some good but the majority were bad and became obsolete not long after their release only to be replace by the standard for that processor release at that time. Such as EDO-SDRAM-DDR, ISA-VESA-PCI-APG, socket-slot-socket. Every time a motherboard replacement was needed to use the same processor during the transition to the design that would become the standard for that processor be it a K6 or a Athlon XP. The first Athlon XP boards used APG 2X and sdram and were quickly replace with DDR ram and APG 8X. It appears that the same thing is taking place with the release of the AMD64. First the 754 with DDR ram and APG 8X then the 940 and now the 939 with DDR ram and APG 8X. It has been said that the 939 boards will be the standard for the AMD64 and soon those boards will have DDRII and PCIe (no APG). What do you think will become the technological motherboard standard for the AMD64 in the next year? If I were to buy a AMD64 motherboard today, would I be buying a motherboard that is equipped to handle the next generation of video cards, hard drives, and multimedia add-on cards or would I be buying a motherboard that I would have to replace to upgrade my video card and memory? |
#2
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AGP video cards will be around for quite a long time. My guess is at least 5
more years. Ram for new motherboard will also probably be available for at least 5 years. Rusty wrote: There have been allot of post with questions regarding upgrading to a AMD64 system not just on this board but all over the net. I have been around and OCing since the 486 days and have seen some wonderful improvements in computer hardware. What I have noticed over the years is that before the release of a totally new system design that there are some prerelease designs that hit the market. 1. 286 to 486 same design but faster ISA 2. Pentium to K6 same design PCI 3. Pentium III to first Athlon same design Slot / APG enhancement 4. P4 to Athlon XP same design lots of changes to memory bus better APG north/south bridge enhancements 5. P5 ? to AMD64 ????? changes to memory bus better PCI removal of south bridge north bridge enhancements When hardware changed from the 486 to the Pentium/K6 there were some board designs that were old technology with a new processor it took about one year for the motherboard technology to catch-up. From Pentium/K6 to the Pentium III/Athlon again it took about one year for the motherboard technology to catch-up. From the Pentium III/Athlon to P4/Athlon XP it took about 6 to 8 months for the motherboard technology to catch-up. The time frame during this transition period was reduced due to the input from AMD and Intel. Intel became a major motherboard manufacture. Between each major change new motherboard designs were released some good but the majority were bad and became obsolete not long after their release only to be replace by the standard for that processor release at that time. Such as EDO-SDRAM-DDR, ISA-VESA-PCI-APG, socket-slot-socket. Every time a motherboard replacement was needed to use the same processor during the transition to the design that would become the standard for that processor be it a K6 or a Athlon XP. The first Athlon XP boards used APG 2X and sdram and were quickly replace with DDR ram and APG 8X. It appears that the same thing is taking place with the release of the AMD64. First the 754 with DDR ram and APG 8X then the 940 and now the 939 with DDR ram and APG 8X. It has been said that the 939 boards will be the standard for the AMD64 and soon those boards will have DDRII and PCIe (no APG). What do you think will become the technological motherboard standard for the AMD64 in the next year? If I were to buy a AMD64 motherboard today, would I be buying a motherboard that is equipped to handle the next generation of video cards, hard drives, and multimedia add-on cards or would I be buying a motherboard that I would have to replace to upgrade my video card and memory? |
#3
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On Tue, 26 Oct 2004 01:12:39 +0000, Rusty wrote:
If you really want the latest bells and whistles then get an Nforce4 motherboard with PCI Express instead of AGP. The boards are just hitting the market now, so if you want one wait a couple of months. If you want a new system today then get an Nforce 3-250GB motherboard, MSI K8N Neo2 has the best ratings. There will 0 difference in performance between an Nforce3-250GB and an Nforce 4 motherboard today. The current generation of graphics cards are perfectly happy with AGP-8X, the PCI Express versions won't be any faster. Eventually AGP-8X will be a bottleneck and PCI Express will help but that's at least a year away, maybe 2. The memory interface on the Athlon 64 is on chip so the bridge chip doesn't matter. Get an 939 pin Athlon 64, it supports more memory and has twice as much memory bandwidth as the 754 pin part. The future dual core Athlon 64s will proably be available in the 939 pin packages (AMD is bring them out in the Opteron first but the 939 won't be far behind). The memory bandwidth on the 939 pin processor is more than sufficient to handle a dual processor. Both the Nforce 3-250 and the Nforce 4 have the same gigabit ethernet. The Nforce 3 supports 150Mbyte/sec SATA drives, the Nforce-4 has support for 300MByte/Sec drives. This will make absolutely zero difference. The bandwidth of the current generation of drives is no where near 150MBytes/sec, it's closer to 60. In the life time of a motherboard that you buy today you won't see a drive that exceeds the 150Mbyte/second limit of the Nforce 3. |
#4
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On Tue, 26 Oct 2004 01:12:39 GMT, "Rusty"
wrote: What do you think will become the technological motherboard standard for the AMD64 in the next year? If I were to buy a AMD64 motherboard today, would I be buying a motherboard that is equipped to handle the next generation of video cards, hard drives, and multimedia add-on cards or would I be buying a motherboard that I would have to replace to upgrade my video card and memory? The pace of change does seem to be accelerating finally for hardware. I mean its been going on of course but no fundamental changes have happened for a unusually long time at least on the AMD side. If you want to hedge your bets -- Id wait for a PCI Express , 939 board with AMD 64. The one problematical point is AGP or no AGP. A lot of people still have AGP cards that are still decent. Havent really heard much about DDR2 and AMDs. Supposedly the VIA boards will have AGP but I dont see AGP mentioned at all with the NForce4. When theyll be on the mkt, maybe a lot of the buzz is hype ---- we still havent seen VIAs though they keep mentioning deadlines from Sept and Oct. Im sure they are probably close since the sites keep mentioning it but maybe they are having some problems still or maybe they are waiting for the old inventory of boards to dwindle first who knows. Toms Hardware and others are already saying Nforce 4 will be out supposedly in Nov so I imagine some next gen boards will be out before Xmas. The problem was Toms Hardware noted the whole industry seems to be in a rush mode ---- hinting almost that they seem to be prematurely pushing products as ready to get in the mkt quickly so who knows about even nforce4. They have a really brief writeup on it dated Oct 20. The things they noted about it was --- its going to have something called soundstorm 2 7.1 which was predicted by the Enquirer and then universally bashed as a mistake in which many sites claimed they wouldnt have it. And also SATA II. Also they said the SLI version wouldnt be out until later so as not to take away the spotlight on Nforce4 debut or something or who knows maybe its not really ready yet. Another thing - people have mentioned they announced there would be boards for the 754 too - sempron and AMD 64 support. http://www20.tomshardware.com/mother...force4-01.html |
#5
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On Mon, 25 Oct 2004 21:21:27 -0400, JK wrote:
AGP video cards will be around for quite a long time. My guess is at least 5 more years. Ram for new motherboard will also probably be available for at least 5 years. maybe not so long, but 3y yes IMHO ... only to be replace by the standard for that processor release at that time. Such as EDO-SDRAM-DDR, ISA-VESA-PCI-APG, socket-slot-socket. .... low latency sdram (10x times smaller than 60ns Edo) was a big jump, next was RDram, but certain policy "killed it" ... next was PCI & AGP2x ... practical no performance gain later in real life ... also ATA33 is enough except for Raid0 setups (Ata100 is more than enough than) The first Athlon XP boards used APG 2X and sdram and were quickly replace with DDR ram and APG 8X. marketing "high " numbers took place & could not make a decent chipset in handling real life memory transfers ... appears that the same thing is taking place with the release of the AMD64. no, integrated mem.controller circumvents upper my statement & 2ch s.939 even mo see my last analisis on my site under comp/bench link before "new" .. If I were to buy a AMD64 motherboard today, would I be buying a motherboard that is equipped to handle the next generation of video cards, hard drives, Probably the last top notch equipment is not necessary for average user! If I would be buying a new system, I would opt for GIGABYTE K8NS s754 + sempron3100+ & OC-it till it goes stable with 1 step backwards for safety .. Practically there is not much really new last years except innovation of marketing tricks to sell stuff IMHO ... -- Regards, SPAJKY ® & visit my site @ http://www.spajky.vze.com "Tualatin OC-ed / BX-Slot1 / inaudible setup!" E-mail AntiSpam: remove ## |
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