Comments Locked

35 Comments

Back to Article

  • Anonymous User - Tuesday, October 14, 2003 - link

    Why would a manufacturer include ECC slots for RAM but no 64 bit PCI bus? Is this aimed at the server market, the high end workstation, or what? Remove two PCI 32 bit slots and make 'em PCI 64bit. You have on board ethernet an USB. All everyone else needs is a video card and you have an AGP slot for that anyway. Come on manufacturers, let's see some damn 64 bit PCI slots already!!!
  • Anonymous User - Tuesday, October 14, 2003 - link

    Why would a manufacturer include ECC slots for RAM but no 64 bit PCI bus? Is this aimed at the server market, the high end workstation, or what? Remove two PCI 32 bit slots and make 'em PCI 64bit. You have on board ethernet an USB. All everyone else needs is a video card and you have an AGP slot for that anyway. Come on manufacturers, let's see some damn 64 bit PCI slots already!!!
  • Anonymous User - Tuesday, October 14, 2003 - link

    To reiterate and emphasize #19's question:

    * WHEN will these things become AVAILABLE? *

    I've already ordered my FX-51 processor and most of the rest of the system. I'm twiddling my thumbs waiting for this motherboard to appear on the virtual shelves of some reseller.

    Maybe I should resort to ball and jacks.
  • Anonymous User - Monday, October 13, 2003 - link

    The anti-AMD comments are completely baseless. So you're going to stop buying from one company because one product is not good? What about the other company's product? Are you going to buy that just because you happened to not have a bad experience with them and then decided to go elsewhere if you do? Such is the attitude of the "all or nothing" extremists. I don't like those people - they tend to have tunnel vision.

    Let us not forget that purchasing EITHER the P4EE or 64 FX this year is a horrible mistake if you plan to upgrade, unless AMD and intel plan on making higher speed grades for those sockets, which seems unlikely. Combine the price point that could allow one to easily purchase a high-end Dual Socket A system for little more than 5% more performance, and you must ask yourself if what you are doing is really worth it...

    The Value-conscious buyer gets a Barton or 2.4C system NOW if they really need to upgrade, or waits out until fall next year if they don't. Remember all the high-end stuff... 300MHz PII Klamath, 600 PIII katmai, 1130 PII Cumine, 2GHz willamette, etc.... all of those are top-end platforms with virtually NO upgrade path whatsoever. Many with them were utterly disappointed as something with more performance and a much shinier upgrade outlook could be purchased a few months later....

    We have all made mistakes, due to lack of research and closed-box thinking burned by non-A via chipsets and the like, but please, let's learn....
  • Anonymous User - Monday, October 13, 2003 - link

    The anti-AMD comments are completely baseless. So you're going to stop buying from one company because one product is not good? What about the other company's product? Are you going to buy that just because you happened to not have a bad experience with them and then decided to go elsewhere if you do? Such is the attitude of the "all or nothing" extremists. I don't like those people - they tend to have tunnel vision.

    Let us not forget that purchasing EITHER the P4EE or 64 FX this year is a horrible mistake if you plan to upgrade, unless AMD and intel plan on making higher speed grades for those sockets, which seems unlikely. Combine the price point that could allow one to easily purchase a high-end Dual Socket A system for little more than 5% more performance, and you must ask yourself if what you are doing is really worth it...

    The Value-conscious buyer gets a Barton or 2.4C system NOW if they really need to upgrade, or waits out until fall next year if they don't. Remember all the high-end stuff... 300MHz PII Klamath, 600 PIII katmai, 1130 PII Cumine, 2GHz willamette, etc.... all of those are top-end platforms with virtually NO upgrade path whatsoever. Many with them were utterly disappointed as something with more performance and a much shinier upgrade outlook could be purchased a few months later....

    We have all made mistakes, due to lack of research and closed-box thinking burned by non-A via chipsets and the like, but please, let's learn....
  • Reflex - Monday, October 13, 2003 - link

    Heh, K6-2's rocked provided you did your research on your motherboards. The Asus P5A was easily my favorite, I still have a few systems out there that I built based on those and they are *rock* solid. I suppose if you bought a PC Chips board/relabel and had system issues that it may have colored your perspective, but honestly most of the boards I used at the time from Asus, Abit and Epox were all very very good.

    But its always that way, if you do your homework you won't get burned. Or at least its rare. ;)
  • Anonymous User - Sunday, October 12, 2003 - link

    #26 - I had a comparable mentality as it relates to AMD. I thought the K6-2 was craptastic as well but let me tell you, AMD has come a LONG way since then and most of the problems with the K6-2's were actually with the MB chipsets. If you don't give AMD another look you are selling yourself short. Sure glad I did!
  • Anonymous User - Sunday, October 12, 2003 - link

    It's best to leave people like #26 alone as you can't save them. Just like those people who continuously buy from Dell, best to look, shake your head, and keep walking.
  • Reflex - Sunday, October 12, 2003 - link

    #26: Never buy once you have had a defective product? How's that i820 motherboard with MTH doing these days? How about the first generation P4 that was slower than the P3? GOt a P60 with the floating point bug? How much money you invest in the dead end called RDRAM? Ever pick up one of those 1.13Ghz P3 CPU's, the first generation ones that had all sorts of problems...

    With your attitude I am amazed you can buy Intel. After all, they have had practically a parade of errors and flaws. As far as I know no company hits everything 100% all the time. Judging based on your experience with a single product is pretty idiotic, I am certain I can find a very flawed product that was put out by virtually every company in tech at some point or other. But hey, where will you go when you finally end up with a flawed Intel chip, I mean I guess its off to the Via C3 or something...heh.
  • Anonymous User - Sunday, October 12, 2003 - link

    The Macs are really, really, really freaking fast. What are you talking about? The Mac G5 beats a dual 3Ghz Xeon system by about 50% all around.

    I'll never ever buy a Mac though. Just like I'll never buy an AMD system since my K6-2 fiasco. Say what you want, it left a bad taste in my mouth. I won't shop at Best Buy. I wont buy anything made by Sony either after 2 discmans (men?), a $600 amplifier, and a CD burner broke way too early. After a company sells me a faulty product, I don't buy from them anymore.

    Maybe the Pentium Pro pricing days are coming back, but regardless, Intel's new roadmap suggests that by this time next year a 3.6 Ghz Prescott with a 1Mb cache will be in the midrange price range and still fit in any 478-pin socket. That, to me, says that today's best buy is still a P4 2.4C. Who knows if AMD will still be in business by then anyway. Maybe IBM will be tired of giving them 200 million bail-out gifts, and will own them by then.

    I will admit this: The best high-end system, for the buck, right now, is certainly AMD. I just won't buy one.
  • Anonymous User - Saturday, October 11, 2003 - link

    Hmm.. something just occured to me. (This is #24 again.) Anyone else remember the days of the Pentium and Pentium Pro? Well, it seems like we may be reentering the whole "high-end CPUs are different from midrange ones in ways other than clock speed" thing.. except this time around, the Macs aren't faster (the G5 and its super-deep pipeline can kiss my ass, thanks.. and probably the Hammer's while it's at it), and there are two companies in the game. This is going to be fun.
  • Anonymous User - Saturday, October 11, 2003 - link

    Hey, why isn't the Nehalem in this review? So what if it doesn't exist? They've got like 80% of it planned out now anyway, it's unfair to have this review biased towards AMD.

    Well, SOMEONE had to be ignorant and stupid, and hell if I'm going to say a thing about the Pentium 4 Xeon MP Edition.

    Uh. Anyway. The Athlon FX may just be a rebranded Opteron, but it's cheaper than the rebranded Xeon MP and much better at its job, so who cares what's a rebranded what? Not that I'd ever buy an Athlon 64 at these prices, but it seems the only market sector Intel has left is the low high end :D
  • Anonymous User - Friday, October 10, 2003 - link

    Excellent review! I'll be reading all of your writings from now on. :D
  • sandorski - Friday, October 10, 2003 - link

    Sweet motherboard, makes me think that as Athlon 64/FX motherboards mature, more performance will be acheived.
  • Anonymous User - Friday, October 10, 2003 - link

    Haha, good point #20!
  • Anonymous User - Friday, October 10, 2003 - link

    #12, perhaps because P4EE does not exist...
  • Anonymous User - Friday, October 10, 2003 - link

    When will this board be released?
  • Reflex - Friday, October 10, 2003 - link

    #11: I am not reffering to Quad-Channel DDR as I think you believe. I am reffering to Quad-Data Rate SDRAM. It uses the same pin count as DDR but sends information four times per clock, resulting in twice the bandwidth as DDR. If AMD supported it in their on board controller it would not require a higher pin count.

    However there must be some technical reason for QDR not appearing by now since its been 'just around the corner' for over two years now...
  • Anonymous User - Friday, October 10, 2003 - link

    Mostly I meant that running hand-compiled 64-bit apps would be irrelevant. I'd love to see another article in a few months, when Linux apps start actually arriving in 64-bit versions. But until then, it would be akin to Tom's OC'ing the P4EE. It may be interesting to a few people, but it would appear biased to almost everyone else.
  • Anonymous User - Friday, October 10, 2003 - link

    #15, 64-bit tests running linux would not be relevant? what about those of us who are running linux right now? I for one would love to see a 64-bit set of linux benchmarks included.
  • Anonymous User - Friday, October 10, 2003 - link

    64-bit tests running Linux and hand-compiled programs would be:

    a) Really time consuming
    b) Artificial
    c) Not relevant to the real world
  • Anonymous User - Friday, October 10, 2003 - link

    It is odd that NO 64-bit tests has been made. Why don't people fire up Linux and compile a few programs like MPEG encoding, video/divx processing etc etc?
  • Anonymous User - Friday, October 10, 2003 - link

    Has anyone tried decreasing both the memory speed and the LDT speed when overclocking an athlon 64 board via the fsb?
    The reason I ask is that being able to set the memory, and hypertransport ratio's, may make an independant CPU multiplier adjusment redundant.
    (obviously it would be nice to rule CPU frequency out of such a test)
  • PrinceGaz - Friday, October 10, 2003 - link

    ...almost forgot, why was the P4EE 3.2 not included in the benchmarks?
  • PrinceGaz - Friday, October 10, 2003 - link

    Very very nice board and CPU, and impressive benchmarks throughout (you can't expect it to match the P4 for encoding). But next year's 939-pin FX is definitely the one to wait for.

    #4- QDR is just as unlikely as RDRAM but for different reasons, a key point of the A64/FX is the on-die memory-controller but that means you can't just add another couple of memory-channels to it without a total socket re-design (and for QDR a ridicoulously high pin-count). DDR2 is the way forwards in the future rather than more channels.

    I'd really expected the fastest CPU nearly two years after getting my XP1700+ to be more than just 85% or so faster than it (the Barton 3200+ is barely over 50% faster, and the A64 3200+ about 70% faster). Unfortunately I can't justify an upgrade until its over 2x, preferably 3x as fast so I'll wait into next year and see what speed increases the shift to 90nm brings.
  • Anonymous User - Friday, October 10, 2003 - link

    Very impressive board, We've used Gigabyte boards almost exclusively for the past few years at our computer shop and they just keep getting better with every revision. What I'm looking forward to is what they're going to have coming out early next year for the FX, by that time, having an FX system will become a reality for those of us who can't pay an arm and a testes.
  • Anonymous User - Friday, October 10, 2003 - link

    I want to know whats up with Gunmetal. Otherwise, great review. I just hope that the prices come down, alot, by spring for my upgrade.
  • Anonymous User - Friday, October 10, 2003 - link

    If anyone had doubts about the A64 and FX performance there should be no questions now!

    FX is intended to satisfy the extreme demands of power users who want the best and they want it now. A64 is a more cost effective solution for those who want outstanding performance at a consumer price point.

    As A64/FX ramp all prices will drop as is normal. You'll likely find that the FX series is quite affordable to the enthusiast market and a Helleva value as things ramp.

    And there are some more goodies on the way from AMD and it's partners to make all consumers very happy. Stay tuned!

  • Wesley Fink - Friday, October 10, 2003 - link

    #5 - Regular Opterons are locked - at least that is what we found in the 2 we tested. The FX is unlocked.

    #6 - Yes, this is the first 1394b 800mb/sec Firewire board.
  • mcveigh - Friday, October 10, 2003 - link

    is this the first PC board with firewire800?
  • juc - Friday, October 10, 2003 - link

    can you try and put in a lower clock opteron and see what type of overclocking you can do w/ it?, is the regular 14x opteron unlocked? it would be nice if it was.
  • Reflex - Friday, October 10, 2003 - link

    #1: A RDRAM version would completely eliminate the advantage of having an on-die memory controller on the CPU as it is very very high latency by design. The A64 thrives on very very low latency/high IPC, and RDRAM does not provide that.

    Honestly, what would be truly ideal is a QDR solution. But everytime I hear about it being close nothing seems to come of it. Too bad...
  • Anonymous User - Friday, October 10, 2003 - link

    Considering the performance gain, money ain't that important :-)
  • Anonymous User - Friday, October 10, 2003 - link

    #1,

    Samsung PC-3200 512 MB DDR SDRAM $125
    Samsung PC-3200 512 MB ECC Reg. DDR SDRAM $174

    +49

    Corsair XMS3200 PC-3200 512MB DDR SDRAM $175
    Corsair XMS3200 PC-3200 ELL 512MB DDR SDRAM $220
    Corsair XMS3200LL-RE PC-3200 ECC Reg. 512MB DDR SDRAM $235

    +15 (+60 compared to slower timings)

    completely unmeaningful to anyone with the money to buy an fx.
  • Anonymous User - Friday, October 10, 2003 - link

    Looks like a cool mobo, and an amazingly fast CPU, but . . .

    Who's going to buy one of these!?!?!?

    The price you'll spend on memory put's this way out of most people's price range! And before you yell at me for saying that, look up pricing for registered modules!

    You could probably buy an awesome Athlon 64 system now, then upgrade your mobo and CPU to FX when the 939 pin version comes out, and still spend less money than paying this ridiculous premium on memory. Plus, it would be upgradable to future FX chips, not an unsupported beast. Anyone remember socket 423?

    Say goodbye to the idea of 'surpassing the 4Gb memory limitation,' unless you have like $10,000 to spend on memory!

    My real question here is why, when the Athlon 64 (non-FX) is such a success, would they make this strange beast?

    What I would LOVE to see (I know you're going to hate this one) is a really tight RDRAM chipset ready when the 939-pin chipset comes out.

    What do you think? Quad Channel 1200Mhz RDRAM on the new FX? Ain't gonna happen, but I can dream.

Log in

Don't have an account? Sign up now