AMD Motherboards: Processor Support
by Wesley Fink on June 28, 2005 1:00 PM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
Final Words
The latest AMD Athlon 64 processors bring with them performance improvements, and a new round of potential compatibility issues. Venice, San Diego, and Toledo (x2) all have the 90nm manufacturing advantage and the addition of SSE3 instructions. While they will all potentially work on any Socket 939 board, all three new processors require a BIOS update, which may or may not be available for your favorite board.In general, motherboards based on the nForce4, VIA K8T890, Uli1689, SiS 756, and ATI Crossfire AMD will likely already have a BIOS released that will work with x2 processors or one will be coming shortly. Those with motherboards based on the earlier nForce3 chipset may not be so lucky - as BIOS' that support x2 on nForce3 are just starting to appear. We are told nF3 support for x2 is coming, but it is definitely coming more slowly. This means most Socket 939 boards with AGP video may not be supported right now with an x2 BIOS upgrade. We say most, because the new ULi 1689 chipset does support both AGP and x2, and some of the older but popular VIA AGP boards have x2 BIOS updates available.
AMD has also added additional "hidden" features in the AMD on-processor memory controller. Additional asynchronous ratios are available at 433, 466, and 500 memory speed on boards that implement the necessary code to access these memory controller features. These options should be available with any Revision E chip if the manufacturer implements the controller option read in BIOS. We saw the additional options "magically" appear on an Abit AN8 Fatality motherboard when a 4200+ x2 processor was used.
Unfortunately the long-rumored 1T Command Rate with Rev. E AMD processors appears to have been just a rumor. We could not run 4 matched dimms at 1T in a motherboard with Rev. E/x2 support. Four dimms still required a 2T Command Rate.
You should consider our list of Official and Unofficial Dual-core support to be a unified Revision E list. AMD tells us that Revision E support is part of the requirement for x2, so you can assume any x2 capable board will also properly support Venice and San Diego.
Fortunately for those shopping for a new Socket 939 motherboard there are many new boards that support Revision E and x2 processors. We hope the information in the article will make your search for a new motherboard for an Athlon 64 an easier process. If we overlooked boards and/or BIOS revisions that belong in our Supported list please let us know.
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Den - Tuesday, June 28, 2005 - link
Both the ASUS A8N-E and A8V support the E4 (in addition to E3 and E6) stepping according to AMD's page though your article just lists E3 and E6. See cut and paste below...Asus
A8N-E
# 2.0 ATX nVidia nForce4 Ultra Cool'n'Quiet
# PCIe™
# Supports up to processor stepping: E3
# Supports up to processor stepping: E4
# Supports up to processor stepping: E6
xeizo - Tuesday, June 28, 2005 - link
You forgot to mention in the text that there are indeed older K8T800Pro/agp-boards that supports dual-core, in fact they are on your list, like the Abit AV8 2.0 and the Soltek K8TPro-939 ....Olaf van der Spek - Tuesday, June 28, 2005 - link
> Date: June 28th, 2005> Topic: Business
> Manufacturer: 3Com/U.S. Robotics
> Author: Wesley Fink
Did someone do too much copy/pasting?
BTW, _new isn't a valid target for an anchor.
Houdani - Tuesday, June 28, 2005 - link
Is there any value with including which SFF designs are X2 / Rev E compatible?I'm fairly certain the Shuttle SN25P does support the X2.
Aikouka - Tuesday, June 28, 2005 - link
Just as a note, Gigabyte released the BIOS update for the GA-K8N Ultra-9 nForce 4 motherboard today.Wesley Fink - Tuesday, June 28, 2005 - link
$6 - While AMD did not officially support DDR400 with 4 dimms on earlier Athlon 64, the fact is almost every board we tested ran fine at DDR400 with 4 dimms. Check our earlier roundups. The boards that would NOT do DDR400 with 4 dimms stood out, since most would. Also 2x1GB has never been a problem at 1T in our testing.#7 and others - It's good to hear there are new BIOS' to support x2 on nForce3. The websites did not list any nF3 with x2 support when we suveyed the last few days, but readers with nF3 boards will be happy to know some are becoming available.
#10 AMD says that if the board supports Rev. E the X2 chip should run in single core mode to allow BIOS update. If the board does NOT support Rev. E chips you will need a new BIOS chip or an earlier A64 to flash.
arswihart - Tuesday, June 28, 2005 - link
this is what one user that I know of reported when he installed an X2 in an Epox 9nda3+ (NF3) mobo.elpheer - Tuesday, June 28, 2005 - link
Nice article.I'm unclear on one particular point though; am I correct in assuming that if you mount an X2 on a motherboad that has an outdated BIOS, it will successfully boot on just 1 core, thus allowing an OS installation?
This in-case there is no immediate second hand PC available to make a BIOS disk to flash..
bigtoe36 - Tuesday, June 28, 2005 - link
#62x1gig dimms have been doing 1T for a while already with winchester and Clawhammer proving easliy capable of supporting the feature, it was however not guaranteed.
4x double sided will always be 2t in my books, but E die seems to allow some good overclocking so much of the speed can be clawed back.
Wesley Fink - Tuesday, June 28, 2005 - link
#5 - You're Correct and this has been updated.