Clawhammer Mobo Preview

[Eric Portelance]

In case you haven't been reading the news, I'm very excited about AMD's upcomming processor lineup. Barton should boost the current K7 architecture (even though it'll probably arrive too late), and K8 will be incredible.

I was quite surprised and impressed to see that Tom's Hardware managed to snag a prototype Clawhammer motherboard to review. Unfortunetly, they didn't have a processor (or so they say), and even if they did, they wouldn't be able to publish any benchmarks. They do hint, however that some should be available before Christmas, and that the samples mobo companies are currently getting are rated at 3200+ and run at 1.6ghz.

Check out the full article, it's worth a read.

 

[Richard Slater]

Yeah Im looking forward to the new hammers the article looks interesting, I might wait for the new Clawhammers to come about before I build my new system.

 

[Eric Portelance]

I was also thinking of waiting for Clawhammer, but I decided I can't wait that long to build a new system. I'll probably settle for Barton or something.

 

[Richard Slater]

I am really tempted not to wait and get a dual Xeon system, I really fancy having a what looks like a 4 way system.

I might just save my money though and go for a P4, to be honest I have had it up to here with the VIA/AMD Athlon saga, if VIA are the best chipset manafacturer for AMD motherboards I worry.

 

[Eric Portelance]

Why? What issues have you had with Via chipsets? I've never had a single issue.

A dual Xeon board would be heaven, but $$$ ++. I wish I had that kind of dough. I can barely afford to build myself a 2000+ Athlon system.

 

[Richard Slater]

Originally posted by Eric Portelance
Why? What issues have you had with Via chipsets? I've never had a single issue.

A dual Xeon board would be heaven, but $$$ ++. I wish I had that kind of dough. I can barely afford to build myself a 2000+ Athlon system.

I am just fed up with the endless need for new 4 in 1's to resolve the latest bug, having to install USB filters to get things to work. Not being able to use Creative sound cards without spending days tweaking the settings so that they are usuable. As individual companys AMD and VIA are great but I just cant cope with the problems that they seem to have. Until 6 months ago I was a huge AMD evangalist, I could never see me wanting a Intel box, but now after seing Darrens P4 in action and the smooth time he has with it I dont think I will touch an AMD Athalon except for small upgrades to my current system.

I think the whole thing about Intel is they do test their chips so thuroughly (there is an excelent article on anandtech) and perhipials just seem to work on Intel baised systems.

Xeons would be nice but the Price is prohibiting, you could spend £1000 on the Motherboard and Processors alone, then you got RIMMS and the rest of your computer to buy after that. I think I will probably either wait for the Hammer's or get a high end P4 (3ghz+, rambus probably), all assuming I can save enough money of course

 

[Eric Portelance]

Yes, Via has had some issues, but a lot of people haven't had any problems. I have a SoundBlaster Live! and a Via chipset, never had any issues whatsoever. I had to install a USB patch earlier, but all is fixed now.

 

[Darren Eddleston]

yep my comp is a beast

all i need now is:
a 19 inch(+) mointor
some very sexy Corsair 512MB DDR XMS3500 memory....
oh and i new gfx card dammit.

and i'm rockin.

I had an AMD system and oh my god what a pain in the ass.... it needed so many updates i just couldn't be bothered with it anymore. I'm not even gonna mention the instability of it.... and that was with a VIA chipset.

Now, i rarely crash... when it does it's usually the fault of my lameass pc2100 ddr memory

 

[Eric Portelance]

Interesting. It sucks that you had so many problems, because there are very few people I know (except on the internet) that have actually had problems with the Via/AMD thing. What chipset/mobo were you using?