AMD Upgrade Questions?

R

Rusty

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?
 
J

JK

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.
 
G

General Schvantzkoph

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.
 
J

John

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/motherboard/20041020/nforce4-01.html
 
S

Spajky

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 ...

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)

marketing "high " numbers took place & could not make a decent chipset
in handling real life memory transfers ...

no, integrated mem.controller circumvents upper my statement & 2ch
s.939 even more:
see my last analisis on my site under comp/bench link before "new" ..

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 ...
 

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