Blogs Where are the decent Socket AM2+ motherboards?

http://www.bit-tech.net/blog/2009/02/22/no-decent-socket-am2-motherboards/

 

Sorry you cannot pass of Tims smell as coming from the computer

 

i agree with most of what was said 100% but there are a few things i totally disagree with

AMD processors are competitive on the budget end and now around the mid end with the phenom 2 so what exactly are you saying? because it sounds like your just slagging them off for not being as good as intel the way that is phrased (i doubt you are, but if you are you shouldnt)

I mean yeah until recently they havent had a decent enthusiast chip but the way its phrased just sounds like your putting the boot in in general, it desperately needs rephrasing

And

Seriously i find that fairly off the mark considering the Phenom II 940 is a Phenom worth buying in its own right no matter what way you look at it, its also amusing since the 720BE is just a 940BE with one core disabled

You are seriously off mark with those points (and thats putting it lightly and very politely IMO) but your spot on about how stagnate the support for AMD boards is as ive said previously on these forums

 

hmm, i've owned 3 different socket AM2+ boards and been happy with all of them, but must admit that i'm not what you would call a serious overclocker, especially the 'big voltage' overclocks. I tend to stick to the maximum stable overclock at stock voltages, just to keep the heat down. First board was an Asus M3A32-MVP, not the greatest chipset and took a few bios revisions to get the most out of it, but plenty of features. Second board was an Abit A-S78H micro-ATX board, probably the best value board i've ever bought, about £60 from PC World, with the cracking 780G chipset that was rock solid running an overclocked Phenom 9850. Shame that Abit went by the wayside as i'd probably have stuck with it for Phenom II if a bios update was on the cards. Latest board is a DFI 790GX JR micro-ATX board, no problems at all with an overclocked Phenom II 940 and 2 x 4850's in crossfire. I guess it depends what you're looking to get out of each board.

 

Sorry for any confusion, I wasn't giving AMD/ATI a general purpose kicking - it seems we both agree that until recently (Phenom II onwards) AMD hasn't had any really competitive mid-range CPUs. Yes, I'd concede that there were some reasonable budget CPUs (Athlon X2s), but they're not what I'd call enthusiast chips, i.e. they have very low (comparative) performance and limited overclocking.

The whole point of the blog was that now there are some competitive AMD CPUs that it's a tragedy that motherboard manufacturers are letting AMD down by not providing good enough boards.

 

No doubt about it, while AMD have IMO some of the best chipsets in the market for what they are designed for, they are wholey let down by the pittiful support by manufacturers as ive previously said here on the DFI AMD mobo review

I have a real soft spot for AMD going back to the Duron days (still have all my old intel and AMD comps running actually!) and i always root for the underdog so it just shits me that they are wholey let down on the mobo front, they make **** boards and brand them enthusiast and sell them for an arm and a leg (lets all face it MOBO's these days ARE over priced) for a bunch of bells and whistles you dont need, dont want and will never use

The only AMD mobo maker i think has done a half decent job all around is Gigabyte, fair enough they had their issues but as soon as they had their mosfets cooking when the first phenoms were around they worked out why and went to work on it and have thus far done a pretty decent job


but in all fairness props on calling the mobo makers out on it, its definitely something that should be followed up on, ask mobo makers why they have dropped the ball so bad and what they are doing about it etc it could make for an interesting story

 

AMD should release a new IGP chipset, call it 795GX, that:
1. is based on their 4xxx series GPUs
2. provides support for 7.1 channel LPCM over HDMI

Motherboard manufacturers should then build kickass mobos using that chipset and a good quality 8-channel HD audio codec that can do HDCP (among Realtek codecs, 889a can do this). Then, I'd be pleased (excited, in fact) to invest some USD 200-250 in a Phenom II X4 CPU and $100-150 in a motherboard with at least two, but preferably three, full bandwidth x16 PCI-E 2.0 slots. Doesn't need to have SLI for my purposes; nvidia rips people off with SLI.

All three versions: AM2+ (DDR2) and AM3 (double and triple channel) should be released for each design, and no motherboard (going forward) should be sold without an e-sata port (for external storage), and in the case of an IGP mobo (as suggested here), they must all have an HDMI port.

An additional idea is for mobos to have active chipset cooling with a small fan to go with the heatsink in order to make it possible for slightly more powerful IGP to be used here (say, HD 4550 instead of 4350).

To top it off, start providing solid linux support on the motherboard side (i.e. downloadable drivers etc), not just AMD's catalyst for dGPUs and iGPUs.

All of this is doable with costs and prices kept very reasonable. And that's when AMD's dragon platform will truly take off (which I do predict will happen) and when AMD can go head to head with the i7's in terms of performance, the Intel Goliath can be brought down to earth.

 

Also, two key things that seem to be plaguing AMD's Catalyst drivers for linux:
1. video tearing
2. poor fan control
which should really be fixed ASAP.

When that's done, I'd be pleased to buy their mid-range GPUs over Nvidia's for daily graphics and light gaming, and higher-end ones when AMD's stream computing platform matures and becomes robust and usable.