Note that nForce 3 board hardly has any features. None of the fancy nForce sound, no SATA till september, but should still be nice. 8-ball
from the nVidia press release. Nice to know they're working with ASUS on this one. Added confidence factor. 8-ball
They are launching their chipset, not necicarily a motherboard. That board is a concept board. We will probably get it here in a few weeks for testing. (I hope ) It's up to the OEMs to add features to the board. My experience with ASUS and nForce2 makes me think this is the board to watch out for.
Is there a good source for more info on hypertransport? Can you give us a general idea of what it would take to unlock an athlonxp/hypertransport? Is the hypertransport 16 wired dedicated to each direction, or could it be pulling data in on 17 and outgoing on 15? Also, while changing the hypertransport rate wouldn't make great increases in processing power, it would allow data to travel that much faster to/from the memory/video/ect, no? And one last thing, just so you don't forget: WE LOVE YOU!
What commercially available 64bit software will be available at the launch of the Athlon 64 for desktop applications?
From the AMD home page: http://www.mindshare.com/?contentpa...hypertransport/hypertransport_books_main.html And here of course: http://www.hypertransport.org/ I can give no details on unlocking it. It is 16 dedicated in each direction. By dedicating the wires, you can design for faster data transfer. Rather the trying to get a sending transistor, and a receiving transistor to co-exist on the same wire. Yes, increasing the hypertransport speed can definently incread overall system bandwidth. TONS! Read the lauch site for details. The biggest news is Microsoft Windows Server 2003 64-bit. Announced today, to be released in a few days.
Do you know how to though? I've been wondering if AMD tell their techs how to unlock for testing... You were working on DDR weren't you? *n (not asking you to tell us...just wondering ehther or not you hat 'The Knowledge' )
is the hypertransport speed and the cpu speed in anyway linked then? im confused as to how overclocking will work on these can you just set the cpu speed, no multipliers and what not? and set the hypertransport seperately? love your media pc btw
Would you say essentially that for non server applications the Hammer takes second place to the Athlon? would you consider the Athlon-64 an interim (filler) chip till the new architecture (K9) is ready?
No i don't know how, we have to have them specialy manufactured that way. There are only a few around the lab that are unlocked. The hypertransport, and CPU Core speed are not linked in anyway. There are multipliers, they just reference another clock. I do not know whether the reference clock is internal or external. I think you can set the hypertransport speed through BIOS (If it supports it) As penski said I work on DDR, not hypertransport. Absolutly NOT!, the Opteron is faster than the Athlon 64 (And XP of course) The core is similar, the differences lay in the number/speed of hypertransport links. The DDR Bus, and Cache sizes. Here is the block diagram of a Opteron: And that of a Athlon 64: And this image may interest you: http://www.amd.com/us-en/assets/content_type/DigitalMedia/27382A-12_lr.jpg More images here: http://www.amd.com/us-en/Corporate/VirtualPressRoom/0,,51_104_572_573^5766,00.html The Athlon 64 is a cheaper subset of an Opteron. It will be magnitudes faster than a Athlon XP, yet still slower than an Opteron. As far as K9, I don't know anything about it. (Only that for some reason today the K9 group got a barbeque outside before everyone else...)
lol bout the bbq. Can you explain the chip ratings? 240, 242, and 244? And will these ratings carry to the Athlon 64's, or will those keep a system people can somewhat-easily keep track of? Also, what of the review from tom's hardware suggesting that the opteron is a server chip, doesn't compete with xeons in workstations, and would only be used in workstations because of its ability to use 32-bit software?
Thanks Zap for answering my questions. I think I'll watch how this pans out lol Well hopefully AMD will not be held back by their business model, which has prevented them in the past getting into the enterprise arena. Still I think the battle for the dekstop between the Intel Prescott and Athlon-64 will be an interesting one
The rating corespond to their speed. 240 being 1.4ghz 242 being 1.6ghz 244 being 1.8ghz The 2 at the front means it is a Dual processor. And can run with two and ONLY two processors. The 4 is meaning less. These numbers will not carry onto the Athlon 64, they will use a scheme similar to Athlon XP. The Opteron is scalable from single processor Workstation server, to huge rackmount servers. From one processor to eight. From 128MB of memory up to 32 GB per processor. Opteron is simple the most powerful processor out there. Many times faster than Xeon, Athlon XP, and the PIV. And even faster than the Itanium, at a lower price.
At many of the forums I attend I have been conditioned into believing that anything at THG is horse ****. The style of reviews are similar to those at HardOCP, and oare often biased/uninformed and have dodgy data. Beyond that, the XEON has been around for a while with constant driver revisions. Personally, I'm gonna wait and see how it pans out over the next few weeks, though I have great faith in HAMMER. Once 64 bit software hits the main stream, I think that will be the main driver. 8-ball
A quote from an anandtech article ASUS is NVIDIA's sole launch partner with nForce3 Pro and they will have boards available in the next two months. I think the board in those pics IS the ASUS board and is the only one we'll see. If nVidia were just releasing a chipset, how would they know so much about the possible features on the boards. 8-ball
That could be the ASUS Board, it is the right color for an ASUS Board. But it still could be the development board ,because all those features are part of the chipset. The chipset included more than just nVidia brand chips. nVidia has also choosen to include some third party chips. By doing this they make it easy for OEM's to make a board with their chipset, as the OEM doesn't have to interface anything on their own. And since all the chips that nVidia has choosen are supported by nVidia, the OEM's don't have to spend lots of time on drivers. From the AMD website: http://www.amd.com/us-en/Processors/ProductInformation/0,,30_118_8826_609,00.html But that is the pricing for just the Dual Opterons The other are not out yet, so I do not know the pricing.
