Question about AMD processors

[Gallienus]

It might also be pointed out that with the 939 socket you will be able to use the FX chips when they come down to a more reasonable price range.

[The Coder]

Some AMD 64 939 chips are 130nm in size while the newer Winchester core chips are 90nm. As far as motherboards are concerned, when a MOBO says it can handle a 939 skt chip, would it be compatible with either a 90nm or 130nm chip? Is the CPU size a spec to be concerned about in terms of compatibility?

[XiaoKJ]

its not measured. like in intel, you can use a 90-nm processor on a mobo that was made for the 130-nm ones. the mobo doesn't care so long as the processor has the correct pins.

That is the whole reason for the pin system.

[Lucas_Maximus]

Originally posted by soulestream
One think I will mention is that AMD seem to run alot hotter than Intel. You may wanna do some checking on better cooling than comes with the processor.



soule

The new prescotts and new Intel Chips have a higher wattage than the AMD 64 chips. In Fact the old AMd runs hotter than intel was killed with the Athlon XP Barton and throughbred processors.

However if cooling is a problem get the thermalright heatsinks compatible for Athlon 64 they are't expensive but however are teh best that Air cooling can do currently.

[Lucas_Maximus]

Why do you like nForce chipsets so much? Am I the only one that remembers the major issues they had when nForce2 came out, and nVidia didn't release drivers for its onboard stuff (...well, the network card at least -- the sound mostly-worked using the intel8x0 driver IIRC) for WAY too long? Am I the only one still not buying their chipsets because of the major problems they seemed to have with that?

My Nforce 2 Mobo worked outta the box with the Linux and there was an opensource driver availbel for some time I do believe.

It a non Issue now as they have drivers for all their nforce chipsets for Linux.

Also the Nforce chipset delivers the best performance for AMD CPU's.

[onorato]

Now who would say that AMD cpus run hotter? The old die-harders. It is true that the old Thunderbirds did alot to build up that reputation; I know, I had a 1400 which really ran at something like 50 degrees, but that is all past now. I own three AMD PCs, with 2600+, 2800+, and a 3200 64Bit. On the first twoI have a TRM2 cooler, and they run at 35 degrees, and on the 3200 I am using the AVC cooler that came with it. the temp at idling is around 24 degrees! So much for heat problems. When building a new pc from scratch certain rules should be adhered to. First rule is to choose a case with with a front side mounted cooler. This should ideally be situated where your hard drives are, and should help keep your mobo running cool. Secondly use a case which has a n air inlet duct so as your cpu cooler sucks fresh air from outside of the case. Thirdly I would recomend a Power supply with its fan mounted on the inside, ie nearer to the cpu heatsink. That way any hot air is sucked out right away. In my case I took out the 8cm fan, and fitted a 12cm one inside. I used a three wire one and connected it to the motherboard to be able to monitor its speed. Some pics of my case are in the attached zip
The NForce3 chipset is recognised by Mandrake 10.2 Beta1 Installation, so there is no problem there

Hope that these tips might be of help.

Onorato

[bwkaz]

Originally posted by Lucas_Maximus
Also the Nforce chipset delivers the best performance for AMD CPU's.

In Windows. According to "benchmarks" (aka "lies", yes, I'm cynical ) that differed by something tiny like 2 percent.

At least, that's what I remember from when the nForce2 chipset was brand new. At that time, the best combination of hardware (in Windows) was an nForce2 motherboard and the newest-chipset ATI video card, whatever that was. And yes, that was true -- but only in Windows.

In Linux, the nForce2 chipset had no AGP drivers (let alone nvnet), and the ATI Linux video drivers didn't have a driver for that AGP controller either. (You could use Option "NvAgp" "1" to have the nVidia driver use its internal AGP handler, which worked with nForce2. But the nVidia driver wouldn't work with an ATI video card, for hopefully obvious reasons. So you were totally hosed if you had that hardware, until AGP drivers for the nForce2 finally made it into the kernel, about three months later IIRC.)

So instead of getting the fastest combination of hardware, you had no AGP support whatsoever. And although AGP should not be used during time critical chunks of game code if possible (because onboard video memory is MUCH faster), no AGP support at all made everything slower, if the card would do 3D at all.

And nVidia said "we won't release separate nForce2 AGP drivers for Linux, because our video driver already handles that chipset just fine". Which was sort of understandable, unless you happened to be using a competitor's video card, in which case it was vendor lockin.

On the other hand, of course the nForce chipsets provide the fastest performance for AMD CPUs. They don't work with Intel CPUs! (Or at least, they didn't. The sockets are completely different, so I would expect that they still don't, though I haven't looked in a long time.)

[Lucas_Maximus]

The nforce 4 chipset, also has been ported to the intel market now.

My nforce 2 chipset is noticably better than my VIa chipset on my second computer under windows and Linux. So IMO it is the fastest chipset fo the athlon XP.

[JSimmons]

nForce2 was the savior for the ATI video card owners. The Via KT400 chipset was "problematic" because the drivers for the motherboards conflicted in some bizarre way with the ATI drivers. Both manufacturers just pointed fingers at each other, each blaming the other for the problem. With the nForce2 boards, ATI video cards ran problem-free.

I am current running an Asus KT400 chipset board and I can't use the motherboard drivers for this very reason (I use ATI video cards). My dad runs an nForce2 board with ATI and has no problems at all.

My AMD64 parts will be here this week, and I chose the MSI K8N Neo2 (nForce3 Ultra) motherboard because I haven't heard anyone say that Via has fixed their incompatibility problems with ATI video cards. Before anyone spits coffee through their nose, I chose the nForce3 because my current (new) video card is AGP, and the nForce4 boards are PCI-E only.