The Motherboards
| The motherboards that AMD shipped
to reviewers with the Athlon 600s were the AMD Fester Rev. B boards that AMD developed in
house, but can you buy them? No. So what motherboards will you be able to buy? AMD's Fester Motherboard (right) |
| Gigabyte's GA-7IX and Microstar's
MS-6167 will be among the first available boards, both will boast 5 PCI slots, 2 ISA
slots, and the rest of the features supported by the AMD 750 chipset. The FIC SD11 is also
on its way, however information on that particular model has been kept very quiet. If
history repeats itself, FIC's excellent relationship with VIA should surface once again
with FIC being the first motherboard manufacturer to showcase a VIA chipset based Athlon
motherboard, possibly later this year. Gigabyte's GA-7IX Motherboard (right) |
The motherboard situation with the Athlon processor will be an interesting one. If you recall, one of the major problems with the Super7 market was the lack of high quality motherboards to drive the chips that AMD had spent so long producing. Motherboard manufacturers will hopefully take the Athlon a bit more seriously now that it is a top tier performer. Our current experience with Athlon motherboards in AnandTech's lab indicates that the manufacturers have a bit of work to do before we get the quality of the mainstream BX boards in the AMD 750 based Athlon motherboard solutions.
The Athlon draws a considerable amount of current, and thus the reference AMD motherboard features a set of voltage regulators alongside the Slot-A connector in order to supply the Athlon with the current it needs, when it needs it. Although the core voltage of the Athlon is lower than the Pentium III at 1.6v, the amount of current the powerful processor draws makes the quality of the motherboard it is installed on a very important issue to take into consideration. At the same time, we noticed some stability problems with some TNT2 Ultra cards and the Athlon, especially in cases where the TNT2 Ultra was drawing more than 5A of power. While these issues are certainly related to premature production of the motherboards (as they should, these motherboards are still in beta), they definitely need to be given some attention as it would be very unfortunate for the motherboard situation to hurt the Athlon.
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vortmax - Wednesday, September 6, 2006 - link
Go AMD!jonmssith - Tuesday, May 18, 2021 - link
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