Gigabyte K8NNXP-940: Built on Athlon64 FX51 Strengths
by Wesley Fink on October 9, 2003 11:52 PM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
Gigabyte K8NNXP: Tech Support and RMA
For your reference, we will repost our support evaluation procedure here:The way our Tech Support evaluation works is first we anonymously email the manufacturer's tech support address(es), obviously not using our AnandTech mail server to avoid any sort of preferential treatment. Our emails (we can and will send more than one just to make sure we are not getting the staff on an “off” day) all contain fixable problems that we have had with our motherboard. We then give the manufacturer up to 72 business hours to respond and then we will report whether or not they responded within the time allotted, and if they were successful in fixing our problems. In case we don't receive a response before the review is published, any future responses will be added to the review, including the total time it took for the manufacturer to respond to our requests.
The idea here is to encourage manufacturers to improve their technical support as well as provide new criteria upon which to base your motherboard purchasing decisions. As motherboards become more similar every day, we have to help separate the boys from the men in as many ways as possible. As usual, we are interested in your feedback on this and other parts of our reviews, so please do email us with your comments.
Gigabyte's RMA policy is easy to follow and fairly good for a tier one motherboard maker. They offer a one-to-three year (depending on the model) manufacturer's Limited warranty. If you are experiencing difficulties in warranty service through your dealer, Gigabyte may attempt to resolve this issue. You must provide the following details to process your RMA request: Name, Address, Phone/Fax number, Model/Revision number, Serial number (10 digits), the precise issues that you are experiencing, name of vendor from which you purchased your Gigabyte product (include vendor contact info), CPU type and size, and memory module type and size. Like ASUS, Gigabyte prefers that you deal directly with the vendor from where you purchased the motherboard rather than directly with them.
In recent tests, Gigabyte has become the first Tier 1 manufacturer to consistently meet our 72-hour reply deadline — which is a vast improvement over past Gigabyte tech support. Since we were testing a pre-release board, any answer we would get from Gigabyte would hardly be a fair measurement of typical consumer response. We therefore decided to delay another Gigabyte tech support test until we were examining a released motherboard. Gigabyte tells us that the K8NNXP-940 should be available at dealers within the next couple of weeks.
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juc - Friday, October 10, 2003 - link
can you try and put in a lower clock opteron and see what type of overclocking you can do w/ it?, is the regular 14x opteron unlocked? it would be nice if it was.Reflex - Friday, October 10, 2003 - link
#1: A RDRAM version would completely eliminate the advantage of having an on-die memory controller on the CPU as it is very very high latency by design. The A64 thrives on very very low latency/high IPC, and RDRAM does not provide that.Honestly, what would be truly ideal is a QDR solution. But everytime I hear about it being close nothing seems to come of it. Too bad...
Anonymous User - Friday, October 10, 2003 - link
Considering the performance gain, money ain't that important :-)Anonymous User - Friday, October 10, 2003 - link
#1,Samsung PC-3200 512 MB DDR SDRAM $125
Samsung PC-3200 512 MB ECC Reg. DDR SDRAM $174
+49
Corsair XMS3200 PC-3200 512MB DDR SDRAM $175
Corsair XMS3200 PC-3200 ELL 512MB DDR SDRAM $220
Corsair XMS3200LL-RE PC-3200 ECC Reg. 512MB DDR SDRAM $235
+15 (+60 compared to slower timings)
completely unmeaningful to anyone with the money to buy an fx.
Anonymous User - Friday, October 10, 2003 - link
Looks like a cool mobo, and an amazingly fast CPU, but . . .Who's going to buy one of these!?!?!?
The price you'll spend on memory put's this way out of most people's price range! And before you yell at me for saying that, look up pricing for registered modules!
You could probably buy an awesome Athlon 64 system now, then upgrade your mobo and CPU to FX when the 939 pin version comes out, and still spend less money than paying this ridiculous premium on memory. Plus, it would be upgradable to future FX chips, not an unsupported beast. Anyone remember socket 423?
Say goodbye to the idea of 'surpassing the 4Gb memory limitation,' unless you have like $10,000 to spend on memory!
My real question here is why, when the Athlon 64 (non-FX) is such a success, would they make this strange beast?
What I would LOVE to see (I know you're going to hate this one) is a really tight RDRAM chipset ready when the 939-pin chipset comes out.
What do you think? Quad Channel 1200Mhz RDRAM on the new FX? Ain't gonna happen, but I can dream.