Next Generation Motherboard Platforms - Part 1: The Athlon Craze

If AMD had enough faith in the 3^rd party motherboard manufacturers, they would have approached one of them to outfit the Athlon review systems that went out to over 200 editors across the globe. Obviously, they had at least one reason to make the evaluation motherboards for those 200+ systems in-house and whatever that reason was, they did, and the result was the Fester.

The Fester is not, nor will it ever be, available for sale to the public. AMD has no desire to enter into the motherboard manufacturing business nor do they intend to manufacture chipsets for any longer than they have to. The only reason for mentioning the Fester here is that it provides a very good point to compare the rest of the 3^rd party motherboard manufacturers to, but let's talk about the design of the board and why AMD did what they did with the Fester.

Looking at the board, it is clear that this board was not made for sale, because the expansion slot configuration is outdated and was equally so when AMD first produced the motherboard. With the general trend going towards no ISA slots on-board, the presence of three on the Fester is proof enough that AMD wasn't looking to stick this board head to head with the rest of those due for release.

The board itself brings one other motherboard manufacturer to mind, Intel. The design of the Fester is very clean with a great emphasis placed on quality as opposed to final price. By looking at the selection of components built on to the Fester it is clear that they're holding stability as the top quality to consider here. The nichicon manufactured capacitors are the same ones used on Intel motherboards, and if you've had any experience with an Intel manufactured motherboard you'll know that they are arguably the most stable in the business. While this isn't a direct result of their capacitor choice, the high quality nichicon parts do contribute to the fact.

Unlike the motherboards we're used to (with the exclusion of Intel boards), the Fester refrains from using a handful (10 - 15) of smaller, cheaper, capacitors. Instead, they use two 1000uF oversized nichicon caps placed on alternate sides of the Slot-A and a group of 470uF capacitors scattered around the motherboard. There are four toroidal inductors placed on the side of the Slot-A farthest away from the memory banks which are surrounded by eight switching voltage regulators.