MB compatible with Conroe?

[brucedeluxe169]

Are you sure they weren't capable of it?

Just like Hyperthreading was turned off at first... maybe Yamhill(EMT64) was just turned off.

It really doesn't matter as 64-bit support still sucks (OS, driver & app support) and its going to remain a blue-crystals feature (gimmick) for at least another year for 99% of people.

definately, a dumb shrink northwood @ 90nm without any longer pipeline stages, SSE3, EMT64 tacked on woulda rocked AMD in the meantime for Conroe to come out

 

[Donnie27]

Northwood wasn't capable of running AMD64 (or EM64T, if you wish to call it that) instructions, that's part of why they made prescott. People would be bitching if Intel users had to wait till the middle of 2006 to do something that AMD users have been doing since mid 04.

Yamhill wasn't added until Prescott but so far, 64bit has proven to more of a Gimmick than anything else. NO ONE is missing anything by NOT having 64bit. I don't even run it on my 3500+. Northwood would have done fine without 64bit support IMHO. It hasn't slowed down the folks hungrey for Dothan or Yonah, now hasn't it?

64bit's main draw/Hook is to get you past the 4GB Memory litmit. Single Sc-939 mobos don't support more than 4GB Many don't even like all 4 slots full and are very picky about what RAM is used.

 

[Donnie27]

definately, a dumb shrink northwood @ 90nm without any longer pipeline stages, SSE3, EMT64 tacked on woulda rocked AMD in the meantime for Conroe to come out

It is also dumb to think SSE3 couldn't be added to Northwood since of it was put there to support Hyperthreading in the first place. Another Gimmick on AMD's part since they don't have Hyperthreading. Sure SSE3 makes sense on a X2 though. See above about the almost useless for this market Desktop 64bit stuff. Unlike 64bit, Hyperthreading was used LOL!

 

[chrisf6969]

Well obviously Intel isn't too concerned with 64-bit support if they didn't add it to the "Core" processor. They took enough time to rework the L2 to be shared, etc.. but didn't bother with 64-bit support.

We probably wouldn't have even had it on Prescott except they wanted to add support for it to Xeon's, so they just left it activated for the desktop Prescotts so its got that extra "feature" that AMD kept pimping.

 

[brucedeluxe169]

bah, so many new transistors, messing up that cool running northwood, northwood @ 90nm for the past 2 years woulda been so awesome....

and instead of the single core yonah, a dumb shrunk dothan @ 65nm.... *drool*...... instead of that high latency L2 cache they have now, mmm... it would be cheap too

 

[Donnie27]

bah, so many new transistors, messing up that cool running northwood, northwood @ 90nm for the past 2 years woulda been so awesome....

and instead of the single core yonah, a dumb shrunk dothan @ 65nm.... *drool*...... instead of that high latency L2 cache they have now, mmm... it would be cheap too

I don't think SSE3 would do anything negative to a Northwood heat wise but that's just me.

Dothan, without any of the new fangled gimmicks (including Hyperthreading) does just fine thank you very much. I'm sure a Single Core Conroe would kick ass as well. A single core Dothan doesn't have to a Slower L2, just Yonah I thought.

 

[robberbaron]

Yamhill wasn't added until Prescott but so far, 64bit has proven to more of a Gimmick than anything else. NO ONE is missing anything by NOT having 64bit. I don't even run it on my 3500+. Northwood would have done fine without 64bit support IMHO. It hasn't slowed down the folks hungrey for Dothan or Yonah, now hasn't it?

64bit's main draw/Hook is to get you past the 4GB Memory litmit. Single Sc-939 mobos don't support more than 4GB Many don't even like all 4 slots full and are very picky about what RAM is used.

Intel makes server class chips (Xeons, perhaps you've heard of them) that are based off of Pentium 4 dies. In a server environent, they would really take advantage of having more than 4GB of RAM. It's cheaper for intel to rebrand the Pentium 4 as a xeon and give it a slightly different package to sell to businesses than to make an entirely different product line.

Also, AMD64 was originally a Server technology (Opteron, maybe you've heard of that too?) and those scale up to 8 ways (usually 4-ways) and the 4-way boards support 16gb of RAM. So since its inception, it was been used. What was AMD's server marketshare last check? 20%?

Single socket 940 boards support 8GB, btw.

 

[Donnie27]

Intel makes server class chips (Xeons, perhaps you've heard of them) that are based off of Pentium 4 dies. In a server environent, they would really take advantage of having more than 4GB of RAM. It's cheaper for intel to rebrand the Pentium 4 as a xeon and give it a slightly different package to sell to businesses than to make an entirely different product line.

Also, AMD64 was originally a Server technology (Opteron, maybe you've heard of that too?) and those scale up to 8 ways (usually 4-ways) and the 4-way boards support 16gb of RAM. So since its inception, it was been used. What was AMD's server marketshare last check? 20%?

Single socket 940 boards support 8GB, btw.

What's with all of the "maybe you've heard of" BS? So maybe you didn't read it correctly? "Single Sc-939 mobos don't support more than 4GB Many don't even like all 4 slots full and are very picky about what RAM is used." Now how did you come up with Xeons and Socket 940 from that?

I full and well know what the hell 64bit is used for and I'm talking about Desktops and WinXP-64. You got a link to some Geek running 8GB on a Single Socket 939?
Troubleshooting

With a day off to do research and spend on the telephone I learned some interesting information.

First, neither DFI nor Tyan were at all willing to commit to 4 gigs on their boards. The Tyan support engineer was most helpful. He said that the problem is that the Nvidea chipset is limited to six ranks (sides) of memory - therefore, 4 double sided ram chips will not work which we already pretty well know. Single sided 1 gig chips do not exist to the best my knowledge. However, sigle sided 512 gig chips are available and I just placed an order for two of them from Crucial.

This will give me a total of 3 gigs on the system which on a Win XP32 system is the effective limit anyhow. Crucial's support engineer was also very helpful and he was quite certain that all shold be well with the configuration of 2 X 1 gig double side plus 2 X 512 single side.

I will have the new modules this time next week and will report shortly thereafter.

This has been an interesting exploration though I hesitate to say that it is over just yet

It's a good thing Opterons have direct lines for each processor to connect to it's own RAM. An Intel Rep showed i975 and ONE 940 running 8GB's of ECC RAM (4 X 2GB sticks). Dewd, I stalled 4GB of RAM on my IC7-G and the RAM didn't slow down to PC-2700 either.

 

[robberbaron]

What's with all of the "maybe you've heard of" BS? So maybe you didn't read it correctly? "Single Sc-939 mobos don't support more than 4GB Many don't even like all 4 slots full and are very picky about what RAM is used." Now how did you come up with Xeons and Socket 940 from that?

I full and well know what the hell 64bit is used for and I'm talking about Desktops and WinXP-64. You got a link to some Geek running 8GB on a Single Socket 939?
Troubleshooting




It's a good thing Opterons have direct lines for each processor to connect to it's own RAM. An Intel Rep showed i975 and ONE 940 running 8GB's of ECC RAM (4 X 2GB sticks). Dewd, I stalled 4GB of RAM on my IC7-G and the RAM didn't slow down to PC-2700 either.

I never said that socket 939 boards support more than 4GB, so you'll have to let that imagined argument go.
You said though, that AMD64 only helps with using more than 4GB
Except that there ARE speed benefits from 64bit, aside from increased memory capacity.
The CPU uses more GPR (general purpose registers) when running in 64bit mode. This allows the processer to handle a lot more data at once.
I'm going to give you some reading material that I hope you find valuable
http://www.pcstats.com/articleview.cfm?articleid=1665&page=6
Here are some simple benchmarks demonstrating that 64bit is all around a good thing to have.

http://www.cpuid.com/reviews/K8/index.php
This is a pretty in depth article describing what AMD64 is about (more than just memory, but actually more efficient/simpler coding and better performance at the same time.)

And this
http://arstechnica.com/cpu/03q1/x86-64/x86-64-3.html

Interesting page about Rattner's and Otellini's comments regarding 64bit
http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9584_22-985432.html

"Rattner's comments echoed statements from Intel President Paul Otellini, who said in an interview last year that Intel may not be compelled to produce a 64-bit desktop chip until 2008 or even 2009."

If it isn't important right now, then why did Intel quickly copy AMD's x86-64 in their CPU's last year?

Honestly, I like ya Donnie. I hate to bicker with you, since you're intelligent. But I just wish you admitted that 64bit has benefits outside of having more than 4 gigs of RAM.

And it's pretty cool that you could run 4gb of RAM on that 875. What were the bandwidth and latency figures on that setup?

 

[steviep]

64 bit still doesn't have much benefit to the regular desktop consumer, unfortunately. I just built a new machine, bought and installed Windows X64, and realized how much of a mistake I made. My TV card doesn't (and won't) work, so I had to buy a new one. My motherboard's secondary SATA controller has unstable x64 drivers, and I have to run the 32 bit version of Internet Explorer in order to properly use such common things like Macromedia Flash and Shockwave! And how many years has x64 been in development/out now? We won't have any real use for it until Vista is out for a good year, IMO, when companies are forced to code everything for 64 bit.

 

[robberbaron]

Before I jump into any new OS, I check for driver compatibility. It's not the fault of 64bit.

 

[Donnie27]

64 bit still doesn't have much benefit to the regular desktop consumer, unfortunately. I just built a new machine, bought and installed Windows X64, and realized how much of a mistake I made. My TV card doesn't (and won't) work, so I had to buy a new one. My motherboard's secondary SATA controller has unstable x64 drivers, and I have to run the 32 bit version of Internet Explorer in order to properly use such common things like Macromedia Flash and Shockwave! And how many years has x64 been in development/out now? We won't have any real use for it until Vista is out for a good year, IMO, when companies are forced to code everything for 64 bit.

Nither of my TV cards work either. Put plain and simple, I said Sc-939 and Desktop, even linked to it.