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Life in the Fast Lane: New Boards for the Athlon 64
[First Page]
Introduction
PCI Express (PCIe) mainboards for AMD's Athlon 64 processor have been in the stores since the fall of 2004. Until now, though, these boards were not able to really "pull away" from ones with AGP 8X. This is no wonder, given that the maximum AGP bandwidth of up to 2 GB/s is entirely adequate in most cases. Even so, with the next generation of graphics cards, manufacturers' attention will switch to PCI Express; that is where the future lies, and even today there is little difference in price.
The future top models from chipmakers ATI and NVIDIA will be based on a PCIe architecture, while AGP versions will still stick around for the foreseeable future in the low- and mid-price segments. In order to establish PCI Express as the mainstay of the market once and for all, however, more and more AGP graphics cards will presumably be put out running at lower clock speeds than comparable PCIe models.
Not all users need 3D performance, of course. A glance at the copious functions offered by the latest chipsets also reveals other benefits for those in the PCIe camp. The nForce4 Ultra from NVIDIA, for instance, already supports Serial ATA II at 300 MB/s and Native Command Queuing (NCQ). Also included is a fast network controller at 1 GBit/s, featuring NVIDIA's own ActiveArmor firewall.
Rivals ATI and VIA offer four and two SATA ports for 150 MB/s per channel respectively; Gigabit LAN is only possible using third-party chips. There's no bottleneck, though, as these are connected with PCI Express. Of course compulsory features include support for RAID 0, 1 and 0+1, a worthy sound system, USB 2.0 and PCI interfaces, and two UltraATA channels for optical drives and older hard drives. Generally speaking, the ATI and VIA models cost slightly less than NVIDIA's.
Our recommendation today is to go for a PCI Express board, whatever the case. Their modern interfaces not only promise a longer useful life, but a simple BIOS update gives all models the capacity to take on the Athlon 64 X2 dual core processor expected in late summer. That said, let's now examine which boards come out on top.
.........
[Last Page]
Conclusion: Abit And MSI Take The Lead
One thing that's always important for running a modern system - whether based on the Athlon 64 or Pentium 4 - is a sufficiently high-capacity power supply. For this reason, more and more motherboard makers already demand a device based on the ATX 2.0 standard. The plugs on these supplies have 24 instead of 20 connections, giving them the capacity to deal with the greatly increased requirements of systems created in the last few years. Power supplies based on ATX 1.3 also work in the larger sockets, but may lead to problems that cannot always be traced back to them.
Before telling you our decision, we have to congratulate all the manufacturers of boards in this test, as none of the candidates presented us with problems with regard to stability. In fact, all makers now offer useful overclocking options, which can generally clock up the speed of an average Athlon 64 to good effect. Apart from the Jetway and the small board from Winfast, the system clock speed, multiplier and CPU core voltage can be changed on all the boards. A Gigabit network chip, a surround sound system and lots of options for connecting hard drives and DVD devices are included across the board.
Jetway, MSI and Winfast still offer four PCI slots, which is certainly a buying argument for folks looking to upgrade. Three PCI slots are usual, but Abit, DFI and the Winfast board in µATX have only two. Jetway, meanwhile, was the only company to send us a board with an integrated graphics unit, which is adequate for the odd game or two. We still anticipate this board together with the Chaintech's VNF4 Ultra will be the cheapest available. DFI offers the option of controlling up to four displays through the use of two graphics cards. Albatron and MSI provide a x4 PCIe port for operating high-grade storage controllers.
At the end of day, two motherboards receive our recommendation: both the Abit Fatal1ty AN8 and MSI K8N Neo4 Platinum Edition offer well-appointed and flexible boards based on top-grade components. These units shine above all through their range of functions and overclocking abilities - the wealth of experience of both manufacturers in the enthusiast market is obvious.
[RANK="www.tomshardware.com/motherboard/20050513/index.html"]Read the complete review at Tom's Hardware[/RANK]
[First Page]
Introduction
PCI Express (PCIe) mainboards for AMD's Athlon 64 processor have been in the stores since the fall of 2004. Until now, though, these boards were not able to really "pull away" from ones with AGP 8X. This is no wonder, given that the maximum AGP bandwidth of up to 2 GB/s is entirely adequate in most cases. Even so, with the next generation of graphics cards, manufacturers' attention will switch to PCI Express; that is where the future lies, and even today there is little difference in price.
The future top models from chipmakers ATI and NVIDIA will be based on a PCIe architecture, while AGP versions will still stick around for the foreseeable future in the low- and mid-price segments. In order to establish PCI Express as the mainstay of the market once and for all, however, more and more AGP graphics cards will presumably be put out running at lower clock speeds than comparable PCIe models.
Not all users need 3D performance, of course. A glance at the copious functions offered by the latest chipsets also reveals other benefits for those in the PCIe camp. The nForce4 Ultra from NVIDIA, for instance, already supports Serial ATA II at 300 MB/s and Native Command Queuing (NCQ). Also included is a fast network controller at 1 GBit/s, featuring NVIDIA's own ActiveArmor firewall.
Rivals ATI and VIA offer four and two SATA ports for 150 MB/s per channel respectively; Gigabit LAN is only possible using third-party chips. There's no bottleneck, though, as these are connected with PCI Express. Of course compulsory features include support for RAID 0, 1 and 0+1, a worthy sound system, USB 2.0 and PCI interfaces, and two UltraATA channels for optical drives and older hard drives. Generally speaking, the ATI and VIA models cost slightly less than NVIDIA's.
Our recommendation today is to go for a PCI Express board, whatever the case. Their modern interfaces not only promise a longer useful life, but a simple BIOS update gives all models the capacity to take on the Athlon 64 X2 dual core processor expected in late summer. That said, let's now examine which boards come out on top.
.........
[Last Page]
Conclusion: Abit And MSI Take The Lead
One thing that's always important for running a modern system - whether based on the Athlon 64 or Pentium 4 - is a sufficiently high-capacity power supply. For this reason, more and more motherboard makers already demand a device based on the ATX 2.0 standard. The plugs on these supplies have 24 instead of 20 connections, giving them the capacity to deal with the greatly increased requirements of systems created in the last few years. Power supplies based on ATX 1.3 also work in the larger sockets, but may lead to problems that cannot always be traced back to them.
Before telling you our decision, we have to congratulate all the manufacturers of boards in this test, as none of the candidates presented us with problems with regard to stability. In fact, all makers now offer useful overclocking options, which can generally clock up the speed of an average Athlon 64 to good effect. Apart from the Jetway and the small board from Winfast, the system clock speed, multiplier and CPU core voltage can be changed on all the boards. A Gigabit network chip, a surround sound system and lots of options for connecting hard drives and DVD devices are included across the board.
Jetway, MSI and Winfast still offer four PCI slots, which is certainly a buying argument for folks looking to upgrade. Three PCI slots are usual, but Abit, DFI and the Winfast board in µATX have only two. Jetway, meanwhile, was the only company to send us a board with an integrated graphics unit, which is adequate for the odd game or two. We still anticipate this board together with the Chaintech's VNF4 Ultra will be the cheapest available. DFI offers the option of controlling up to four displays through the use of two graphics cards. Albatron and MSI provide a x4 PCIe port for operating high-grade storage controllers.
At the end of day, two motherboards receive our recommendation: both the Abit Fatal1ty AN8 and MSI K8N Neo4 Platinum Edition offer well-appointed and flexible boards based on top-grade components. These units shine above all through their range of functions and overclocking abilities - the wealth of experience of both manufacturers in the enthusiast market is obvious.
[RANK="www.tomshardware.com/motherboard/20050513/index.html"]Read the complete review at Tom's Hardware[/RANK]