Elmer, thread,
An opinion on the AMD K7 "pre-production" setup from my previous post, including the "voltage regulators with lots of metal showing." Warning that this is just speculation from the pictures, nothing more.
Those ten things (not the chip heat sink) are most likely heat sinks
for voltage regulators that are dropping voltage for the K7 chip
down to "2 point something" volts, from probably +5 volts. I
asked 'why didn't they just use a power supply which puts out the
exact "2 point something" volts, and, hence eliminate the ugly
voltage regulators.' The answer was that the production power
supply they'll end up using will probably be a "switcher."
Switchers are inherently noisy, and wouldn't allow the K7 to run
at its fastest possible speed. The "2 point something" dropped
down from the +5 volt supply would be much cleaner, and allow
the K7 to run as fast as possible without crashing. Obviously,
however, they can't ship with it, so they'll have to find, or have
designed, the "2 point something" volt switcher.
I have two WAGs for this whole power scenario for the K7 test setup:
1. Either Thresh's Firing Squad got a real early K7 test setup,
before a production power supply/mother board was ready, or
2. AMD doesn't have a motherboard/power supply ready to go.
Otherwise, why wasn't it part of the Firing Squad setup instead of
that kludge?
Tony |
