Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Technology Stocks : Rambus (RMBS) - Eagle or Penguin -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: jr_not_ewing who wrote (38268)	3/16/2000 10:33:00 PM
From: Don Green	Respond to of 93625

Coppermine motherboard roundup by Loki What's a tweaker/gamer/enthusiast to do? You really want to go out and grab a new Coppermine CPU since you've heard how well they overclock, but what motherboard are you going to use with it? Since by all reports you can push that 500e with 150MHz FSB speeds or above, the BX chipset just isn't going to cut it. So you've gotta think about a new motherboard. Just like when the Athlon came out, it's a big decision and the options aren't always clear. Well, that's where we come in. In this roundup, we compare no less than seven leading motherboards that will work with your Coppermine CPU, to help you get an idea of what you should buy if you're looking to upgrade to the Coppermine. The (Un)usual Suspects We figured there should be a representative of the "old-guard," so a BX chipset board got invited to the CuMine ho-down. Even though it's creeping up on two years old, it still has a chance to be a big player in the CuMine market. The BX board we chose to include in the roundup is the ABIT BE6. It's the most stable and reliable of ABIT's line, and it seems the logical choice for this shootout. With ATA66 support, flexible bus speed, easy configuration, and CuMine support, it's a good board to use as a performance yardstick. This board is also pretty popular, so it's a good option for those who are just looking for a mobo upgrade. The rest of the motherboards in our roundup are based on the successor to the BX, Intel's i820 chipset. While this chipset had some early adoption problems with memory compatibility and timing, Intel clearly thinks this board is mature enough to release to the public. Part of the initial problems arose from the fact that the i820 is a big departure architecturally from Intel's previous offerings. Intel has actually completely re-vamped how their motherboards work with the new 800-series chipsets. First off, they ditched the old "Northbridge/Southbridge" configuration of previous chipsets. Welcome to Intel's accelerated Hub Architecture (click here for Intel's animated tour of the 820 chipset). Probably the biggest difference is how data travels from point-to-point on the motherboard. The 800-series motherboards give you much more bandwidth in the memory and PCI subsystems. Other differences are the support for AGP 4X, no support for ISA slots by the main chipset, and support for RDRAM memory. RDRAM is also known as RAMBUS, and it may or may not give higher performance on the Intel 820/840 chipset motherboards. We were unable to test this due to a lack of availability of RDRAM. But that's ok, because at $800 for 128 MB of RDRAM, only folks like Intel chairman Andy Grove actually have that kind of money to throw away. We tested these motherboards with SDRAM -- the RAM that enthusiasts can actually afford. Intel's MTH (Memory Translator Hub) lets i820-based motherboards use standard SDRAM. However, SDRAM will only be read at 100MHz, regardless of what bus speed the machine is running at. The Chip Merchant provided us with a couple of different i820 contenders for this roundup. First up is Intel's CC820. (This board also comes in an RDRAM flavor known as the VC820.) Next, Microstar steps up to the plate with the MS-6301, which sports the 820 chipset and on-board audio. And then there's the most interesting of the bunch, the ASUS P3C-2000. This board sports four (count 'em four) DIMM slots and claims a maximum RAM count of one Gigabyte. Interesting thing about this is that the maximum supported RAM on an 820 chipset motherboard is 512MB and two DIMMs...how'd ASUS pull that off you ask? Stay tuned for the answer. Our fourth contender is a motherboard from the company that's known for producing some of the most stable boards on the market, Supermicro. The PIIISCD doesn't really stand apart from the crowd features-wise, but does Supermicro know something about 820 motherboards that nobody else does? Read on grasshopper... Since this is a roundup of Coppermine contenders, and not just an i820 roundup, we'd be remiss if we didn't include at least two motherboards based on VIA's answer to the i820, the VIA Apollo Pro. The Apollo Pro actually comes in two forms, the VIA Apollo Pro 133 and the VIA Apollo Pro 133A. The difference between these two is pretty slim really. It mostly boils down to AGP speed: AGP 2X or 4X, which Caesar has proven is not really a big thing. The cool thing about VIA's chipset is that it gives you the option of using a CuMine CPU and your PC133 memory. To represent the Apollo Pro in both its incarnations, we picked two offerings from two different manufacturers: IWill and Tyan. On the 133 side, we've got the IWill VD133. If you read my review of the VD133, you know that I was quite impressed by it. The 133A appears in the form of the Tyan Trinity 400. This Tyan board supports a wide variety of CPUs based on the PGA, FC-PGA 370 (CuMine), and Slot 1 interfaces. Caesar's already taken a look at this board, and he even gave it the nod over the Soyo. arstechnica.com