Current P4 mobos WON'T support Prescott

Hi to everybody.

I found this info quite surprising and can influence a lot of people decision. This new appear in Anandtech, here is the link:

<A HREF="http://www.anandtech.com/news/shownews.html?i=20014" target="_new">http://www.anandtech.com/news/shownews.html?i=20014</A>

I hate these incompatibility issues! I hate Intel for don't take care of it! ... And I hope mobo manufacturers find a workaround.

But risk is there.

Still looking for a <b>good online retailer</b> in Spain

Yes but the really good news is that next year scotty will have a new socket format. Why cant AMD force us to buy new mobos for each upgrade? The first prescott boards will only be usable with the 3.4 gig chip. Should be a hot item.

Come on, put yourself together there. AMD will not only have you switching all hardware, but they'll have you switch all software too! And you don't seem to complain about <i>that</i> now, do you? You just say "Intel, those b*st*rds"...

It sounds as if it's a technical drawback they're faced with (i.e. couldn't do differently). Maybe, still, mobo makers can work around - after all, maybe a flexibly-designed mobo can change its voltage accordingly after a BIOS update. Just my thoughts here.

Right or wrong again.

Oh well, what I meant was that if you don't upgrade your software, there'll be absolutely no reason to go with A64 at all. The 3400+ is slower than the 3.2Ghz Northwood in those apps. So the limited budget user who isn't interested in those 15±5% of all software that is 64-bit might choose the other way, because it is more tried-and-tested...

(actually, for most, just looking at the 3400+ label will make them automatically feel it performs on par with the 3.4Ghz Prescott. Let's wait and see)

Anyway, maybe you're right, backwards compatibility does undermine my argument a little bit. But I was annoyed at your "the Intel way" attitude. It's filled with prejudice. Like the term "intelliot" - which you didn't use, of course, it's just an example

<font color=red><b>M</b></font color=red>ephistopheles

Well, first of all I agree that most of people don't care what they have inside the box, probably they just know Ghz CPU and memory, but nothing else (chipset? what's it? ...). So they are not affected by this new.

But I have seen several people talking about what will last longer right now, what to buy. I was with "P4" answer. Right now I am thinking about "are you sure you can't run with your current computer half year more?". I'm sure by the end of this year this issue will be solved and also A64 will show if it's worth.

BTW, totally different, you give me an idea: would it be interesting to have a socket chipset? I know cost will be higher, but imagine you can upgrade northbridge easily. If you maintain CPU socket for several years, like AMD has done, you could upgrade every year and at full speed. Obviously, this means chipset has to have the same number of pins, but VIA already use to do it.

Just an idea

Still looking for a <b>good online retailer</b> in Spain

A socket chipset is entirely possible. There's no real reason why a southbridge and northbridge can't be combined into one chip. I came up with this idea well over a year ago. It just requires standardization and convincing people of it's value.

At the time I also posed that the 'GPU' could be just plugged into another socket on the motherboard instead of in an AGP card. In effect, a dualie motherboard, but one of the 'CPU's was a GPU. It'd probably require seperate memory controllers and seperate memory banks per processor, but I don't see why it couldn't be done <i>and</i> cost graphics companies less in the end.

Some ideas are just so ... new ... that no matter how much sense they may make, convincing people of their merits is difficult.

"<i>Yeah, if you treat them like equals, it'll only encourage them to think they <b>ARE</b> your equals.</i>" - Thief from <A HREF="http://www.nuklearpower.com/daily.php?date=030603" target="_new">8-Bit Theater</A>

Before we all go overboard, the statement from the link wasn't from intel, but an unnamed manufacturer.

So, until a brand name manufacturer, ie. ASUS, ABIT, MSI, etc., states the same thing, I won't go into the whole "intel screwed us" debate. Accordingly, a .5 VIN change might be necessary for a new mobo, but I don't see or understand how such a small voltage change can immediately call for a new motherboard design.

Whether or not the "article" is genuine is questionable, since the manufacturer was not named (why?) and no solid statement from intel about the VIN requirement.

Just my $.02



How many watts does it take to get the center of CPU core?

I think it'd generally not done not because it's too radical of an idea. I mean think of it. Graphics card companies won't even make cards anymore. No more PCB. All that is handled on the mobo. It's too freaky. ATi and nVidia wouldn't be able to sell their chips to 3rd party manufacturers anymore either. Now they'd be working with mobo manufacturers directly. It'd kill off a whole middle-man! Companies would collapse. (Or at least be forced to restructure.)

By not doing this no one loses their jobs and we pay more to make up that cost.

But really, what is a GPU but just a specialized CPU? Give it it's own northbridge (on the mobo or built right into the GPU) for handling the digital-analog conversion stuff and controlling the memory and suddenly you no longer need a card. You just need GDDRII sticks and a GPU like we already need DDR sticks and a CPU. Motherboard prices would go up slightly, but the cost of graphics cards would go way down because there's no more 'card'.

Anywho, that's probably enough of my 3rd party graphics card manufacturer mophia conspiracies. Next thing you know I'll be talking about optical busses instead of electrical busses on the mobo, southbridge and northbridge integrated into one chip so that you don't even need a bus there anymore and one whole bottleneck is removed from the system, etc., etc.

But basically, if I ruled the world and/or had my own PC business, then PCs would be very much redesigned. Heat sinks, cases, motherboards, graphics, it'd <i>all</i> be redone from the ground up.

"<i>Yeah, if you treat them like equals, it'll only encourage them to think they <b>ARE</b> your equals.</i>" - Thief from <A HREF="http://www.nuklearpower.com/daily.php?date=030603" target="_new">8-Bit Theater</A>

If you think about it, both the GPU and CPU could access the same memory. Current Graphics card memory only exists as a buffer to make up for slow AGP Transfer rates (PCI-Express looks to change this and remove Graphics memory). By putting the chip on the mobo it wouldn't need it's own memory and I think most GPU's have integrated Memory controllers anyway, so it coulkd directly access the system memory. There could also be another path directly from CPU to GPU (a form of fastwrites) that skipped the memory alltogether. In fact, the GPU would even need to access system memory. Data would be transferred from memory, to cPU, to GPU, to Monitor. How Amazing that would be

<A HREF="http://service.futuremark.com/compare?2k1=5467618 " target="_new">Almost Breaking 12k!!</A>

I jumped in this forum a bit late but...

TheRod, you said you got screwed for buying a slot mobo...no ya didn't all you need is a cheepo sloket adapter and you are up and running...they even sell socket T adapters with onboard voltage regulators.

Next...Why is this such a surprise (intel changing platforms) i read weeks ago that intel was changing over to LGA...i thought it was publisised that there were only gonna be 1 or 2 478 scotties.

Moving on...the closest thing that i can think of to your guys' mobo interchangable components are some old mobos...the L2 cpu cache was on the mobo (instead of cpu) thus on some boards (socket 7's) you could put 1-2mb of L2 cache on quite old (by todays terms) cpus. Also when personal computing was in its infancy RAM that would be installed as individual chips into DIPP sockets instead of as sticks. But IMO the interchangable component mobos won't happen for a while (although good idea) b/c so many companies would have to die (or loose $). Also nvidia and ati would probably go out of biz too because i believe (disregard if i am wrong...this is a stretch) that neither of them actually manufactur or design their gpu chips they just have them contracted.

And finally it was mentioned about having a cpu and not a motherboard...this has happened in the past to intel. Jeez what was the name of that chipset...solano maybe...it was either the 810,815, or 820...i forget but it has happened.

There is no smell better than fried silicon <P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by pIII_Man on 07/11/03 10:11 PM.</EM></FONT></P>

No good retailer in Spain!
Sounds like a great business opportunity!

The loving are the daring!

Intel released VRM specifications for Prescott processors before releasing the 865/875 chipsets...so manufacturers would know what was needed for future compatability. Are you saying that they changed the spec again? Do you have anything but rumors to back that up?

<font color=blue>Watts mean squat if you don't have quality!</font color=blue>

Well Crashman, I used to have an AMD equivalent to a p75 that went on a 486 board. I still have 3 socket 7 mobos that can take anything from a p75 to a K6 2 550. My current mobo will run any socket athlon made. Let us not forget sockets 5 & 8 as well. Nor would I give Intel too much credit for Slotkits or socket adapters as they do not support thier use. I would put the score at Intel 8 Amd 2. You do have to give Amd credit for backwards compatability.

So lets recap P1 socket 5 - 2 or 3 chips P 2 socket 8 - 1 or 2 chips P3 Shortlived slot format P4 socket 423 also shortlived, but you dont think P5 will have a special format. LOL.
<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by endyen on 07/12/03 00:47 AM.</EM></FONT></P>

I smell Bullshit. I had a Pentium 89MHz for a Socket 3 as well! So AMD gains nothing for their 5x86-P75 (486 DX/4-133). And So...you went from Pentium boards to Slot 1, then to Socket 423, then to Socket 478. You can skip socket 370 all together since Slot 1 went to 1GHz and the P4 was introduced shortly after. I mean, if you want to cheat. I can cheat as well as you. And then for AMD, you went from Socket 7 to Super 7 to Slot A to the KT133 board that only supported 100MHz bus speeds, to the KT133A which only supported 100/133MHz bus speeds, to boards that only supported 100/133/166MHz bus speeds, to boards that supported 400MHz bus speeds, and there were boards that limited your multiplier to 12.5...That's AMD 12 Intel 3.

See, I can play your game!

<font color=blue>Watts mean squat if you don't have quality!</font color=blue>

I just bought a new system last night with an ASUS I865PE board so I could upgrade to a Prescott. This better not be true. Why would they change mb's for this? Wouldn't they wait until Grantsdale in mid 2004? Doesnt make much sense to change for a few processors.

Well, yeah, i'm entirely agreeing with you. i865/875 motherboards can and should support the prescott. And yes, i'd be more than willing to bet some *Coughs* ECS *Coughs* cut the voltage regulation corners to save cash...hmm...probably with some stupid add, that says something about supporting the "New and improved Intel Pentium 4 based on the Prescott core!" in their shady advertisements.

I want to see an <font color=blue>Ati Radeon 99999 Ultra Pro</font color=blue>, based on the <font color=red>AtiRage core</font color=red>. And people wonder how a <font color=purple>Geforce3</font color=purple> is better than a <font color=orange>Geforce4 Mx...</font color=orange>

AMD used Socket 5 also. And Socket 8 was a server platform.

And if you want to go that far, I can tell you that a Socket 5 board will run a Pentium 233MMX, not all Socket 7 boards were dual voltage, and that you could buy a Socket 8 to Slot 1 adapter.

<font color=blue>Watts mean squat if you don't have quality!</font color=blue>

You know, I had read that before already, and I thought the logic was a bit skewed in the first place. What's the deal with the 3.6Ghz specifically? If you're to stay away from it, then why not stay away from all 3.2, 3.4 and 3.6 socket-478 prescotts, unless you're upgrading?... Go with the much more sophisticated grantsdale pinless sockets! Speaking of which...

...this is a funny one. There are no 775 pins on grantsdale, because there are simply no pins anymore. Which shows just how much thought went into that article.

<font color=red><b>M</b></font color=red>ephistopheles

Thats old news he's posting. Plus he says its Hammertime. Maybe thats why he replyed to start a battle with Hammer an Prescott.