Athlon 4

Yes- they will be backwards compatible with every socket A board and chipset. As long as the board supports the lower voltages of the Athlon 4- it'll work (and all boards do). The BIOS might recognize it as a regular Athlon or even a Duron since the voltage is lower- but it'll work just like a Athlon 4.

-MP Jesse

"Signatures Still Suck"

oh, man! I have a bridge to sell you!

Ok, Yes the Athlon4 will fit in an older mb, however the thermo protection features will be unavailable! so you will need to purchase a new mobo to get benefits of this new cpu.

also motherboard manufaturers will want to sell their new and improved mobo's as quick as possible so, like it or not you will end up having to replace your older mobo.

don't let others fool you, into thinking otherwise.

"AMD/VIA...you <i>still</i> are the weakest link, good bye!"

ROFL. Only you would buy a new motherboard for those reasons. ROFL!

<font color=red>Amd or Intel? Who cares?? Not me...</font color=red>

I am not worried about thermal protection now, so I don't care if the thermal protection is enabled or not! The other features and benefits of the A4 are still there if I choose to buy one.

It's great that I have choices in my upgrade path. I can get an A4 for my current KT7-RAID, or upgrade both the MB and CPU at the same time. We will have to see how the Nvidia chipset fairs.

At least I can upgrade minus the thermal protection. Had I bought a P4, the only upgrade option would be to replace both the MB and the CPU, and perhaps the memory as well.

Where is Northwood? Still delayed due to problems with 0.13 lithography? Intel seems to be slipping more and more. Damn! Can't even sell the stock, I'd lose too much at this time.

<font color=blue>This is a Forum, not a playground. Treat it with Respect.</font color=blue>

Was just reading an article from AnandTech about a computer show in Hong kong. Here's what they say about Athlon 4 and motherboard issues.

"AMD unveiled their new Athlon core with the Athlon 4 a couple weeks ago. While no benchmarks have been published yet, the question remains whether the new processor will work on current motherboards. We took this chance to ask ABIT if they have any information on this topic with respect to their popular KT7A-RAID. He told us that, so far, their testing has been quite positive and that the Athlon 4 chips they have in hand are working properly on the KT7A-RAID.

When asked if this is because the KT7A-RAID has a very wide range of CPU core voltages (from 1.100 – 1.850 in 0.025V increments), we got a somewhat surprising response. While voltage values available on the board could be an issue, the most important piece of the puzzle is the necessary circuitry for detecting the chip correctly. They said that the circuitry on their current KT7A-RAID is already capable of detecting the Palomino core and that's the main reason why the chip will work on their board, but possibly not on others.

This is quite surprising since we previously thought that voltage would be the most important factor for getting the Palomino to work on a KT133A. However, if the correct circuitry is really what is needed for this to happen, it could be bad news for those KT133A users whose boards happen to not have this circuitry since no BIOS update can fix that. We have yet to see how other manufacturers will address this issue, though, and we'll be doing our own testing in the lab soon enough".

Was the <font color=blue>“I have a bridge to sell you!”</font color=blue> comment really necessary?

This is just another perfect example of you never ending anti AMD propaganda spree!




<font color=green>I may go to <font color=red>hell</font color=red> but at least I won't get lonely</font color=green>

That could be good. If it can detect the chip, a bios rev. may enable the thermal monitoring feature.

Aklein

It's raining outside, and my lawn has grown a foot overnight!

I was understanding the on die thermal protection worked independantly of the mainboard...
why would it require a new motherboard?

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Independant thought is good.
It won't hurt for long.

According to AMD, as long as the motherboard manufactorers followed AMD's suggested guidlines the new palimino's will be compatable in the old socket a boards. However, this is not often the case so likely we will see a few boards that are not compatable. Just as to what boards are and are not we will have to wait and see. We very well could see a repeat of when the slot-a t-bird was released where the slot bird would work fine in the older amd irongate chipset but not the VIA kx-133. Right now it is anybody's guess, but Abit has said that it will work in thier kt133a board so that is a good sign.

A little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing!

It's a point, but you CAN use your old mobo.

Intel changed pin layout on the celerons from PPGA to FCPGA seemingly just to force you to buy a new mobo with a new chipset, which incidentally is only available from Intel the first 6 months. They did the same thing with every chip generation, except Pentium MMX. Often without adding any new tecnology that made this nescessary.


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Engage!