Athlon64 Motherboards: First Look at Chaintech, FIC, and MSI
by Wesley Fink on September 23, 2003 1:03 PM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
Chaintech ZNF3-150: BIOS and Overclocking
Chaintech uses the familiar Phoenix-Award BIOS. As detailed in Basic Features, a full range of overclocking options are available including adjustable CPU voltage, memory voltage, AGP voltage , and Chipset voltage. As we have seen on all nVidia chipsets, AGP/PCI clock can be fixed for maximum overclocking. The latest 9/19/03 BIOS adds a full range of manual memory timing selections to the Advanced chipset section.The Athlon64 has a full heatspreader like Pentium4, so it would appear that any multiplier adjustments would have to be available on the board or in the BIOS. There are no selections for multiplier adjustments in the BIOS. We also did not find Multiplier Adjustments on any of the other Athlon64 boards that we examined.
FSB Overclocking Results
One of the questions about Athlon64 that everyone has asked is whether it will support overclocking that will be competitive to the ranges offered by Intel 800FSB processors. Our 3200+ chip, with a default FSB setting of 200, was able to boot into Windows as high as 236FSB. We found that we could achieve stable operation at 230FSB by lowering the memory setting to 333, so we were running near DDR400 at a 230 setting. The highest stable 1:1 overclock (DDR400 memory setting) that we could achieve was at 222FSB.| Front Side Bus Overclocking Testbed | |
| Processor: | AMD Athlon64 3200+ (2.0GHz) |
| CPU Voltage: | 1.525V (default) |
| Cooling: | Cooler Master Athlon64 HSF |
| Memory: | 2 x 512MB Mushkin PC3200L2 at 2-2-2-6 timings |
| Power Supply: | Powmax 350W |
We are looking at our first samples of Athlon64 boards, but for those who wish to overclock their systems, you will be pleased to find that there is some decent headroom for overclocking. However, without multiplier adjustments in BIOS or any visible means to change multipliers on the heatshield covered chip, it is critical that the BIOS offer fixed ratios for AGP/PCI for best overclocking results. The Chaintech ZNF3-150 has the ability to fix the AGP/PCI frequency.
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Anonymous User - Friday, September 26, 2003 - link
#5I old too, but still keep buing from AMD, Intel is way too expensive for as in Latin America, and give no clear advantage for a programmer/gamer like me.
If you been having problems with AMD, surely your are building AMD chips with PCCHIPs mainboards, and Pentiums with Intel boards, you are a smart guy!
So, if you gonna build a modern PC, you'll experience problems becouse WinXP didn't include drivers for new chipsets, so, for it all going like a charm, you need an Intel Pentium III and a Intel 2001's mainboard, anything newer, you gonna have to look for drivers, whatever the platform you choose.
Wesley Fink - Wednesday, September 24, 2003 - link
#10 -You are absolutely correct in theory. However, when we moved from the Ti4600 to the ATI 9800 PRO, our encoding scores on the P4 went up about 35-45%. Don't ask me why. They did not change on the Athlon, which had led in this area before. That is one of several reasons we will be changing to another encoding benchmark.
If you doubt what I say, check Evan's 20-board 865/875 roundup done with the Ti 4600, then check the retest of some of the top boards we include in our more recent P4 reviews. Evan did the original and the update tests, and I have confirmed his results.
Anonymous User - Wednesday, September 24, 2003 - link
Since when does the video card have ANYTHING to do with DivX encoding? That is a purely CPU and RAM issue, even playback is not influenced too much by the video card anymore (speed not quality...that is an entirely different issue).Zoomer - Wednesday, September 24, 2003 - link
Hey, could you please touch on what DAC chip is powering these setups? A picture would be nice too.Envy 24bit audio would be an utter waste if some crap Realtek codec was used. It would be good if this was highlighted so that motherboard manufacturers catering to the higher end of the market will take notice.
Chaintech apparantly took note of the fact that you guys bashed every single board that had the ATX connector near the board i/o ports. Despite it being a non issue. That thick bundle can be routed so that the interference with airflow is minimised.
Anonymous User - Wednesday, September 24, 2003 - link
Please, please, please stop using Flash for graphs.dvinnen - Tuesday, September 23, 2003 - link
#5: Youe funny. Constant screw ups? It's Intell who has had to have 3 or so recalls over the last 4-5 years. And theres that bug with the Itantic which the only way to fix is to lower the clock to 800 mhz. AMD is the one who keeps screwing up?Wesley Fink - Tuesday, September 23, 2003 - link
#3 and #4 - Thank you. Now corrected.Just before posting we decided to combine the 3 reviews into one larger launch review. Unfortunately I had used the same name for two different pictures and the first one was picked up. There is a socket closeup of the FIC that never made it to the server.
Anonymous User - Tuesday, September 23, 2003 - link
yeah, about the only good thing coming out of this is the price drops soon. Otherwise still the same stupid +-5FPS differences = waste of time/effert to get excited about.i used to love amd, but just got tired of their constant screw ups, so anymore i personally don't care what stupid thing they come out with, i won't waste my time with it.
Perhaps that's cuz i'm older now and have a good job/salary and don't need/care about overclocking and or paying a few bucks more for intel quality/stability. yeah, must be just getting to be an old fogey, cuz this whole amd/intel wanna-be-war doesn't give me a hardon like it used to ;)
Thoreau - Tuesday, September 23, 2003 - link
Correction, Page 11 in the index list. First pic.Thoreau - Tuesday, September 23, 2003 - link
The 2nd page of the FIC section shows a pic from the Chaintech board. Think you got that a little mixed up there.