AMD Bulldozer Finally!

[gareth170]

Link please?
And given The CHIV is AM3, and BD will work on it, it's still technically AM3, for unofficial support.
AM3+ is official support. More of a case AMD forcing people to upgrade.

i can't find the link, sorry mate.

anyway the 700 and 800 chipsets may not be able to overclock them as high as the 900 chipset

i read that the am3+ boards use slightly different power system for the BD

http://www.asrock.com/news/events/2011am3+/

see the link, there are some changes from am3 to am3+

 

[Martini1991]

Most of the time it's hyperbole.
Nothing to stop them making the 900 chipset on AM3 tbh.

 

[Gashman]

got an ASROCK 880 AM3+ board sitting right here, the socket looks identical as far as I can tell to AM3, just black and supports upto 140W CPUs. must admit love the look of the board and has great layout, ASROCK have came a long way since their days of being branded a 'budget' board manufacturer, me mate has one similar that is AM3/ATX and it overclocks like a monster! so DDR3, check! motherboard, check! Bulldozer....?

 

[drunkenmaster]

Most of the time it's hyperbole.
Nothing to stop them making the 900 chipset on AM3 tbh.

Theres not, but its usually the minimum standard thats important. While a Crosshair will be well OVERSPECCED and still be able to give the power you might want with a new chip, a bog standard bottom end mobo won't be overspecced but will be as cheap as possible.

CPU power is going up, voltage is going down, which means required amp's are going up pretty fast.

The chipset isn't really a big deal, it does the same things most generations since everything important when onto the cpu die. But power regulation and moving the minimum requirements forward, less with new architectures but almost every time a new process comes around is almost impossible to avoid.

 

[qbazdz]

Martini... what do you know about mobo design (or even electronics design) to slack mfg's descriptions?
Anyway, shame there is no chips to test new 900 mobos to see if there is a real performance gain.

Come on AMD! I'd hate to spend my money on intel

 

[davieg]

Jeez my fingers and brain arent working today

 

[davieg]

Bah misread stuff soz.Delete

 

[Martini1991]

Martini... what do you know about mobo design (or even electronics design) to slack mfg's descriptions?
Anyway, shame there is no chips to test new 900 mobos to see if there is a real performance gain.

Come on AMD! I'd hate to spend my money on intel

Everthing Asrock have claimed won't amount to much in the real world, regardless or not if they're true.
What the hell does the socket pins being X% larger really do to make it superior ;0?

 

[qbazdz]

Hmm.. let's see... bigger socket pins would imply slightly bigger pins and bigger pins means more metal, leading us to higher current capacity?

Trust me, I know marketing hype and can believe that some of it is like that, but AMD doesn't introduce socket changes lightly (at least they have been know for not doing so).

We shall see when BD is finally here

Ps. At least ASrock Xfast USB tech proved to be working.

 

[gareth170]

only afew am3 boards are over speced which as enough power to power a BD chip stable at stock, overclocking them on the few supported am3 boards is a different story, nobody knows if you'll find yourself at a limit...

most am3 boards are just speced enough to power the current cpus

BD chips needs more amp's, which most am3 boards can't give.

 

[Martini1991]

Hmm.. let's see... bigger socket pins would imply slightly bigger pins and bigger pins means more metal, leading us to higher current capacity?

Trust me, I know marketing hype and can believe that some of it is like that, but AMD doesn't introduce socket changes lightly (at least they have been know for not doing so).

We shall see when BD is finally here

Ps. At least ASrock Xfast USB tech proved to be working.

AMD have been offering pointless platforms since AM2...
AM3+ is just another shortlived socket.
Some high end AM2 boards can use the thubans.
It's only AM3+ that's introduced a new architecture, and it turns out it was crippled to do so.

only afew am3 boards are over speced which as enough power to power a BD chip stable at stock, overclocking them on the few supported am3 boards is a different story, nobody knows if you'll find yourself at a limit...

most am3 boards are just speced enough to power the current cpus

BD chips needs more amp's, which most am3 boards can't give.

A fair few AM3 boards are getting re-badged to AM3+ boards..
A few Gigabyte and MSI boards come to name.

 

[gareth170]

A fair few AM3 boards are getting re-badged to AM3+ boards..
A few Gigabyte and MSI boards come to name.

yes because they are over speced am3 boards. which as enough power to power a BD chip stable at stock, but overclocking them on them boards is a different story, nobody knows if you'll find yourself at a limit...

 

[pmc25]

yes because they are over speced am3 boards. which as enough power to power a BD chip stable at stock, but overclocking them on them boards is a different story, nobody knows if you'll find yourself at a limit...

It's been confirmed that a lot of current / previous gen. Asus boards meet the exact requirements of the AM3+ / 9xx platform, not just that they're compatible. Asus at least made sure of compatibility with Bulldozer once they had the final spec for 9xx for their 8xx products.

 

[davieg]

Hmm.. let's see... bigger socket pins would imply slightly bigger pins and bigger pins means more metal, leading us to higher current capacity?

Trust me, I know marketing hype and can believe that some of it is like that, but AMD doesn't introduce socket changes lightly (at least they have been know for not doing so).

We shall see when BD is finally here

Ps. At least ASrock Xfast USB tech proved to be working.

But the bigger holes were only put there to reduce pin damage, no mention at all that they were going to make the actual CPU pins bigger.

"With the 11% bigger pin hole size, it can get rid of possible mechanical mismatch when installing the CPU,and avoid the CPU pin-bent problem"

Nothing about electrical needs, just making it supposedly less likely to bend pins.

 

[gareth170]

It's been confirmed that a lot of current / previous gen. Asus boards meet the exact requirements of the AM3+ / 9xx platform, not just that they're compatible. Asus at least made sure of compatibility with Bulldozer once they had the final spec for 9xx for their 8xx products.

i still think the supported am3 boards meets the requirements to power a BD chip stable at stock, but overclocking them on them boards is a different story,

if am3 fully supports am3+ the requirements to power a BD chip stable at stock and higher, all am3 boards would have be updated via bios.

anyway we'll see when BD is released.

 

[Martini1991]

yes because they are over speced am3 boards. which as enough power to power a BD chip stable at stock, but overclocking them on them boards is a different story, nobody knows if you'll find yourself at a limit...

Most of them aren't.
The MSI 870's blow on thubans with their 4+1 phase design, there's a rebadged AM3+ model.

 

[gareth170]

let's just wait and see when BD is released, if supported am3 boards overclock BD chips to the same level as a am3+ board without issue then good but if it doesn't it'll only be good enough for stock or a little overclock....

 

[spleenharvester]

I see lots of explosions coming up should MSI be continuing their ****** VRM designs...

 

[gareth170]

http://whatswithjeff.com/amd-black-am3b-socket/

Noticeably, the new socket AM3+ is indicated by an “AM3b” written on the socket and the socket is color black. AM3+ has bigger pin holes from .45mm of AM3 to 0.51mm of AM3+. The problem is if CPU makers decided to make the pins in the Zambezi processor bigger in order to handle higher power current, it would not be able to fit in an AM3 socket.

maybe amd is releaseing the top end chips with the slightly bigger pins.

 

[Martini1991]

Then that would be AMD forcing people to upgrade to their shortlived and frankly pointless new socket.