I was thinking about AMD/ATi the other night, because I was wondering why it's so hard to chose a good C2D motherboard. (This RD600 is dead, and I'm buying a new one Thursday - problem is, I can't choose!)
The answer is because there is so many chipsets out there compared to my last build (which was an A64 146 Opteron, clocked to 3.0Ghz on nForce4). Pretty much everyone on 754/939 had an nForce 3 or 4 chipset. ATi did release RD420 and RD580 chipsets, but they were no where near as clockable as nForce4, and SB480 was the worst southbridge to exist.
RD600 isn't anything special, it's probably (is) the worst chipset for C2D (which can be expected) but SB600 Raid perfomance is dire, despite ATi promising it being better than crap SB480.
Thats why a lot of motherboard manufacturers went for ATi NB and ULi SB untill nVidia bought out ULi, and even then DFI with the CFX3200 could not get the ULi SB to play ball.
So if AMD's new K10 architecture comes out, and if it's the performance winner - then what will chipset support be like?
There will pretty much only be two chipset manufacturers, nVidia and AMD's (which is basically ATi's work, with AMD imprinted into the silicon and box) and I'm pretty sure nVidias chipset will be the better one. Okay, there will be VIA's attempt at making a chipset (if we can call it an attempt).
If you look at the C2D platform at the moment, the good thing is they are amazing processors but they also have great chipset support - and unlike ATi/AMD in the past, Intel chipsets are probably the best for their own processors.
680i/650i are good chipsets, but they are not as fast as 965/975 and P35 and the only real benefit of them are SLi and unlinked memory clocking.
Do you think we can get another nForce4 like chipset for K10, or do you think AMD with the ownership of ATi can make "the chipset" for its own platform?
nForce4, on a DFI board - it was the only choice to have for AM64 processors, oh how I miss those times.
The answer is because there is so many chipsets out there compared to my last build (which was an A64 146 Opteron, clocked to 3.0Ghz on nForce4). Pretty much everyone on 754/939 had an nForce 3 or 4 chipset. ATi did release RD420 and RD580 chipsets, but they were no where near as clockable as nForce4, and SB480 was the worst southbridge to exist.
RD600 isn't anything special, it's probably (is) the worst chipset for C2D (which can be expected) but SB600 Raid perfomance is dire, despite ATi promising it being better than crap SB480.
Thats why a lot of motherboard manufacturers went for ATi NB and ULi SB untill nVidia bought out ULi, and even then DFI with the CFX3200 could not get the ULi SB to play ball.
So if AMD's new K10 architecture comes out, and if it's the performance winner - then what will chipset support be like?
There will pretty much only be two chipset manufacturers, nVidia and AMD's (which is basically ATi's work, with AMD imprinted into the silicon and box) and I'm pretty sure nVidias chipset will be the better one. Okay, there will be VIA's attempt at making a chipset (if we can call it an attempt).
If you look at the C2D platform at the moment, the good thing is they are amazing processors but they also have great chipset support - and unlike ATi/AMD in the past, Intel chipsets are probably the best for their own processors.
680i/650i are good chipsets, but they are not as fast as 965/975 and P35 and the only real benefit of them are SLi and unlinked memory clocking.
Do you think we can get another nForce4 like chipset for K10, or do you think AMD with the ownership of ATi can make "the chipset" for its own platform?
nForce4, on a DFI board - it was the only choice to have for AM64 processors, oh how I miss those times.
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