#4: The answer is pretty much a "yes" Reason: Firewire, in this design, sits on the PCI bus. Gigabit networking sits on the PCI bus. Any soundcard / chip better than chipset-provided onboard sound sits on the PCI bus. Any additional hard drive controllers sit on the PCI bus.
On non-server motherboards, the PCI bus runs at 33mhz and is 32 bits wide, for 133 megabytes/sec of bandwidth
Firewire is 400mbit/sec per port. The new design is 800mbit/sec. This means you will use a maximum of 50 megabytes/sec for a firewire/400 port (granted, the practical peak is less than 50mb/sec, but you'll never eke out 133mb/sec out of the PCI bus either). Add to that the 250mb/sec full-duplex Gigabit Ethernet can generate, and 150mb/sec for ever SATA port courtesy of those Silicon Image chips, and you can see that you're starved for bandwidth.
On the other hand, there's a tidy 533 megabytes/sec of bandwidth between the northbridge and the southbridge.. that means everything that runs straight off the southbridge can report back to the northbridge and, consequently, to the CPU at 533mb/sec. Subtract 133mb/sec for the PCI, and you still have 400 megabytes for LAN and hard drives and firewire, if it's implemented in the southbridge.
Unfortunately, the only true "onboard" firewire comes courtesy of the MCP-T southbridge on nForce2 boards. Everyone else (All Via, all SiS, all Intel chipsets, and all chipsets for Athlon64) has to use a PCI firewire chip. Reply
Welsey #11, I would liked to have seen an 8or9 x 233and234. I still smell a rat. I've run some mobos at 41MHz PCI speed in the past while others (same brand and chipset but different review) would not function. The fact that other posts claim that ABIT have left out the AGP/PCI lock feature of this chipset adds to my suspicion. Reply
#10 - I did a quick check with PC Geiger and the bus was locked on the Reference Board. Since I had the board for only 2 days for testing, there was no time for much more. You will also see I reached 231 overclock on the FX51 at 10 ratio, in addition to the 255x8.
Checking my review notes, I also tested the 10 multiplier at 233 and 234 to determine if there was a ratio drop. I could boot at 233 but the system wasn't completely stable; the CPU simply would not do 234 at standard multiplier. This also suggests a working lock.
Please also keep in mind that VIA has a working pci/agp lock on the PT880 chipset for the P4, so this is not their first PCI/AGP lock. It is just their first lock on an Athlon 64 chipset. Reply
You got to 8x252 on the Aopen AK86-L (VIA chipset/Skt754) which didnt have PCI/AGP lock but ratio controlled. Given its an a64/FX chipset (and on top VIA) where AGP/PCI lock has been a matter of controversy, would'nt it have been prudent to have used your PCIgeiger to check the PCI frequencies at the different FSB settings-so that we wont be fooled once again!
PCI/AGP lock is DEFINITELY working on the Reference Board, but I can not yet address whether Abit has implemented the lock or just dropped the PRO chipset in the older design with no changes. I did see the one review in the UK reporting this issue before the VIA review was finished.
We do have the Abit board coming to us for testing and I will report what I find.Reply
Question: Will Firewire suffer from the fact that it is not on-board? Will anything else suffer from the fact that Firewire will then have to be supported with an additional chip?
To stretch the importance of Firewire for the home-user. I believe that a lot of people own MiniDV camera's in and a year or so most analog videocams will be replaced with digital cams. Most of them work best with Firewire. I haven't seen any models that work explicitly with USB 2.0 so far.Reply
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Odeen - Saturday, May 08, 2004 - link
#4: The answer is pretty much a "yes"Reason: Firewire, in this design, sits on the PCI bus. Gigabit networking sits on the PCI bus. Any soundcard / chip better than chipset-provided onboard sound sits on the PCI bus. Any additional hard drive controllers sit on the PCI bus.
On non-server motherboards, the PCI bus runs at 33mhz and is 32 bits wide, for 133 megabytes/sec of bandwidth
Firewire is 400mbit/sec per port. The new design is 800mbit/sec. This means you will use a maximum of 50 megabytes/sec for a firewire/400 port (granted, the practical peak is less than 50mb/sec, but you'll never eke out 133mb/sec out of the PCI bus either). Add to that the 250mb/sec full-duplex Gigabit Ethernet can generate, and 150mb/sec for ever SATA port courtesy of those Silicon Image chips, and you can see that you're starved for bandwidth.
On the other hand, there's a tidy 533 megabytes/sec of bandwidth between the northbridge and the southbridge.. that means everything that runs straight off the southbridge can report back to the northbridge and, consequently, to the CPU at 533mb/sec. Subtract 133mb/sec for the PCI, and you still have 400 megabytes for LAN and hard drives and firewire, if it's implemented in the southbridge.
Unfortunately, the only true "onboard" firewire comes courtesy of the MCP-T southbridge on nForce2 boards. Everyone else (All Via, all SiS, all Intel chipsets, and all chipsets for Athlon64) has to use a PCI firewire chip. Reply
Pumpkinierre - Friday, May 07, 2004 - link
Welsey #11, I would liked to have seen an 8or9 x 233and234. I still smell a rat. I've run some mobos at 41MHz PCI speed in the past while others (same brand and chipset but different review) would not function. The fact that other posts claim that ABIT have left out the AGP/PCI lock feature of this chipset adds to my suspicion.Reply
Klaasman - Friday, May 07, 2004 - link
Why oh why ABIT, would they leave this out?? Damn it! Replyblup - Friday, May 07, 2004 - link
This board breaks my heart. I was hoping for a "BH7 for Athlon 64" i.e. cheap, fast, very overclockable. It is not to be.ABIT has NOT implemented the PCI/AGP lock on this board - maybe there will be a more expensive MAX model that does. Checkout one man's review at http://www.nickgoodall.org/kv8pro/review1.htm Reply
Wesley Fink - Friday, May 07, 2004 - link
#10 -I did a quick check with PC Geiger and the bus was locked on the Reference Board. Since I had the board for only 2 days for testing, there was no time for much more. You will also see I reached 231 overclock on the FX51 at 10 ratio, in addition to the 255x8.
Checking my review notes, I also tested the 10 multiplier at 233 and 234 to determine if there was a ratio drop. I could boot at 233 but the system wasn't completely stable; the CPU simply would not do 234 at standard multiplier. This also suggests a working lock.
Please also keep in mind that VIA has a working pci/agp lock on the PT880 chipset for the P4, so this is not their first PCI/AGP lock. It is just their first lock on an Athlon 64 chipset. Reply
Pumpkinierre - Thursday, May 06, 2004 - link
You got to 8x252 on the Aopen AK86-L (VIA chipset/Skt754) which didnt have PCI/AGP lock but ratio controlled. Given its an a64/FX chipset (and on top VIA) where AGP/PCI lock has been a matter of controversy, would'nt it have been prudent to have used your PCIgeiger to check the PCI frequencies at the different FSB settings-so that we wont be fooled once again!Reply
Jeff7181 - Thursday, May 06, 2004 - link
This is definately a good thing... finally overclockers have a choice between chipsets. ReplyWarder45 - Thursday, May 06, 2004 - link
I thought the Pro was going to have a HT speed of 1200? ReplyWesley Fink - Thursday, May 06, 2004 - link
#6 -PCI/AGP lock is DEFINITELY working on the Reference Board, but I can not yet address whether Abit has implemented the lock or just dropped the PRO chipset in the older design with no changes. I did see the one review in the UK reporting this issue before the VIA review was finished.
We do have the Abit board coming to us for testing and I will report what I find. Reply
Klaasman - Thursday, May 06, 2004 - link
Abit has a board out now but reports are that it does NOT have the AGP/PCI lock working. Replybigtoe33 - Thursday, May 06, 2004 - link
Come on guys its the first look at a reference board.Reviews will come with all boards compared etc.The question you should ask is why abit hasn't implemented the lock on the new pro board they just released? Reply
ceefka - Thursday, May 06, 2004 - link
#2 quite rightQuestion: Will Firewire suffer from the fact that it is not on-board? Will anything else suffer from the fact that Firewire will then have to be supported with an additional chip?
To stretch the importance of Firewire for the home-user. I believe that a lot of people own MiniDV camera's in and a year or so most analog videocams will be replaced with digital cams. Most of them work best with Firewire. I haven't seen any models that work explicitly with USB 2.0 so far. Reply
Cygni - Thursday, May 06, 2004 - link
There arent any Socket 940 boards based on the 250 chipset in the open market right now. Replywicktron - Thursday, May 06, 2004 - link
im disappointed that it wasnt compared against nf3-250 boards. Replywicktron - Thursday, May 06, 2004 - link
weeeeee Reply