AMD Motherboards: Processor Support

Everyone was pleased to hear that the new AMD Venice and San Diego processors would work fine in their Socket 939 motherboards. In many cases, however, a BIOS update is required to support these latest Revision E Athlon 64 chips, which are based on the 90nm manufacturing process and support SSE3 extensions.



Then Venice/San Diego got extended with the Dual-Core X2 processors. The good news is that, once again, any Socket 939 motherboard can theoretically support the new x2 processors with a BIOS upgrade. This was certainly a welcome contrast from the Intel dual-core announcement which required new chipsets and motherboards for dual-core to function. However, since the official launch of X2 at Computex earlier this month, confusion seems to reign as to which boards support Dual-Core processors.

To try to shed some light on the current BIOS revisions and processor compatibility we took a closer look at the state of x2 processor support among motherboards. In many ways the adoption of x2 is faster than we expected, but there are still gaping holes in x2 and Rev. E processor support. Hopefully with this guide and a little research you can find the perfect motherboard home for your new Revision E or x2 Dual-Core Athlon 64 processor.

The Processor Factor
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  • arswihart - Friday, July 8, 2005 - link

    epox has release official dual-core BIOS's for the 9npa+ and 9npa SLI
  • leexgx - Thursday, July 7, 2005 - link

    -mood mode on-
    silly post system
    -mood mode off(ish)- :)

    why are you lot setting your self on fire when its only been out for an week or so every board by the end of the month will get its bios updates put up (well the ones that do realy support it)
  • leexgx - Thursday, July 7, 2005 - link

  • OldDummy - Monday, July 4, 2005 - link

    The FN95 V3 motherboard works with the X2. This is the motherboard in the SN95G5 V3,It works well.
  • SUOrangeman - Saturday, July 2, 2005 - link

    The Shuttle released a new BIOS for the SN25P on 21 June. The linked README doesn't refer to this new release (yet), but I'm hoping that it has something to do with X2 support.

    http://global.shuttle.com/Download/Download_File.a...
  • OldDummy - Thursday, June 30, 2005 - link

    Shuttle SN95G5 V3 has problems with the X2 but a bios is in the works.
  • Wesley Fink - Thursday, June 30, 2005 - link

    The chart on page 4 has been updated based on information sent in by readers - Thank you. If we could verify the BIOS existed and claimed x2 support by the mfg, then it was added to the list.

    If we have overlooked any x2 BIOS please let us know. The motherboard supported, BIOS rev date, and where the BIOS can be downloaded would help us in verifying the information.
  • porn loader - Thursday, June 30, 2005 - link

    The new DFI UT LP NF3 Ultra-D supports rev E/x2 cpus right out of the box..
  • 100proof - Thursday, June 30, 2005 - link

    I don't believe this question has been asked yet. In refference to the comments concerning the addiotion of 433, 466, and 500 DDR speeds for Revision E processors, which motherboards currently have bios releases that support these speeds?
  • ceefka - Thursday, June 30, 2005 - link

    Likewise. a very useful article.

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