News for 2011-03-04

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dhanson865
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News for 2011-03-04

Post by dhanson865 » Fri Mar 04, 2011 8:18 am

http://www.silentpcreview.com/news-2011-03-04.htm

* Superflower Golden King 550W (80 Plus Platinum) reviewed at JonnyGURU
* Corsair announces USB 3.0 Upgrade Kit for Obsidian Series Cases
* Musing on the state of motherboards at The Tech Report
* Thortech shows off 80 Plus Platinum power supply at CeBIT 2011
* MSI to launch AM3+ motherboards for Bulldozer in April, will have to use AM3 CPUs until June?
* Mazda Recalls 65,000 Cars... over Spider Webs
Last edited by dhanson865 on Fri Mar 04, 2011 5:36 pm, edited 1 time in total.

andyb
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Re: News for 2011-03-04

Post by andyb » Fri Mar 04, 2011 9:24 am

I did find a contradictory statement a day or so ago from someone from AMD about the ability to use "Bulldozer" CPU's on the existing 800 series chipsets. However it is obvious that they can be made to function with the 800 series chipsets and also claim to be backwardly compatable (something that the AM3+ socket is supposed to do), but at what cost.???

Just because it works does not mean that the end user will get the best out of the new "Bulldozer" CPU.

There is a known delay with the 900 series chipset, and this is what I will be waiting for. The 900 series chipset is "designed" to work with the "Bulldozer" CPU and be backwardly compatable with AM3 CPU's, while the 800 series chipset is "designed" for AM3 CPU's and is being "made" to function with the "Bulldozer" CPU's.

The "Bulldozer" CPU's wont hit the market until the middle of the year, and with a new chipset supposed to arrive at about the same time why would anyone bothyer buying a brand new motherboard now to put with an existing CPU, when there is a new CPU out in a few months.? This is puzzling especially as the new (top of the line) chipset sets to destroy the existing chipsets by feature-list alone, not withstanding any extra performance benefits, and power savings to be gained.

Here is a little of the info about the new 900 series chipset, I am sure that you can find more via google and when the x-bit labs website is working again, as I know they have a load of info.

http://news.softpedia.com/news/AMD-s-Up ... 9448.shtml


Andy

dhanson865
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Re: News for 2011-03-04

Post by dhanson865 » Fri Mar 04, 2011 5:46 pm

I believe that the 800 series chipset will fully support bulldozer. The only big difference between 800 and 900 is the USB3 / SATA 6 Gb/s support / quantity.

As I said in the other thread I'm using a X3 720 (AM3 CPU) in a ASUS M2A-VM which was released before AM2+ chips were out. It was labeled as AM2 at time of release, later they added AM2+ with a bios update, and again later added AM3 with the last BIOS they released.

So AM2/AM2+/AM3 all work in my M2A-VM but I'm still using DDR2 800 and still only have USB 2 and still only have SATA 3 Gb/s.

Oh and my board doesn't support dual power planes but bulldozer is purely a logical change. There isn't a third power plane added or any other physical change that can't be addressed by the BIOS + Drivers.

Don't get me wrong, Bulldozer will be a big deal. I just don't think it's anything that requires physical changes enough so that a 8xx chipset would hamper it's performance. Remember that the memory controller is on the CPU die now so they can make drastic changes without changing the chipset.

andyb
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Re: News for 2011-03-04

Post by andyb » Sat Mar 05, 2011 9:51 am

Here seems to be absolute confirmation that (some) existing chipsets can (with a BIOS update) support "Bulldozer" CPU's.

Testimony from someone who spoke to MSI.

http://forums.legitreviews.com/about32895.html

MSI's website - specifically about the 890FXA-GD65

http://www.msi.com/product/mb/890FXA-GD65.html

Picture of motherboard (just incase it vanishes from MSI's website), note the AM3+ written above the NB heatsink - I have cropped the picture to include the important bits.


Andy
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