Athlon 64 Revision E: Unofficial DDR500 Support
by Anand Lal Shimpi on July 11, 2005 12:05 AM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
Enabling Support for the new Dividers
BIOS support for the new dividers must be enabled by your motherboard manufacturer. Apparently, AMD has been sharing the information with motherboard manufacturers if they ask, on how to implement it, but it is not given out by default.For our tests, we used DFI’s LANParty UT nForce4 Ultra-D, whose 704_22V6 BIOS dated 7/06/2005 supports the new dividers.
Not all of the configurations are supported by the LANParty UT nForce4 Ultra-D. Below is a table of what is supported by the board:
| CPU | Clock Speed | Memory Dividers Supported by the DFI nF4 Ultra-D | |||
| 13/12 | 7/6 | 5/4 | 4/3 | ||
| AMD Athlon 64 FX-57 | 2.8GHz | 215MHz | - | 233MHz | - |
| AMD Athlon 64 3800+ | 2.4GHz | - | 218MHz | 240MHz | - |
| AMD Athlon 64 3500+ | 2.2GHz | - | 220MHz | 244MHz | - |
| AMD Athlon 64 3200+ | 2.0GHz | - | 222MHz | 250MHz | - |
| AMD Athlon 64 X2 4800/4600+ | 2.4GHz | - | 218MHz | 240MHz | - |
| AMD Athlon 64 4200/4400+ | 2.2GHz | - | 220MHz | 244MHz | - |
The dividers appear in the BIOS based on your selected clock speed, and appear as both an estimated DDR frequency as well as the actual memory divider that you are selecting. Because of the variation in actual DDR frequency, the estimated frequency is often wrong. For example, the FX-57 using the 5/4 divider results in a DDR466 speed, while the BIOS incorrectly refers to the 5/4 divider as enabling DDR500.
There are other motherboards with BIOS support for these new dividers, such as the ABIT Fatal1ty AN8-SLI with its latest BIOS. You can expect most enthusiast motherboard manufacturers to follow suit, if they haven’t already.
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wien - Monday, July 11, 2005 - link
#15: It's not like they will stop making s939 CPUs the instant they launch M2. You'll be fine for a couple of years for sure.PrinceGaz - Monday, July 11, 2005 - link
#13- Lots of mobos support 3.3V RAM voltage. Only problem is they take PC66/100/133 modules rather tahn DDR :)AnnihilatorX - Monday, July 11, 2005 - link
Well in the end AMD still planned to move to DDR2To me they said S939 would last long
But they are moving to socket M2 and DDR2 next year
It would have been much better if they stick to s939 and wait for DDR3 instead
#12 I think it's next year
Viditor - Monday, July 11, 2005 - link
"According to [H] it is the San Diego core which has the improved (fixed) memory controller (see quote below). So do you have to be careful to get San Diego or is Venice ok?"San Diego, Venice, DC Opterons, and the X2 all have the improved memory controllers...
elecrzy - Monday, July 11, 2005 - link
#11: how many mobo's do you know support 3.3V+ RAM voltage and how many RAM sticks to you know support DDR500 with 2225 timing?bupkus - Monday, July 11, 2005 - link
When does AMD's roadmap start using DDR2?JustAnAverageGuy - Monday, July 11, 2005 - link
A64s aren't bandwidth starved. We knew that much already :)When you crank up the HT\FSB speeds you're normalyl trying to get the CPU clock speed up. Dividers just help if the memory can't keep up. :)
What's with all the OCZ+DFI love going on around here anyway? :)
GTMan - Monday, July 11, 2005 - link
According to [H] it is the San Diego core which has the improved (fixed) memory controller (see quote below). So do you have to be careful to get San Diego or is Venice ok?"The San Diego core brings with it some very important things. Primarily, it has what AMD terms as a “more flexible memory controller.” We at HardOCP would prefer to call it a “fixed memory controller.” “Fixed” as in the older one was broken."
http://www.hardocp.com/article.html?art=Nzg3
creathir - Monday, July 11, 2005 - link
Well, I for one am just GLAD Anand is not dead... was begining to wonder... Maybe you got invited up to Redmond for a little chat due to you article that got pulled? At least you're alive and the M$ob did not get ya...Great work on the article. I suppose as long as I do not play BF2 on one screen while rendering a scene in 3DStudioMax on another, I should be fine.
- Creathir
Joepublic2 - Monday, July 11, 2005 - link
"i remember when ddr400 wasn't official..."I do too, DDR333 was intended to be the last speed grade of DDR. Samsung and other memory makers had good yields of DDR400, and were having big problems with DDR2. Those have been fixed, and DDR2 is ready to go, having recently become even less expensive that DDR.
http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/memory/display/200507...