ye merci qqpanpan
bon chui chaud je vais faire un copier coller de toutes les pages 
Computex: AMD Releases 760MP Chipset For Dual AthlonMP
Article Info
Computex: AMD Releases 760MP Chipset For Dual AthlonMP
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Created:
June 5, 2001
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Updated:
June 5, 2001
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
By:
Thomas Pabst
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Category:
Mainboard Guide
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Summary:
We had to wait a long time for the release of AMD's SMP platform, but now, almost 2 years after the first release of the Athlon processor, we can finally experience a system based on two Athlon processors. The processor for the AMD760MP chipset is also new, based on the long anticipated 'Palomino'-core and going by the name AthlonMP. This gives us the first chance to look at the improved performance of Palomino in comparison with its predecessor 'Thunderbird'.
Introduction
When AMD released the first Athlon processor in August 1999, we were already told that its point-to-point processor bus, Alpha's EV6, supports multi processor configuration. It took almost two years however, until AMD finally released a chipset that would support more than one Athlon processor. Today AMD releases the AMD760MP chipset, which supports two AthlonMP processors, which are not based on the well-known Thunderbird core, but on the new Palomino core, which has recently been released as a mobile version. Therefore, another AMD-product is being launched today as well, the new AthlonMP processor.
Due to significant time constraints because of Computex2001 and because AMD was unable to provide sufficient information to me on time, this article will be shorter and less detailed than what you are used to as a Tom's Hardware Guide reader. I had to make a decision about which product I consider more important and I decided for NVIDIA's ground breaking nForce chipset. Don't be too disappointed though. I have still benchmarked AMD760MP as well as AthlonMP for four days without a break and can provide you with a rather large amount of benchmark data, including some performance evaluation of single Palomino in comparison to single Thunderbird. You will simply have to do without the usual technical in-depth information. I will provide this information next week once Computex2001 is over.
The AMD760MP Chipset
First, I have to note that the 760MP is not a complete new chipset. Only the AMD762 north bridge, which communicates with the two processors, the system memory and the AGP, is of new design. The AMD766 south bridge that completes the 760MP chipset is already known from the previous AMD760 chipset. This south bridge is of classical design, connecting to AMD762 via the PCI-bus and providing the common features as ATA100 interface, 4 USB ports, interfaces for the serial/parallel ports and the SM-bus controller. The AMD762 north bridge is the interesting and obviously important part of 760MP, as it hosts the two AthlonMP processors that run in SMP configuration.
The AMD762 provides two EV6 buses, one to each AthlonMP, and a DDR-only memory controller that runs the memory at the same clock as the processor bus, either 100 MHz (200 MHZ DDR) or 133 MHz (266 MHz DDR). 762 does not support any PC100 or PC133 SDRAM, just as its older brother the AMD760 chipset. Tyan's K7 Thunder motherboard, which is currently the only platform with AMD760MP that is available on the market, requires registered DDR-DIMMs. This DIMM type comes with additional buffers to reduce the load of the memory controller. The K7 Thunder does not run with the common unbuffered DDR-DIMMs, although the AMD760MP specifications allow the support of up to two of them. In a few weeks or months, we will see low-end AMD760MP motherboards that will probably support two of the common unbuffered DIMMs as well. AMD762 supports the typical ECC goodies, including 'memory scrubbing' as you would expect from a workstation/server chipset. The final feature that 762 has over the single-Athlon 761 north bridge of AMD760 is the support of 64-bit PCI or short PCI64. While PCI64 is rather uninteresting for desktop as well as most workstation users, it can be of importance for servers to accommodate cards with high I/O loads.
The One And Only AMD760MP Motherboard
Different to usual chipset launches there is only one motherboard with AMD760MP chipset available right now. Tyan worked together with AMD on the board design and in return it will take other board makers at least another month until they will be able to supply their own AMD760MP solutions. Tyan's K7 Thunder motherboard is a real high-end monster with tons of nifty features, but it also carries a hefty price tag of $700-800, which makes it rather unaffordable for sane, but enthusiastic Athlon SMP fans.
Here's the long features list:
2 SocketA plus 2 VRMs
1 AGP Pro Slot
5 PCI64/32 Slots
4 DIMM Slots for PC1600/2100 registered DDR-SDRAM
ECC-support
2 3Com 3C920 LAN controllers 100/10 Mbit with two WOL headers
Adaptec AIC-7899 Dual Channel Ultra160 SCSI Controller
Optional ATi Rage XL gGraphics Chip with 4 MB video memory
Of course it comes with the usual floppy adapter, serial and parallel port and ATA100 IDE controller as well.
The board showed stable operation with single and dual AthlonMP processors as well as with single/dual Athlon processors based on the Thunderbird core and single/dual Duron processors. It even supported the 'abuse' of two Thunderbird Athlons with different clock speeds. I tested the K7 Thunder with an Athlon 1200 plus an Athlon 1333 and it ran both processors at their respective speeds without major problems, even showing improved scores in SMP-capable benchmarks. However, neither 3Dmark2001 nor Sysmark2001 Office Productivity would run properly with this configuration. We should note that theoretically the point-to-point processor bus of Athlon actually allows the operation of two differently clocked Athlon processors.
The Tyan K7 Thunder requires a special 460W power supply, which comes with board connectors that are different to the common ATX power supplies.
Currently there is only one supplier of this power supply, Delta Electronics Inc. The K7 Thunder does not run with common ATX power supplies.
AthlonMP
We have seen pictures of Athlon with Palomino core in form of mobile Athlon4 processors before. AthlonMP is using the same core as Athlon4, but it doesn't put the PowerNow! power saving features to any use. The core voltage of our AthlonMP 1200 test samples was a surprisingly high 1.75 V. We know the new features of the Palomino core from our previous Athlon4 Mobile article, but I'll sum them up once more:
New design to reduce power consumption over Thunderbird core by 20%
Implementation of the full Intel SSE instruction set. The SSE processor flag is set so that software can recognize AthlonMP as a SSE-capable processor. AMD calls its SSE-implementation '3Dnow! Professional'.
Hardware auto data pre-fetching unit
L1 Data TLB (Translation Look-Aside Buffer) was increased from 32 to 40 entries, the architecture of the data and instruction L1 and L2 TLBs was made exclusive and TLB-entries can be written speculatively.
Implementation of a thermal diode to monitor processor temperature
It is a bit disappointing to see that AMD is only releasing AthlonMPs at 1 and 1.2 GHz, but obviously, the validation had to be a lot tougher than for a single processor Athlon processors, and the relatively low clock speeds seem to be required for reliable SMP operation.
We learned from AMD's presentation, that the above features should improve Palomino's performance over the previous Thunderbird Athlons. The benchmark results further down will confirm this. In terms of compatibility, I have made the experience that many current SocketA motherboards will run AthlonMP, but the majority of boards didn't recognize the Palomino core, which resulted in unstable operation. Only Asus' A7V133 was able to report 'Athlon H-series Processor' and ran AthlonMP reliably. Unfortunately, I didn't benchmark AthlonMP on this board, since it only supports PC133 and therefore isn't able to show Palomino's full potential. The motherboards that didn't recognize Palomino did also somehow 'cover' the SSE-flag, so that software was unable to recognize Palomino's SSE-capability. Only the Asus A7V133 and of course Tyan's K7 Thunder enabled the correct reporting of a set 'SSE' feature flag.
Overall, I expect that many current SocketA motherboards will support Palomino once they are equipped with the proper BIOS. Until then, I would suggest to buy a faster Thunderbird Athlon instead, since AthlonMP is more expensive than the 'normal' Athlon with Thunderbird core. AMD supplied us with the following pricing information: $265 for AthlonMP 1.2 GHz (OEM price for 1000 unit quantities)
$215 for AthlonMP 1.0 GHz (OEM price for 1000 unit quantities)
AMD SMP Technology - SmartMP
The SMP-capability of Athlon's architecture was obvious from the day when AMD disclosed that Athlon will use Alpha's EV6 processor bus. Athlon's processor bus is a point-to-point bus. This requires a processor bus for each CPU in case of multiple processor configurations, which increases manufacturing costs of motherboards, but it ensures full data bandwidth for each Athlon processor. Intel's processors, including the recently released Xeon 4, are using a shared bus architecture, which keeps motherboard production costs down, but it has the disadvantage that the processors have to share the processor bus bandwidth.
Due to time constraints I will supply you with additional information about AMD's SmartMP in form of an AMD paper. I apologize and promise to give my own evaluation at a later point in time.
You could say that AMD's SMP solution has some clear performance advantages over Intel's SMP-architecture, but it is more expensive to implement due to the requirement of dedicated processor buses, which makes motherboard design complex and expensive. We will have a look at our benchmarks later to see if dual AthlonMP is indeed able to show an edge over Intel's dual Xeon 4.
The Benefits Of SMP
Multi processor systems are common for servers as well as complex workstations for a long time. However, so far the average home user was rather unable to get any benefit out of SMP. The first reason why the average PC-user won't be able to take much advantage of a multi processor system is the operating system. The most common OS today is Windows98, before it was Windows95 and many people today are using WindowsME. None of those three operating systems is able to support more than one system processor. If you want to get something out of a multi processor system, you require either Windows 2000, Windows NT, BeOS or one of the UNIX OSes, like e.g. Linux or FreeBSD. Then you need to either use certain software that is programmed for multi-threading, because normal software can't occupy more than one processor, or you have to be a person that uses many performance intensive programs at the same time. A single processor system is well able to run Excel, Word and PowerPoint at the same time without the urgent need nor benefit of an additional CPU. However, if you want to zip large directories or burn CDs while e.g. working with Word, you will indeed benefit from two processors, since one processor will be busy zipping or burning the CD, while the other is available to you for other workloads. If you neither use special workstation software, like e.g. 3D rendering or CAD, that has been designed for multi processor operation, nor run more than a few low profile programs at the same time, it is better to spend your money on one fast CPU rather than two slower CPUs. This is particularly important to 3D-gamers. Only Quake 3 and games that are based on the Quake 3 engine are currently able to take advantage of multi-processor system. All other 3D-games run just as fast with one as with two CPUs, unless you are running some other processor intensive software in the background.
The verdict remains the same. The majority of PC users will not benefit from SMP-systems. Performance crazy Quake 3 Arena gamers should have a good look at our benchmarks though.
pour les benchmark voir le site
---------------
[XTBA>TSA] |Depuis l'épieu mérovingien jusqu'aux roquettes à tête fouineuse, y a pas une arme que tu connaisses pas. // Michel Audiard |
... les voies du marketing sont impénétrables 