Low Voltage Athlon64 Mobile

Tigr · Post by **Tigr** » Fri Sep 03, 2004 12:10 pm

Ok, folks, the Athlon 64 mobile is out in the shops. I am trying to find the information on the compatibility of this chip with the desktop boards. Does anyone have some references to:
- whether it runs in the regular desktop boards
- whether there are some compatibility problems with some boards
- any tests done with it?
Thanks in advance!

POLIST8 · Post by **POLIST8** » Fri Sep 03, 2004 1:07 pm

I found this page and wept. You will too.

http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview ... id=1321894

Tigr · Post by **Tigr** » Sat Sep 11, 2004 1:54 am

Thanks, POLIST8! Well, I can see a reason for weeping. The life with Athlon 64 is not going to be as easy as it was with the XP-M. Although that may still change some time later. I really hope that the board manufacturers will fix all those boards to run with Mobile. For the moment, I guess, it's better to wait for I am not very impressed with the number of problems cited for those boards.

icancam · Post by **icancam** » Wed Sep 15, 2004 5:22 pm

Here's a small mention of one of the motherboards (ASRock K8S8X) mentioned in the anandtech thread working successfully with a Mobile Athlon 64 2700+ (see Customer Reviews section).
http://www.newegg.com/app/viewProductDe ... 449&depa=0

Mats · Post by **Mats** » Thu Sep 16, 2004 1:06 pm

For all you girls & guys living in Europe, www.itbutikken.dk just got in a wide range of those CPUs. I still haven't seen them in Sweden (anyone?). They also got lots of other mobile ones like XP-M, PM, CM and P4-M. Their site is available in eight languages and I think they ship to most countries in Europe.

They got a 3000+ at 35 W, AMD3000BQX4AX (never seen it before). The code means:
AM = mobile A64
D = 35 W
3000 = 1800 MHz and 1 MB cache
B = 754 pin
Q = 1.2 V
X = 95 degrees celsius
4 = 512 kB cache
AX = revision GC

Confused? Can someone explain this? Neither a 35 W 3000+ nor AMD3000BQX4AX is listed at AMDs site, so I doubt it's a double typo.

Dobby · Post by **Dobby** » Thu Sep 16, 2004 1:25 pm

Mats wrote:For all you girls & guys living in Europe, www.itbutikken.dk just got in a wide range of those CPUs.

That's nice to know for the future. Now, all we need is motherboard with proper support and probably safer cooling solutions for mobile A64 wouldn't hurt either.

Mats · Post by **Mats** » Thu Sep 16, 2004 2:00 pm

Dobby wrote:That's nice to know for the future. Now, all we need is motherboard with proper support and probably safer cooling solutions for mobile A64 wouldn't hurt either.

Yeah, indeed. I haven't seen any articles about it either, strange. I'm so tired after reading thousands of threads at various forums, and in the end I just get rumours like "[Motherboard] with latest BIOS supports mobile Athlon 64!!". No more info anywhere at that point. Later on you find out that you need to use a desktop A64 when flashing BIOS, and you need clockgen to make the CPU work properly, and Cool n Quiet doesn't work. Except for those small issues it's "compatible"! Yeah right.

POLIST8 and you other M-A64 users, how compatible is your motherboard? Does Cool n Quiet work? Other issues? I'm really interested in this CPU, but I think I need a mobo too.

General A64 question: Can I choose separate Vcore and frequency for each P-state or just for the highest one (guess it depends on BIOS)?

icancam · Post by **icancam** » Thu Sep 16, 2004 11:37 pm

This looks very promising! Amusingly, anandtech, while identifying the XP-90 as a great choice as heatsink for the mobile Athlon 64 on a DFI motherboard, names the manufacturer as Thermaltake as opposed to Thermalright. Deadline chasing probably accounts for the mental slip.
http://www.anandtech.com/guides/showdoc.aspx?i=2209&p=5

POLIST8 · Post by **POLIST8** » Fri Sep 17, 2004 6:36 am

Tomato tomatoe.

I guess it would be worse if someone accidentally got Seagate and MaXtor confused, or recommended a 40mm fan to cool your cpu.

I just used the anandtech website to limit the risks involved setting up my A64m system. I am the only user up there (or at least was with my MSI board) with a Micro-ATX setup.

sthayashi · Post by **sthayashi** » Fri Sep 17, 2004 7:03 am

The most consistent mistake that pisses me off is people selling Matrox hard drives.

Matrox, if you're not familiar with them, sells video cards.

killerfish · Post by **killerfish** » Mon Sep 20, 2004 8:04 am

I was doing a little surfing, and ran across this mobo:

http://www.newegg.com/app/viewProductDe ... 035&depa=1

It supports both socket 754 and 939. Although interesting, that's not what peaked my interest... This mobo utilizes the M1689 chipset from ULI. If you visit this page: http://www.uli.com.tw/m1689.php and scroll down to the features part, you'll see that it explicitly states it supports Mobile Athlon 64 processors! ...hmmm. I already wrote the sales & tech support contacts at ULI to see if it works with 1.2v AMD64's... If I get a response, I'll post.

BTW, performance of the board seems to be pretty damn good. Here's a benchmark review: http://www.ocworkbench.com/2004/asrock/ ... o-z/g1.htm

KF

mki · Post by **mki** » Mon Sep 20, 2004 9:40 pm

killerfish wrote:If you visit this page: http://www.uli.com.tw/m1689.php and scroll down to the features part, you'll see that it explicitly states it supports Mobile Athlon 64 processors! ...hmmm.

Some of the laptops running Mobile Athlon 64 processors use VIA K8T800 chipset, so that chipset supports mobile processors too. But the desktop motherboards using that chipset just don't support the mobile models. It has something to do with BIOS and maybe something to do with voltage regulators. I don't know.

But! See this topic. If I'm right, you should be able to run a 2.4GHz 3400+ desktop model at 1.8GHz with 38W heat dissipation.

sthayashi · Post by **sthayashi** » Mon Sep 20, 2004 10:00 pm

Given Aopen's track record for undervolting, I wonder if this will be another contender for Mobile A64:
http://usa.aopen.com/products/mb/n250a-FR_Spec.htm

If only there were an 8rdavcore for A64...

Jan Kivar · Post by **Jan Kivar** » Tue Sep 21, 2004 7:13 am

sthayashi wrote:Given Aopen's track record for undervolting, I wonder if this will be another contender for Mobile A64:
http://usa.aopen.com/products/mb/n250a-FR_Spec.htm

If only there were an 8rdavcore for A64...

ClockGen is claimed to support all nForce3 boards.

Cheers,

Jan

Gholam · Post by **Gholam** » Tue Sep 21, 2004 8:50 am

sthayashi wrote:The most consistent mistake that pisses me off is people selling Matrox hard drives.

Matrox, if you're not familiar with them, sells video cards.

To be sure, Matrox used to sell video cards

I guess they are still trying, in the very small niche of 2D-only mega-multi-monitor work, but I haven't seen a Matrox card in years. Likely they'll go the way of #9 eventually, unless they somehow manage to make an ATI-style comeback.

Mats · Post by **Mats** » Thu Oct 07, 2004 5:03 am

mki wrote:
killerfish wrote:If you visit this page: http://www.uli.com.tw/m1689.php and scroll down to the features part, you'll see that it explicitly states it supports Mobile Athlon 64 processors! ...hmmm.
Some of the laptops running Mobile Athlon 64 processors use VIA K8T800 chipset, so that chipset supports mobile processors too. But the desktop motherboards using that chipset just don't support the mobile models. It has something to do with BIOS and maybe something to do with voltage regulators. I don't know.

Yeah, there's a very big difference between what the chipset supports and what the motherboard supports. As an example, VIAs chipsets has supported mobile AXP since the KT133 or something, but theres still no AXP motherboard that can change Vcore on the fly like the notebooks, just because it was a notebook feature by then (until A64). Just because the chipset have a certain feature, there's nothing that says all motherboards with it have this feature.