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When the x16 pci-e bus is saturated, it will have been well past the time of which you should have upgraded your system.
BTW, is it possible for you to be a little more clear in your posts? Try not using dot dot dots cause I really didn't understand half of your post.
You need to understand that pci-e is not bandwith limited. It is channel limited, it does not work like the old pci bus, where all device hopped on the same bus.
In pci-e you assign lanes to each slot. x16 = 16 lanes x1= 1 lane x4 = lanes etc. Today for example try this, considering that all motherboards offered are maxed out at 20 lanes.
Take an ASUS Ultra motherboard with say:
1 - x16 pci-e
1 - x4 pci-e
3 - x1 pci-e
You can easily see that depending on what you install in your system, possibly you will not be able to use 3 connectors.
In my example, put in 1 video card x16, put in 1 SCSI controller x4, where are u going to connect the Audigy 5 ZS x1 coming out later this year ?
Have we reach the bandwith limitation of the system, heck no for as you correctly stated the video card does not utilized the bandwith of the x16 connector, but I loose because I cannot access the unused lanes.
Want another example, look at DFI LanParty SLI...look at it's slot assigment when u go to SLI mode.....
edit: Still think I should not design motherboard Kobalt ...lol!
I can see the need for some of the older architectures like ps/2, floppy, etc. Some people still use this.
I really am keen on the idea of either having dual bios, a bios savior in every box, or just an extra bios chip for hot swapping.
I see many redundant posts about taking away this and that, adding this and that. It's all great for feed back, but lets be real. For many of you enthusiast they would have to personalize the board per your wants. This won't happen.
I do how ever see the need for a bare bone minimum board, lacking all the bells and whistles to provide nice clean power to the cpu, video and ram. This being for the hardcore OC'ers out there.
Now they could have a deluxe version, that may take away a lil power from the above mentioned. Not to say it will take away much performance. It just may not have the extra umphhh to go as high as the bare board.( all bells and whistles, most likely being integrated into the board.)
If you like all the cables, cards, and add on devices, just make it a starter pack. Sold seperately of course. That way if you have the bare board, but want the add on devices, it's available to you as well.
Just my thoughts!!
-LIS
:rolleyes: :stick: yea right :stick:Quote:
Originally Posted by Blindbat
do you know how fkd up it would be haveing 5 X16 connectors? how big do you want that board to be? and did you consider price? :rolleyes:
Ever seen a 7 slots isa mobo, would not be bigger then that, atx form factor. No reason to be pricier because of connector, more trace for lanes so make it 6 layers as oppose to 4.Quote:
Originally Posted by enzoR
DFI LanParty nf 4 = 6 layers board, solid components and to some degree although hardware implemented, already allows assigments of lanes per connectors. Nothing magic or super complicated.
Cost, gimme my board and keep SLI ...$ for $ I bet it comes to similar price, and futurproof / flexible in such a way that I am willing to pay a premium.
Call it deluxe if u want, For a change it will be true!
yeah, agreed here. I like your idea, it would follow the standard ATX format since, its possible for that. But I would rather see something like 2x PCI and then the rest can be PCI-E 16x connector. You would need a RAID card tho that uses 4x lanes. Normally I would think those things would use 1x or 2x. But still a nice idea. Yeah, it would probly cost alittle more, but then again so the DFI LanParty boards. We just have to pay alittle more to get what we want. One of these board like what BlindBat is proposing would be best suited in the poweruser/network arena I would think. That would make one nice Opteron board...:D yeah I like the idea, but i believe I know what enzor is getting at: the market. There wouldn't be much of a market for such a board. There would need to be more support behind such a board before it would make it. So what I'm saying is its a good idea, but it needs more backing.
jjcom
Euuhh... is it not what I asked for from the start ? look at my inital request on previous page.Quote:
Originally Posted by jjcom
High end http://www.intel.com/design/servers/raid/srcu42e/ but x8 ~ mid range would have to be in the 1 gig bandwith rate for dual channels ( 2 X 500 to support for example 2 x U320 SCSI) ..hence minimum 4 lanes x4Quote:
Originally Posted by jjcom
I meant 3 PCI slots...opps typo :(. then the rest as 16x PCI-E slots.
jjcom
Review by ocworkbench. (Jetway A210PDAG - First K8 PCI-E board with HD AUDIO)
Yah not to shabby, them Nf4 are really good boards, but I wouldn't call this an overclocking board tho, not how we have been discussing it anyway, the bios really needs some work :)
hmmm
Yeah - I'm going to look at that some more. If you don't mind me asking, which PCI Express SCSI controller are you using? I'll be switching to PCI-E and am looking. Right now I have 2 15K RPM SCSI drives with LVD adapters running on an Adaptec 29160N on PCI.Quote:
Originally Posted by Blindbat
The only pci-e SCSI controller that I have found to date is the Intel, and honestly a very big overkill for me.Quote:
Originally Posted by RAINFIRE
So hopefully this year we will see something in the x4 range at hopefully half price of the Intel, with luck maybe even cheaper.
http://www.intel.com/design/servers/raid/srcu42e/
http://shopper-zdnet.com.com/Intel_R...tag=pl&q=Intel
I'd like a CMOS spring loaded reset switch on back panel. It's hard as heck to reset CMOS with water lines in way and stuff. Plus you got to open case and I drop the stupid jumper half the time and got to shake case to find it.
2. real sound or no sound not this AC97 crap
3. 4V dimm, 2V CPU
4. high end server board jap caps and mosfets or better yet transistors.
5. Copper NB passive heat sink. those NB fans are the biggest POS on planet
I like it. Call it "the big bad ugly", or "all cattle no hat", or "you're too stupid to own this board"Quote:
Originally Posted by Kunaak
Quote:
Originally Posted by Blindbat
Yeah - that is a bit pricey:( Hehehe - hopefully they will start dropping in price soon.
i hope SAS controllers will be cheap whenever they come out. (by cheap i mean the 50 dollar range)
Ok, I am definitely late into this game(been spending too much time in the AMD forum), but I hope my comments and suggestions can still be heard, Grayskull.
I am an overclocker, but not hardcore by any means. I will push my rig to its very limits as long as it can stay in my case, run 24/7 and have acceptable noise levels. So already my experiences are about "extreme" performance, but with compromise. Hope this is what my suggestions will be about as well. As fun as it would be, I can't go for extreme benches with the mobo running on phase-change and set the whole thing inside of a General Motors wind tunnel. ;)
Overclocking
First off, we need 4.0 vDimm and 2.0v for the processor. Now here is a thought: Grayskull, you said in an earlier post that implementing 4.0v for the DIMMs is not difficult. This may sound a bit far out, but why not 4.3 or 4.5v with appropriate safety measures? Have a basic 3.0v from the 3.3v line, a jumper to switch to the 5v line to allow for 4.0v, and then an option buried in the BIOS(basically hide it from normal users/have a huge warning pops up that gives the users something like 3 different acknowledgment screens to select "OK" to that they know what they are getting into) that bumps it all the way to to 4.5v? I know this really isn't necessary with 99% of memory, but there are those few BH-5 users that can run over 4.0v without problem. I believe one of them posted here several pages back. Again, the 4.5v is purely a wishful and probably impractical thought, but we DO need to have 4.0 vDIMM and 2 vCPU.
Have the most complete BIOS options possible for overclocking. Let the HTT scale from 200 to 400 Mhz. This is impractical for 1:1 memory, but could be useful for someone out there with a bunch of really unique dividers, which is my next point. Give us as many dividers as you can think of. I won't list them as a lot of great ones have already been posted in this thread. Hey, it can't hurt anything, can it?(seriously though, if allowing such a high HTT could present some form of problem that the ATi engineers are aware of, then by all means DON't do it.)
Another thing that would be immensely helpful it a feature in teh BIOS to save 2 or 3 custom settings if that is possible. This way you could switch between a few completely tweaked configurations without having to manually re-enter all the parameters.
Board and Layout - pass to vendors if no BBA boards(which there should be) :)
The highest quality caps and mosfets available, within some form of reason price-wise. But don't save a nickel or dime a board, we'll pay the difference in thsi area. Basically we need components that will provide ultra-steady power delivery all day long. I know you have said that you guys are already committed to excellent power delivery, so this shouldn't be a problem. Also nice copper sinks for all crucial fets and the NB/SB would be ideal. However, don't let them attach them with crappy thermal pads. If the vendors want to do this, tell them to put the sinks in a bag and let us attach them ourselves. (j/k) ;) No active cooling on the NB/SB unless you all can find a super low-noise yet effective fan whose mean time before failure is ~30,000hrs.(just go quality passive cooling :))
Miscellaneous
-If this chipset does indeed support AMR, give us as much space between the the PCI-E slots as possible.
-Need to have support for SATA II + NCQ(this is a must for me), and options for RAID 0/1/5.
-Keep the key/mouse PS/2 ports. I still use the mouse(personal pref., seems to be faster for games) and I'm sure some ppl still use PS/2 keyboards as well.
-Keep floppy connector as well. Windows needs a true floppy(no USB) for some drivers I believe, plus I still use a floppy drive every single day(college student).
-Support for 8x USB 2.0 and 1 FireWire port. I really see no need for a printer port(can't remember which is which, thats a parallel port, correct?)
-Need to have 100% working PCI locks and such.
-Onboard sound is not needed, however I suspect it will show up for mass-appeal reasons, which is perfectly fine. Same thing goes for onboard video, although I really wish this would be completely left off.
-Leave plenty of space around the CPU socket, at least enough to mount a Thermalright XP-120 w/out cap bending.
-Have a clear CMOS jumper that is easily accessible, and make the pin tall enough to be grasped easily, like an inch or two.
-Have LED power indicators on the board.
-Onboard LAN would be a nice thing, and I believe you already said it was included, but perhaps it did not include Gigabit LAN, but rather just a 10/100 which is just fine by me.
-One of the more unique and awesome ideas to come from this thread that I HIGHLY support is some sort of an integrated RAM cooler bracket. I really cannot stress enough how wonderful an addition this would be, assuming it is implemented in a quality way. A sturdy and well designed bracket that would support a *cough* 120mm fan would put you way ahead of the game. Ok, 90mm or 82mm would be just fine. :D
Aesthetics
Let me say first that how the board looks is obviously secondary to nearly everyone on these forums, however a nice looking board never hurt anything. For this, I say either a red board with black slots, or a pitch-black board with bright red slots. The very best idea, though, was mentioned a few pages ago. That is to create a pure white board, as bright as you can make it, with black or red slots. Not only would this look cool IMHO, but no one would EVER mistake a (insert vendor name here) ATi Xpress200 with anything else. It's instant recognition.
Sorry for the novel, but I take very seriously the chance to give input on a product that I will most likley own in the future, especially when I know for a
fact that my input will be considered and passed along to any appropriate parties. Thanks a ton for all your work Grayskull! you rock.
Quote:
Originally Posted by trakslacker
:D
Well, well, well said. :toast:
Yea I wish more vendors did public surveys like this to find out what the people want instead of trial and error and making us wait for further revisions.
I strongly agree with the idea for an optional bracket to cool the ram, and the bios options to have a warning systems so that people who dont know what their doing wont burn their boards.
The look of the board, honestly, I could give 2 sh*ts about, but if you want to make it pretty then go right ahead. What I need in a mobo that I forgot to mention is when u plug a usb floppy in have the bios emulate it as if it where on the actual floppy drive connector because windows is retarded and wont work off anything but an actual floppy drive on the FD connector for getting drivers.
What everyone else said + mATX.
-Right now 1*PCI-E & 2*PCI would be just fine.
-Put my vote in for 1.85vcore, 4.0vdimm
-External CMOS reset button (or "INS" reset that always works)
-Integrated 5.1 channel audio chipset with hardware DSP and some Philips QMSS effects processing
-Oh and heatsinks + quality thermal paste on any chip that gets toasty. Thanks. ;) :thumbsup:
My a64 mobo didn't come with working ethernet drivers for winxp-64 so I just dled them from another rig and copied them across with a usb stick.Quote:
Originally Posted by `schr0et
and for the people without another rig?Quote:
Originally Posted by wwwww
its a good idea but a driver cd is just neccesary...
how about make it so we dont have to use a floppy to load SATA drivers?
I'm ready, I'm ready...........