Return To Castle Intel: 16 Years Of Motherboard History

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ravenware

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Nice article. My only critique would be ending it with the skulltrail platform. It wasn't a breakthrough, both in terms of performance and innovation. AMD produced a similar system a year before Skulltrail in hopes of regaining its performance crown by pulling out the big guns, unfortunately that beast couldn't outperform Intel's quad core chip.
The Skulltrail had similar results, offering very little performance gains over single socket systems while costing and arm and a leg to build and run.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/intel-skulltrail-part-3,1770-25.html

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/brute-force-quad-cores,1371-13.html
 

old time jon

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I am not even finish reading but have fond to many errors that I will stop

EX:

-AGP came from the LX chipset not the BX
-PII starting clock where 233Mhz and 266Mhz
-FX chipset had not cache on the board it was on the slot with the CPU

actually the 233Mhz had a really strange cache mem divider that gave it really slow cache access compared to the 266Mhz variant if memory serv well?
 

swyn01

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The unknown power connector you mention on the Plato motherboard is an ATX 6-pin auxiliary power connector. It was used if motherboard drain was to exceed 250 watts. With this many slots it must have been possible to exceed this. I still have ancient power supplies lying (as keep sakes) that have this connector. However, I have never found the need to connect it myself.
 

cangelini

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[citation][nom]old time jon[/nom]I am not even finish reading but have fond to many errors that I will stop EX:-AGP came from the LX chipset not the BX-PII starting clock where 233Mhz and 266Mhz-FX chipset had not cache on the board it was on the slot with the CPUactually the 233Mhz had a really strange cache mem divider that gave it really slow cache access compared to the 266Mhz variant if memory serv well?[/citation]

Jon,
You're right about the chipset--the LX was, in fact, first with AGP.
I believe the author was referring to 100 MHz bus models--clarified that.
I believe you're incorrect about the 430LX, though--it did support onboard pipelined burst cache memory.

As for the drop-down menu, it appears on all reviews. However, you can navigate through picture stories using the little boxes up top, which also give you a preview of each page before you click.

Thanks, and all the best.
Chris
 

swyn01

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I believe you're incorrect about the 430LX, though--it did support onboard pipelined burst cache memory.

You're correct that some slot 1 boards did offer onboard pipelined cache. Often it was an add on option with its own socket but some definitely did have soldered in out of the box.
 

old time jon

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[citation][nom]swyn01[/nom]You're correct that some slot 1 boards did offer onboard pipelined cache. Often it was an add on option with its own socket but some definitely did have soldered in out of the box.[/citation]

I may yet learn something here? Seing as the L2 cache on slot 1 CPUs was on the sloted card itself did this soldered on cache on the motherboard become L3 or was it just deactivated?
 

old time jon

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[citation][nom]swyn01[/nom]You're correct that some slot 1 boards did offer onboard pipelined cache. Often it was an add on option with its own socket but some definitely did have soldered in out of the box.[/citation]

I do remember this option on the socket 5-6-7 motherboards. Some super 7 motherboard went a far as 1mb cache with depending on the CPU would be L2 or L3 cache.
 

swyn01

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[citation][nom]old time jon[/nom]I may yet learn something here? Seing as the L2 cache on slot 1 CPUs was on the sloted card itself did this soldered on cache on the motherboard become L3 or was it just deactivated?[/citation]

Adding on additional cache onto these motherboards created an L3 cache. It was really just a luxury with little performance boost in desktop markets. Its effect may have been more profound with server boards. Either way, most motherboard manufacturers never bothered to include additional L3 cache or at best the L3 expansion slot.
 

snarfies

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This article brings back bad memories of SIMM chips. They had to be installed in pairs - no dual-channel action, it was just required for them to function, period!
 

swyn01

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[citation][nom]default123[/nom]http://www.tomshardware.com/pictur [...] adaxe.htmlisn't the fan for the chipset and not the processor?[/citation]

The heatsink with the fan is for the chipset and not the processor. The Atom processor is actually under the smaller heatsink to the left.
 
Intel 440FX (P6) was the first with AGP yes, NOT the 430FX

P5 (Pentium 1) Designs had the L2 cache integrated into the motherboard and was accessed via the FSB rather then a sort of "back side bus" like the pentium 2's etc and NO P2's didnt have any cache on the motherboard, but the L2 was integrated on the cpu "package", this time directly accessed etc (but at a 1:2 ratio), this was only done because it wasnt cost effective at the time to integrate the cache into the cpu die/package (like the P6/Pentium Pro).

L3 expansion slot? your talking about the "COAST" slots on a P5 based motherboard, right? They dont exist on P6 based motherboards ;)

That AUX power connector, i doubt any system listed here based on the P5's and P6's ever used anywhere near 250w, and you can find a far more modern motherboard even as far as the original Pentium 4 socket 423 with that connector or similar - iv seen them from ASUS (P4T??) and other OEM's - even in Dell's.

Interesting side note i have used a Pentium 1 with 1gb of ram (Gigabyte GA-5AA, 2x512 SDR PC133), and Pentium Pro's with 256mb EDO etc, still got working samples of most Socket 5/7 CPU's (AMD, IBM/Cyrix, IDT, Intel etc) - the last socket shared by everyone!
 

sublifer

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The power connector on pic 6 is the ATX auxilliary connector. It was optional but needed if you wanted to think about populating all of those card slots
 
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Didn't RDRAM start with Pentium 4??? I don't remember dealing with RDRAM with Pentium 2 or 3. I had a Pentium 2/3 (Slot 1) board that used DDR.
 

sublifer

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wtf is with safecount.net hijacking your page for a survey for? There are no signs what-so-ever that its a legitamate survey and with all the redirects to malware sites lately I'm getting sick of this. Your site will NOT be viewed by me any longer if this continues.
 

BallistaMan

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[citation][nom]sublifer[/nom]wtf is with safecount.net hijacking your page for a survey for? There are no signs what-so-ever that its a legitamate survey and with all the redirects to malware sites lately I'm getting sick of this. Your site will NOT be viewed by me any longer if this continues.[/citation]
Are you sure you don't have the hijack on your end? I have no such problem with the site.
 

cadder

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Next, do a history of OCing. AFAIK OCing has existed as long as these boards.

The original PC's with 8086 and 8088 processors could be overclocked in various ways. I remember some kind of add-on product for the IBM PC that upped the clock speed. I went to the local CompUSA (the original one!) to buy one and they told me it was a crappy product and talked me out of it. I remember various clone computers that upped the clock speed to 6 and 8MHz.
 

cangelini

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[citation][nom]sublifer[/nom]wtf is with safecount.net hijacking your page for a survey for? There are no signs what-so-ever that its a legitamate survey and with all the redirects to malware sites lately I'm getting sick of this. Your site will NOT be viewed by me any longer if this continues.[/citation]

I've made my opinion on that survey heard already, believe me. The malware issue was something else--an infected ad agency--and has been solved!
 
[citation][nom]BallistaMan[/nom]Are you sure you don't have the hijack on your end? I have no such problem with the site.[/citation]

No, this happened with quite a number of people over the last few weeks. It's not the users, even the editors are seeing it sometimes.
 

ravenware

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Are you sure you don't have the hijack on your end? I have no such problem with the site.

I have encountered this on different networks but only while accessing tomshardware.com This has been going on for quite sometime. I just assumed toms had paid for some survey service.
 
[citation][nom]sublifer[/nom]wtf is with safecount.net hijacking your page for a survey for? There are no signs what-so-ever that its a legitamate survey and with all the redirects to malware sites lately I'm getting sick of this. Your site will NOT be viewed by me any longer if this continues.[/citation]
+1. And not I DO NOT have any spyware,etc on my end. This only seems to happen with Win XP systems and NOT with Vista systems. WTF? The other thing is being redirected to a AV website. lol. I run Kapersky/NOD32/AVG/Avera.
 
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