Which motherboards allow drop in upgrade of AMD Barcelona?

[itguy]

OK, I've recently read reports that AMD claims their forthcoming Barcelona quadcore is 40% faster than Cloverton (2 core2duo's linked together). Now assuming that this is true (only an assumption), which motherboards that exist today will allow a drop in K8L (K10/Barcelona) cpu with a potential simple bios update?

Is it only the 4X4 motherboards or will the newest AM2 boards support the Barcelona core?

Thanks.

 

[rammedstein]

to my knowledge Barcelona will come in 3 flavors, one for servers (socket f) one will be 4x4 and the other will be home/am2. i generally think since that all of the changes are internal changes and none actually effect the links with the board too greatly, most am2 boards, 4x4 boards and socket f boards will support them after a simple bios flash

 

[human_error]

A couple of things:

1. I think that the quad cores will be able to work in any AM2 socket, but to get all features working (there are a couple features they are adding to the new K10's) you will be needing an AM2+ mobo - i'm not 100% certain on this but i have read it somewhere but don't have the link.

2. The 40% increase in power is not over the Intel systems, but is over the current K8 design and arcitecture, i'm an AMD fanboy but i never allow people to believe a lie, and the 40% boost in power clock for clock was over an Athlon 64 bit arcitecture, and not over the intel systems. Overall i THINK the AMD will have a slight advantage, but until final revisions are made and benchmarks are completed on independant sites, we won't know the truth on this.

Still, i'll be getting the new barcelona chip in my new home pc to run all the screens in my house and run several home based systems like heating etc, will be a schweet system to get running, but as i said, i think there is an AM2+ socket revision due to enable all features in the new arcitecture.