I’ve got a couple of system builds in the works, but I ran into an interesting problem that I thought I’d share. This is a lesson about paying attention to the POST messages, or maybe looking at that BIOS setup screen a little more closely. Those messages actually do show useful information on occasion.
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Recently, I’ve been benchmarking a lot of graphics cards, one of which I can’t really talk about. So this post is going to be a little weird, as I dance around the product which cannot be named. One particular graphics card isn’t the focus here anyway. I want to talk about troubleshooting technical problems.
A few weeks back, I mentioned that I’d built a Windows 7 reference system. That system was built on an Intel DX58SO board using the X58 chipset. So I decided to use it for testing new graphics cards. What happened next was truly weird.
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Scott Gardner is an electrical engineer, MBA, consultant, chip architect and even former game producer. We’ve known each other for quite a few years, having met during the era of the 3D graphics wars of the 1990s. I asked him to write up a post about the usefulness of multiphase power and denser copper layers on motherboards. We’re seeing those features touted by a number of manufacturers, including Gigabyte and Asus. Are those features really valuable, or is it marketing fluff. Scott dives into the engineering underneath the marketing. — Loyd Case
Computer motherboard manufacturers are locked in a desperate struggle to differentiate themselves as the PC platform runs out of differentiating features. As more of the motherboard silicon gets sucked into the chipset and now into the CPU itself, there isn’t much left for the board vendor except to add memory, some connectors, a few minor peripherals, and the power management circuitry. As it turns out, power management complexities have given new life to those motherboard developers who push the envelope of technology and then create lots of new marketing hype to convince us we desperately need it.
If Loyd’s readers profess an interest in diving deeper into the technical issues, I’d be happy to sling even more technical jargon and describe the engineering issues in more detail. For this article, we’ll stay at the level of motherboard buyers trying to make sense of features list.
Take, for example, the Asus P7P55D Deluxe.
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P55 is Coming
So Intel is readying a new chipset and processor, based on the Nehalem core. This is not exactly a secret. What’s not currently public is when the new CPU, code-named Lynnfield, will ship, or what its pricing will be.
It’s coming soon, though. Apparently the Core i5 750 was briefly for sale at Fry’s Electronics. Meanwhile, Lynnfield prices may have leaked.
So Lynnfield and P55 motherboards will ship soon. What does this mean for users? What about all those people who went out and bought or built Core i7 systems based on X58 chipsets? and what will it mean for Intel’s completion?
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