ASUSTeK is Demonstrating AMD Athlon 64 Mainboard with DDR-II and PCI Express Support?

by Anton Shilov
09/23/2003 | 01:59 AM

ASUSTeK Computer is showcasing a mainboard for AMD Athlon 64 processors with support for DDR-II memory and PCI Express interconnections at Computex Taipei 2003. The mainboard company claims that the product is a Year 2004 Conceptual Mainboard, Japanese web-site PC Watch reports.

There are very few facts concerning this outstanding device, but those that are currently known are very strange and sensational.

As we see, the mainboard is not finalized and more resembles a mechanical, rather than engineering sample. There is a PCI Express x16 port with an installed graphics card probably based on the code-named RV380/RV381 VPU from ATI, besides, there are two PCI Express slots for other add-in cards onboard. Certainly, the industry will not shift to PCI Express from conventional PCI in one quarter and that is why we see three PCI 32-bit 33MHz slots on this Year 2004 Conceptual Mainboard from ASUS.

The most important peculiarity of the mainboard is claimed support for DDR-II SDRAM memory at 400, 533 and 667MHz. According to the information we know, Socket 939 AMD Athlon 64 processors code-named San Diego will still have dual-channel DDR SDRAM controller and there is no information about any actual AMD64 microprocessors with DDR-II-compliant memory controller.

There are four possible explanations for DDR-II availability on a mainboard for AMD Athlon 64 processors due to come next year:

• Socket 939 Athlon 64 processors support both DDR and DDR-II SDRAM. This may be possible since AMD surely needs to maintain support for mainstream memory since DDR-II will be quite expensive in the first half of 2004. DDR-II SDRAM support is important for AMD’s marketing and its support is not totally inconceivable. AMD may also cope with two versions of its next-generation Athlon 64 chips – with DDR and with DDR-II memory controllers, however, there will be a mess in the market in such case.
• There are doubts that it is possible to implement a dual-channel DDR-II controller into AMD Athlon 64 processors for Socket 939. This leads to assumptions that such memory controller may be located in the North Bridge of the chipset, while the built-in DDR controller is disabled.
• This Athlon 64 mainboard is a concept design to attract attention, nothing more, it will never come to the market.
• This is a mainboard for Intel Prescott/Tejas processors. :)

ASUSTeK has even put a sticker on the core-logic of this platform so that we could not find out the name of developer of the chipset. Based on some indirect facts we may assume that this mainboard is based on NVIDIA’s code-named Crush K8 3GIO planned for the release next year. NVIDIA Corporation is known for its superfluous and extravagant solutions for AMD Athlon and AMD Athlon XP processors, so, its core-logic with advanced memory controller for AMD64 may really exist.