Why i965 boards are in short supply IDE and friends would helpBy Charlie Demerjian: Thursday 06 July 2006, 09:47THE WORD IS that Intel is having problems with i965 motherboards. The problem, however, isn't with the chipset itself, that part is doing well enough, but related to IDE, or lack thereof.In a case of great timing, it seems that the ICH8 doesn't have IDE ports, and, well, there is a distinct lack of S-ATA optical drives out there. Now let me see, where have I heard that before? Ah yes, now I recall. Talk about timing.One source tells us that Intel is roping Marvell into 'welding' a SATA/PATA PCI controller to the south bridge, something that is taking a lot of custom engineering. The problem is that the current version, the fifth, still won't boot a Linux or Windows install CD. Oops. In the irony of all ironies, Intel has to resort to using the Plextor SATA DVD drive to install an OS.OK, funny as this is, in a "look at the stupid kid that jumped off a building and landed on his face" kind of way, there is a deeper lesson here. I keep ranting about how Intel screws their partners, and it bites them in the ass, and this is a prime example. If i965s are broken, then where do you turn? Via? Sis? ATI? NV? Hmm, the door was shut on them for the high end a while ago, and they certainly won't have parts ready for launch. Who does Intel turn to? That leaves, oh listen, you can hear crickets chirp on such a clear night.Basically, there is no plan B anymore, and as AMD has pointed out with painful clarity recently, Intel stumbles on occasion when under duress. With no parts in the bank, tight timetables, and a gutted partner programme, when you slip, the only thing you get is knives in the back. The i965, fine chip though it may be, coupled with Conroe, fine chip though it is, would be a lot better off if it had a friend. µ
Conroe may tip up motherboardless I965 chippery late setting sailBy Fuad Abazovic: Wednesday 05 July 2006, 15:40 WHEN MUCH-ANTICIPATED Conroe - or Intel Core 2 Duo, as Intel likes to call it these days - sees the light of day, there might be slight complications. One complication goes under the label, motherboard volumes. Especially when talking about shiny new P965 motherboards. Intel only shipped the first quantity of P965 chipsets two weeks ago and now the motherboard manufacturers, including the top one, are struggling to make the boards on time. Intel already said that the new i975 revision of boards will support Conroe CPUs but Intel recommends, and sent out a reviews kit, with its latest, greatest P965 chipset. There are only a few weeks left before the official introduction and the motherboard manufacturers are playing against time, as it takes up to two weeks to transport the final boards from China to Euroland and the USA. The big shipments of boards are always transported by boat as the plane costs too much. Intel will need as many Conroe boards as it can get, as its new baby aims for instant movie-star success. µ
Conroe shows dodgy RAID performance anomalies Overheads and slowdownsBy Theo Valich: Wednesday 05 July 2006, 16:24 PRELIMINARY CONROE results have been really impressive, but as time goes by and the platform gets tested in more and more environments, interesting things are popping up.Right now, it seems that Intel has some serious problems when using RAID5 configuration. If you are using an Intel's own baby, D975XBX motherboard and put four drives in RAID5 array, an interesting overhead and a slowdown will occur on all upcoming Conroes.We're talking about all the combinations, including Core 2 Duo E6300 with 2MB of L2 cache, E6700 with 4MB of L2 cache and the X6800 - Extreme Edition as well. An odd thing indeed.When comparing the identical disk configuration several different combinations on AMD's side, nothing happens. We tried using with older Athlon 64 on an nForce4-SLI platform or the new ones, Athlon 64 5000+ and FX-62 on new Socket AM2 with both nForce 590SLI and CrossFire Xpress 3200 chipsets. Result? Works flawless, without any suspicious CPU overhead and so on. So, either we're crazy, or someone really screwed up in the SouthBridge department.The performance in benchmarks is there, but the performance in real world isn't. While synthetic benchmarks will do the thing and show RAID5-worthy results, CPU utilisation will go through the roof no matter what CPU is used, and the hiccoughs will occur every now and then. It remains to be seen whether this can be fixed via BIOS or micro-code update. Or does Intel have a bigger problem at hand?It seems to us that Intel's Core 2 is suffering from a specific overhead when on-board RAID controllers are used. If you're unfamiliar with current on-board RAID5 controllers, let's just say that they really look like soft-modems and soft-sound cards, utilising power of the CPU for everyday work.I only wonder how will a two-meg cache Conroe work on a fully integrated motherboard, with Gigabit Ethernet, software-based sound-card – ever popular AC'97 codec and so on. Probably not as advertised. µ
US government unit throws Intel out over RAID problems IBM ServeRAID problemBy Theo Valich: Thursday 06 July 2006, 09:15WHEN WE BROKE the story about Core 2 marchitecture problems with RAID configurations here, one of the things that interested us the most is the open question: RAID for Conroe isn't much of a deal, but is it a problem with the aarchitecture and could Woodcrest suffer from the same problems?The answer was surprising and came far sooner than we'd expect. We have learned that the policy of Government Accountability Office (GAO), is very simple: all of systems have to pass a mandatory four-month operational test before any final contracts are awarded.WoodCrest systems were delivered for an evaluation for one of the US government departments, and it all ended up in tears, with Woodcrest being rejected in the first round of trials. The reason was that there were severe problems when Woodcrest was paired with a 1E RAID field when using IBM ServeRAID controllers. The problems didn't occur just in benchmarking, it was the every-day usage model that produced unexpected errors.Worse of all, several problematic situations occurred during the trial period and Intel was heavily criticised in internal memos, all ending up in a really unexpected manner. Since the company has allegedly been aware of the problems and didn't responded in a timely manner, the supply contract was then lost and awarded to a different product coming from a competing company, which passed the field test with flying colours. µ
no shortage of conroe motherboards if you have money ,or trust gigabyte .
