Best dual Athlon Mobo?

[JerryH]

Welp, I'm planning on building a new rig in a couple of months, so could anyone offer an opinion as to who offers the best dual Athlon MObo?

I've seen countless posts here dissing VIA and promoting SIS; are there any dual-cpu boards with SIS chips?

[Ryu Connor]

are there any dual-cpu boards with SIS chips?

No.

[isochar]

From what I've gathered at the 2cpu forums, you are most likely to have the least problems with a Tyan or MSI. That said, I highly recommend going there and doing research on the troubles that each motherboard encounters.

[MultimediaMan]

The most stable Dual Athlons out there are based on the AMD760 Chipset, and you have two choices there: Tyan makes a Thunder and Tiger version of both: both offer DDR200 and PCI 64/33MHz Support and these boards are known to be as stable as a rock.

The newer AMD760 MPX adds some features, most notably DDR266 and the use of a PCI 64 Bit/66MHz Bus. However, there were issues on the AMD762 Southbridge that prevented USB from working correctly (These Chips are known as the "B1" revision): On April 1st. 2002, The B2 revision hit release that fixed the USB problem. However, there are issues with using PCI 64/66 MHz card in these boards. Many BIOS updates from Tyan, MSI, Asus, and Gigabyte have not yet resolved all issues.

The problem is with the chipset and how it handles Bus traffic on the 66MHz Segment: AMD has been working closely with all vendors on this front. Now, it has been brought to light that the problem manifests itself most commonly when an AGP card is used in conjunction with PCI66-compliant devices.

My Parhelia refuses to boot into Windows on my Chaintech 7KDD; before you go knocking Chaintech, be advised this is about the only 760MPX board that will boot with all (Ahem)ATI and NVidia(**Gag-Cough-Spit**) cards. The Tyan 760 MPX boards still have a hard time booting with these cards regardless of the BIOS update installed - they are also the only manufacturer that chose an AGP Universal slot rather than an AGP-Pro slot.

Parhelias in general do not seem very happy with the MPX chipset and I know of at least two vendor labs that are looking at that particular problem.

I was forced to switch to ATI on my Chaintech Duallie: believe you me I wanted the Parhelia on my main rig, but it is looking like it will stay on my Wife's machine for a little longer.

Again, the 760MP chipset works flawlessly, but it doesn't quite offer all of the performance of the 760MPX.

Here's a chart of all of the currently available 760MPX boards (With the exception of the Gigabyte GA-7DPXDW+, which has some minor revisions to the board, but the features are identical to the non Plus version):

[K6-III]

I'd say the MSI K7D Master-L....

[DGhost]

Originally posted by MultimediaMan

My Parhelia refuses to boot into Windows on my Chaintech 7KDD; before you go knocking Chaintech, be advised this is about the only 760MPX board that will boot with all (Ahem)ATI and NVidia(**Gag-Cough-Spit**) cards. The Tyan 760 MPX boards still have a hard time booting with these cards regardless of the BIOS update installed - they are also the only manufacturer that chose an AGP Universal slot rather than an AGP-Pro slot.

never had a problem with ATI FireGL 8800's or any GeForce video card (visiontek or videoexcel manufacturered, usually. one PNY Ti4600 that a guy bought somewhere else) with either of the Tyan Tiger boards (MP or MPX) or the MSI board.

the AGP Pro portion of it is unimportant unless you plan on running a FireGL X1 or some of the Wildcat boards.

the PCI 64/66 issues that we experienced were resolved with a bios update on the MSI board we tested. last i checked their were some issues with PCI32/33 writes on the MPX boards in general, noticable by write bandwidth being limited to 25MB/sec

chipset wise the only choice you have is either the 760MP or 760MPX chipsets. as was said, the MP does have broken USB, and the MPX did fix it but vendors are seeing issues with PCI stuff in general. note that the 760 chipset is a completely different chipset and will not handle dual processor systems.

personally, i would vote for the Tyan or MSI. these two vendors seemed to be very favored by our AMD Rep. the EPoX board might be a good one, but i have not heard much about it.

[MultimediaMan]

The Tyan AMD-760 MP-based boards (Tiger MP S2460, Thunder K7 S2462) have no USB issues.

The Tyan AMD-760MPX-based board did: the early revision S2466N and S2468-series boards had the B1 revision southbridge (762) that had a broken USB controller.

The S2466N-4M was the first Tyan MPX board with operational USB, and used the B2 Southbridge (762) Chipset.

User feedback at the 2CPU.com forums indicates Tyan still exhibits some issues booting the Radeon 8500s (Early BIOS revision ATI Radeons it would seem, newer users aren't experiencing the issues.), the GeForce issues were mostly with bad quality cards or underpowered motherboards.

The MSI Master is great board by all accounts. Iwill's board is generally accepted to offer the most overclocking potential.

[DGhost]

errmmm, sorry , i dunno what the hell i was thinking when i typed that... yeah, B1 vs B2 for USB working.

again, we experienced no problems with the MP or MPX boards with ATI FireGL cards or any NVidia card...

[MultimediaMan]

Fire GL cards use a different BIOS...the Radeon 8500 had something funky going on with their 1st generation Radeon 8500s.

[VJ]

Multimediaman:
What exactly is the problem if a PCI64/66 card and an AGP card is installed ? (I'm considering a Tyan Tiger MPX, Parhelia and 64 bit SCSI-controller)

Is the problem similar to the one between ISA cards an PCI-cards (when the ISA-card acts as bus-master ?) on a BX-mainboard ? (This problem was solved on mine by enabling the "passive release" setting in the bios, but this setting does not exist on all boards - and it slightly impacts PCI-performance).


Jörg

[Ryu Connor]

Passive release is required for PCI 2.1 compliance.

You can learn more about it here.

[MultimediaMan]

I suggest you talk to other forumgoers here: I have not seen a single instance of a Parhelia working correctly on any MPX motherboard in Win2K or WinXP.

As far as the PCI64/66 issues: I just downloaded and installed a BIOS update for my board that deals with the Spread Spectrum Timing a little bit that is supposed to fix these issues. Others have reported that the PCI64/66 bugs have been worked out of the Tyan motherboards.

[Ribbit]

Just going to be a bit picky and pedantic here, dont take it personally

Originally posted by MultimediaMan
The most stable Dual Athlons out there are based on the AMD760 Chipset...

You mean the 760MP chipset (the 760 is the single-CPU version).

The newer AMD760 MPX adds some features, most notably DDR266...

All the 760 variants have always had DDR266 support.

However, there were issues on the AMD762 Southbridge...

The 762 is the northbridge. The southbridge you're referring to is the 768.

Thanks for the rest of the info.

Also, the Tyan S2468 (Thunder K7X) never had the broken USB problem.

And for JerryH's benefit, the AMD 760MP and 760MPX are the only dual-Athlon chipsets in existence. Although VIA were planning one at one point

[MultimediaMan]

No problem, Ribbit...

[VJ]

Originally posted by MultimediaMan
As far as the PCI64/66 issues: I just downloaded and installed a BIOS update for my board that deals with the Spread Spectrum Timing a little bit that is supposed to fix these issues. Others have reported that the PCI64/66 bugs have been worked out of the Tyan motherboards.

But what is the issue ? Does the board refuse to boot ? Does it impact performance ? *What* goes wrong ?

(I'll try to find more info on Tyan - whether or not it has been fixed)

Jörg