Intel Corp (INTC)

[Windsock]

Maybe Intel intimidated AMD so much that they were afraid to tell the motherboard manufacturers of this detail.

http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=11713

Athlon 64 in short-term memory loss shocker

Computex 2003 Where did I leave my marbles?


By Sume Gai: Tuesday 23 September 2003, 08:57

LEADING MOTHERBOARD maker Biostar this morning confirmed to us what we've been suspecting for quite a while - that memory suitable for the upmarket AthlonFX platform is going to be very hard to come by.
In an interview with Biostar this morning, it revealed how its biggest problem designing Athlon64 motherboards had been finding memory they could use to test it with. A source at Corsair hinted this to us last month - that none of the DRAMurai realised that ECC, Registered DRAM was required for the FX platform and, since no other (major) platform on the earth requires it, nobody bothers making it (and apparently AMD didn't bother telling Biostar. Surely it wouldn’t have been hard?

"Oh yeah, and by the way, our new platform needs completely different memory...") As we understand it, only Corsair are ready to go with PC3200 AthlonFX compliant memory, with Kingston waiting in the wings in the final stages of its testing. For the record, Corsair memory was shipped in our review system by AMD, who are big fans of the enthusiast memory maker.

Whilst this is expected to play out just-fine for AMD in the long-term (other major RAM manufacturers are now, we believe, starting to ramp up production on ECC Registered) in the short term, combined with the apparent lack of Athlon64 chips, AMD are in serious danger of another non-launch, the likes of which we haven't seen since the AthlonXP 2800+. We will be bringing you more on the launch event here in Taipei, scheduled to happen tomorrow (well, it's tomorrow here, it'll still be today over in the UK. It's all so confusing).

In the meantime, we suggest you check out Biostar's funky range of small form factor PCs, which will shortly include an Athlon64 model, Here.