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Hardware Technology

AMD / Intel Hybrid Motherboard 151

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the grand-unification-theory dept.
batgirl writes "ECS has taken advantage of their recent merger with PC Chips and released an interesting take on motherboards. Using the highly portable SiS chipsets, they were able to create a motherboard that supports all kinds of processors across all platforms. The PF88 starts as an Intel socket 775 motherboard, but different expansion cards can be purchased to add support for everything from a Socket 939 Athlon64 to a Socket 479 Pentium-M. The price is right, and performance is as good as can be expected. But how many people would make use of this?"
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AMD / Intel Hybrid Motherboard More

AMD / Intel Hybrid Motherboard

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  • Not me (Score:5, Insightful)

    by fuzzy12345 ( 745891 ) on Sunday October 16, 2005 @02:30AM (#13801506)
    I generally find that by the time upgrading the CPU is cost effective, a new motherboard makes sense as part of the package. YMMV

    • Re:Not me; Oh but it is (Score:5, Insightful)

      by wondafucka ( 621502 ) on Sunday October 16, 2005 @02:43AM (#13801590) Homepage Journal
      I generally find that by the time upgrading the CPU is cost effective, a new motherboard makes sense as part of the package. YMMV
      If this company has done it's job right, this should reduce the overall cost of the board. If vendors have to keep fewer types of boards around then they are buying fewer types, giving them a price break. By having one mainboard that is common to all daughterboards, the total cost of delivering the motherboard is cheaper (one hopes).
      My two cents.
      • If this company has done it's job right, this should reduce the overall cost of the board.

        I don't know what kind of reputation PCCHIPS and SiS have now, but I have 2 500Mhz PCCHIPS motherboards and, I believe, SiS chips for integrated extras like sound. Working with them, under Windows or Linux, was such a horrid experience, it'll take years of hearing every geek I meet telling me their work is great before I ever try anything with either of those names on it again. I remember having problems trying 3rd p
        • I am reading this article on an mobile sempron powered laptop which is built on the sis chipset SiS-M760GX.

          Can't really say that anything is really bad over here, i know the sis graphics sucks, but since this is a work laptop and no gaming machine it doesnt really matter (i knew the lack of graphic performance on purchase already, there had to be something that made this thing that cheap :).
          Other than that, it works just ok, no weird "sis bugs" anywhere to see, the sound is ok for a laptop (
          • Interesting. If your laptop is an Acer Aspire 3003, then I considered getting it, but went with a different one, simply because of the bad linux support I'd read about. If there had been linux drivers for the SiS graphics and the broadcom WiFi, then I'd probably have got it. I know you can use ndiswrapper for the wifi, but kismet doesn't like that.
            • yep it's the 3003wlci, wide screen rocks.
              and as for the performance of the cpu, it kicked the ass in real life tests when compared to pentium-m 1.7 ... so go figure ... single app. benchmarks may tell one story, but if several apps run and media player under the m$ windows needs 2x the cpu power to playback mp3-s and movies (while not throttling the cpu) with pentium-m then there's something definetly wrong with intel.

              i use the broadcom wifi device with ndiswrapper, i use ubuntu and have properly configured

        • Re:Not me; Oh but it is (Score:5, Informative)

          by Limecron ( 206141 ) on Sunday October 16, 2005 @03:24AM (#13801775)
          Ditto on this for me as well. One PCChips (later coined PCShits) that I had for a Duron 600 was a nightmare. Two friends also got the same board and their experiences were none the better. After two years of BIOS updates, I finally had something that seemed stable, but I was wary of touching it. It was a releif once it stablized since I built the system for my parents and I got calls every few days tell me what the blue screen was saying this time.

          I do have a more recent PCChips board, and it is not as bad. A merger with ECS doesn't bolster my confidence in them, though my experience with ECS is limited.

          For now I stick to the mid-range Asus, Abit and BioStars and have had good luck.
          • I've stated this elsewhere in the thread, but I work for a local PC shop, and deal with a good number of both ECS and PC Chips boards. ECS definitely makes the better boards of the two (especially within the last year. The KN1 line of motherboards are absolutely great to work with), but for the most part, PC Chips boards are OK. Nothing phenomenal, but we've not had any real problems with them either. They serve their role as a cheap, 'good enough' board just fine for the people that are looking for that.

            Th
        • I had some bad experiences with sis chipsets, on asrock motherboards for socket a AMD and for socket 478 for intel. Running FreeBSD. Avoid like the plague, especially if you use freebsd. Most annoying problem was that activating the serial port killed the network connection.
        • I owned a PCChips motherboard once, back in the days when the Pentium166 was about a mid-range computer. Horrible beast. I think i had to underclock the CPU and FSB to make it work reliably, and the IDE BMDMA drivers for windows didn't really exist, and enabling DMA under linux caused corruption that was undetected by the drivers. I only detected it by copying large files around and comparing them. My filesystem was hosed many times until I figured out what was causing it and turned DMA off.

          Also, I think (a

      • Remember ALR? (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward
        This reminds me of my old ALR 386. The processor was on a card, with the idea that you didn't need to replace the motherboard to upgrade, only the CPU card.

        When I wanted to upgrade to a 486, the CPU card cost more than a new motherboard, CPU, and RAM.

        There are two problems with the CPU card approach. The first is technical; new generations of processors are coupled with new generations of chip sets, and often, new RAM technology.

        The second problem is economic; without a CPU card standard, you are locked i

    • Re:Not me (Score:5, Insightful)

      by gbulmash ( 688770 ) * <semi_famous@ya h o o .com> on Sunday October 16, 2005 @03:03AM (#13801685) Homepage Journal
      I generally find that by the time upgrading the CPU is cost effective, a new motherboard makes sense as part of the package. YMMV

      So much is built onto the mainboard now... USB, firewire, support for various forms of DDR, sound, LAN... These don't change as often as CPUs, but they change.

      Of course, this is meant to be a budget board, or at least they're using budget chipsets. The best I can see is that it provides whitebox manufacturers more flexibility. Use whatever CPU is on hand.

      - Greg

    • Re:Not me (Score:2, Interesting)

      by NotBorg ( 829820 ) *
      I'd be interested in how it affects case temperature with the case being divided in two by the processor board. But then again I guess it doesnt matter as much in low performance machines.

      It's more or less a gimmick for penny pincher's who think they got a great deal on an e-machine.

    • Re:Not me (Score:3, Insightful)

      by stienman ( 51024 )
      I generally find that by the time upgrading the CPU is cost effective, a new motherboard makes sense as part of the package.

      You are not their target market. In fact, as far as upgrading the CPU, no one is their target market.

      You have three end users:
      1) The individual who builds their own systems. If they upgrade, their old system is good enough to resell -but they aren't going to sell just the CPU card. Therefore the entire board, cpu card, and cpu are going to stay together after the original p
    • I generally find that by the time upgrading the CPU is cost effective, a new motherboard makes sense as part of the package.

      Same here. And with the length of time I usually wait between upgrades, I'm also replacing the power supply because of some new power hungry device, a new hard drive since storage always gets cheeper, and a new memory type.

      This is why I love the "Macs aren't upgradable" comments. Well, in many ways, PCs aren't either unless you upgrade to that newest CPU every 3 months. So much in t

      • I use a giant gateway tower from 1998 ("Designed for Microsoft Windows 95" sticker and all =]). I've had to chop off the insides and I've mounted the mobo in an unusual manner, but when I do upgrades ever 1.5-2.5 years (thats how I do it too =]) I usually only have to buy a new motherboard (with cpu & ram) and/or gpu. I don't need a new harddrive, case, power supply, etc. And I can get more hard drive space or the next type of burner when it comes out. I never replace the whole system. Ever. I've been o

  • OS Support? (Score:1, Interesting)

    by TehNSA ( 905740 )
    How good would the OS support be with this? Could an operating system be installed with multiple chipset support?

  • Same as... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by axonal ( 732578 ) on Sunday October 16, 2005 @02:33AM (#13801529)
    Same people who put new engines in their VW Bugs. If the rest of the car is still good, then just upgrade the engine to keep up with the times.

    • Comment removed (Score:4, Funny)

      by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Sunday October 16, 2005 @02:50AM (#13801625)
      Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Re:Same as... (Score:3, Insightful)

      by misleb ( 129952 )
      Usually the "engine" of a computer includes the mainboard (and RAM). What are the chances that CPUs of the future will work with the same sockets/RAM that we currently have? No matter how modular they maek it, they won't support the Athlon 128 with a 2GHz FSB, or whatever. Even if the socket remains standard, there will be a faster front side bus or RAM type to support...

      -matthew
       
      • Keep in mind we're moving more towards duplicating rather than increasing speeds.

        Two cores where there were once one and all that :>
      • What are the chances that CPUs of the future will work with the same sockets/RAM that we currently have?

        Dunno, how does a 66 MHz PPC601 motherboard with 72 pin SIMMS run a 500 MHz PPC G3? [sonnettech.com]

        The sort of thing you're talking about has been done on the Mac side for years.

        • At a significant performance penalty, of course. In the Mac world you almost have to do that kind of thing because getting a new mainboard is prohibitively expensive, if possible at all. PC mainboards are so cheap, I can't see any reason why you'd want to try to adapt a modern CPU to a much older board.

          -matthew

    • Re:Same as... (Score:2, Insightful)

      by heson ( 915298 )
      I like your analogy, becuase I think it compares so well. You put a new powerful engine in the bug, and can drive theoretically 100mph, but the bug isnt made for it, and you need a fat front splitter to be able to steer it above, say 60. What I mean is, new fast CPU in an old computer is a waste of good computrons. I think the idea of a modular MB could be good but for other reasons.
    • Good point. I think the idea is cool.

    • So this guy's engine has kept up with the times, but what about the rest of the car? Did he install anti-lock brakes? How about a new exhaust system that complies with his state's new emissions law? Air bags? Did the chassis magically assume a modern design that takes into account the decades of impact research that have accumulated since his car was manufactured?

      By the time a CPU upgrade makes sense, it's probably time to replace most of the machine.

      • How about a new exhaust system that complies with his state's new emissions law?

        FWIW, you don't have to comply with any emissions regs beyond what was required at the time the vehicle was sold. Changing the engine doesn't change the year of manufacture of the car.

        Yeah, I know. Totally irrelevant tangent. I am, however, one of those nutcases who put a subaru engine in a VW Vanagon....

  • Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Sunday October 16, 2005 @02:36AM (#13801544)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • This has been done before, and even today you can buy adapters to get next-generation CPU's working on older motherboards. However, most of these hybrids have to make trade-offs that do not benefit the end-user. It would benefit ECS for economy of scale, but end-users would always be stuck with proprietary expansion modules that may or may not be available anymore by the time they want to change CPU.

      IMO you're better off selecting the mobo+CPU that fits your needs today, and by the time you need to upgrade
    • It would benefit ECS for economy of scale, but end-users would always be stuck with proprietary expansion modules that may or may not be available anymore by the time they want to change CPU.

      I'm not sure what your complaint is. You can change the RAM and processor on both the motherboard and the expansion card. It's not like you'd be stuck with buying an expansion card that had a processor fixed to the PCB.

  • Hybrid (Score:2, Funny)

    by sloths ( 909607 )
    Can I drive it in carpool lanes though?

  • Maybe (Score:2, Insightful)

    by JayDot ( 920899 )
    But only if the Intel and AMD chips that provided the features I want were close to the same price. By the time that I needed a new proc, though, I would probably want a new mobo to take advantage of 6 months to a year of new development.
    • That is definately true in general. But I find myself getting carried away with that logic. New CPU? Well might as well get a new mobo. New mobo? Might as well get faster ram. Faster ram? Might as well get better video card, etc.

      Then I've basically bought a new computer. I planned ahead and got a AMD Socket 939 mobo when I built my last machine. I'm keeping an eye on the dual-core processors. Hopefully after a few months I'll be able to double my processor speed with only a few hundred bucks. I can't wai

  • Mark? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by BrynM ( 217883 ) * on Sunday October 16, 2005 @02:42AM (#13801577) Homepage Journal
    Despite eveyone talking smack, I can see this being a valuable benchmark board. How well do these CPU/Chipset combos work? How well does this ATI card do with an AMD CPU? Okay now how about an Intel CPU? It's not a new idea to expand the CPU, but doing it across vendors like this is interesting.
    • The only problem with that is the possibility of a performance negative using the expansion. It may be negligable, but the speed freaks out there may very well still care. And none of the "love my proc comapany or die" people will like the thought of possibly being shortchanged in the benchmark process.

    • While a good idea I don't think it will work. How do you ensure that the board isn't able to make better use of one brand of CPU than another? I'm sure there wouldn't be intentional delays built in but you can't be sure that due to a quirk of the design AMD chips won't interently run faster than Intel chips etc etc. At the end of the day I don't think you can quantitativly compare such complex pieces of equipment. There will always be an element of qualitative comparison simply because they don't share exac

    • Unless you are also deploying this motherboard to all your users, your tests would be bunk.

  • The article stated it well (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Gactaculon ( 709191 ) on Sunday October 16, 2005 @02:42AM (#13801582)
    The article summarized this idea well by calling it "a solution without a problem". The whole thing is just so amazingly ill-considered that it's very hard to take it seriously. The only need I could see for something like this is if someone with a P4 needed PCI-E now, and _also_ knew that they wanted to go AMD later. Even then, would they put up with buying a $50 expansion board and running their expensive new processor on that hacked solution?? If PCChips/ECS want to be ambitious, why not endeavor to bring affordable SMP to the masses? Even if the server-classed chips required are expensive, many people must be put off by $300, server-oriented mainboards. This way, they could grab some serious attention in the high-end market and gain credibility. What they're doing now is only going to leave people scratching their heads...
    • Yeah. That's the ticket.

      Mix-n-match SMP.

      Whooo. eh?
      • Mix-n-match? SMP stands for symmetric mulitprocessing. Symmetric, as in the same on both sides. Any SMP system would obviously be a matching pair, and that is something that, while done often, has not been offered as an affordable option to consumers. I didn't think it was possible to misread my post that badly.
    • I would not put ECS/PCChips products in "server" systems, even as a home system, or even say they are worthy of consumer products. Just do a Google search on their names and you'll probably see what I mean.

      I really don't think that system would work well, each architecture has its own means of addressing and signalling multiple chips. Server boards are expensive in part because they have niche components, such as SCSI or RAID chips on board, or have other features rarely found on consumer systems. In the
      • For normal use, neither company's products are that bad anymore. In fact, ECS has been building some superb boards in the AMD64 world with their KN1 line. I've yet to see a better board for the money than the KN1 Extreme, and I've talked to a reviewer that was rather happy with their SLI version of the same board.

        I work for a local shop, and we've used PC Chips boards with great success in their niche - inexpensive machines. I've not seen them fail any more than any other brand motherboard we've used in the
    • Want a cheap SMP that's been given great reviews? Get the Asrock 939Dual-Sata2 (PCIe AND AGP AND 3x PCI, with no negative impact on performance AND it allows you to upgrade to the new M2 socket when they arrive) for $70, pair it with 1GB dual channel memory for $80-100 and finally add a nice Athlon 64 X2 (Dual Core) for $350-380 (this is actually the most expensive part).

      It hits the $500 mark but you end up with a machine that is at least 3 years future-proof. And yes, I got it and had zero problems with it

  • Its...Its...Its....like a ...^^rainbow^^^ (Score:5, Funny)

    by eclectro ( 227083 ) on Sunday October 16, 2005 @02:42AM (#13801586)

    Forget that it can handle all those processors. Look at all the pretty colors.

    Maybe it was built by unicorns....
    • I first thought it looked a little ostentatious too, however, it would probably make it easier to find the connector. I've worked in PCs in situations where the case blocks all the light from overhead and it's sometimes difficult to find the connectors or to distinguish them. So aside from looking a little weird, it might help out the guy who loves to swap stuff out a lot.
  • Is like partitioning the hard drive to have your two favourite operating systems in the same machine.
    Untill there will be a way to have both of them running my programs at the same time (hybrid SMP), that solution would look like a trick.
    Users that are concerned with CPUs and chipsets would like to have the real best, not the best of breeds.

  • PC Chips will never have my trust (Score:5, Informative)

    by Mancat ( 831487 ) on Sunday October 16, 2005 @02:59AM (#13801672) Homepage
    I'm not buying anything from PC Chips, ever. Anyone else remember when they were making 486 boards with fake L2 cache? Yes, FAKE CACHE. The cache chips were empty, and the board had a modified BIOS that reported whatever cache size the motherboard was jumpered for.

    Screw this company, even if it has somehow evolved.
    • I have to agree here. I had the misfortune of attempting to buy an Athlon motherboard from them, and I had 7 DOA before I got a working model.

      Still, when the motherboard did work, it didn't break until at least 3 weeks after the purchase date, so I guess it's not TOO bad.

      :)

    • Re:PC Chips will never have my trust (Score:4, Interesting)

      by zakezuke ( 229119 ) on Sunday October 16, 2005 @03:46AM (#13801859)
      I'm not buying anything from PC Chips, ever.

      I bought into PC Chips in the pentium age... under the Matsonic label IIRC. IBM/Cyrix and motherboard for under $100. I had issues with the motherboard catching fire somewhere around the PC speaker circuity. I had to return a few of those boards.

      • Whereas the last ECS motherboard I bought was so bad, I only wish it had caught on fire; would have saved me lots of time troubleshooting problems with its BIOS.
      • Oddly enough, my Matsonic Athlon XP/PC133 mb ran like junk for the first 6 months and it hasn't had trouble ever since. I guess whatever burned out wasn't helping performance :)
        • Oddly enough, my Matsonic Athlon XP/PC133 mb ran like junk for the first 6 months and it hasn't had trouble ever since. I guess whatever burned out wasn't helping performance :)

          What season was it for the 6 months it was flacky? If it was summer then you might have a cooling problem.

          What's odd about my Matsonic board... aka pcchips M509 IIRC, after it caught fire it continued to fuction, and in fact I had a hard time returning it because to return something at this shop it had to not work, and it tested OK.
    • Anyone else remember when they were making 486 boards with fake L2 cache? Yes, FAKE CACHE

      Some years ago, I owned a retail computer store - about 5 employees, you know the dig. Anyway, I sold tons of PC-Chips MB571 motherboards. They used socket 7, so anything fom Pentium-75 up thru AMD K6-2 450 was supported. They were incredibly reliable - I had maybe 3% bad - and made a good, cheap upgrade board for people's computers.

      It was common for me to take a used 486, slap in a 571 MB, upgrade the RAM, and sell it
    • I note the bit about it being a 486 board. If you are still judging a company by the products they made 10 years ago, well... I am not sure what it makes you, but I can't thing of anything good to put in that blank. That is not to say that they have automaticly improved, but I think you should at least look at some more moden benchmarks or reports before writing them off.
    • I was once given a system with a Slot-1 motherboard that had a 333Mhz Celeron in it, and the board mysteriously lacked any form of identification. I wanted to see if there were any BIOS updates that would cure a bit of flakeyness, so I had to put on my Sherlock Holmes hat and do a bit of detective work (quality time spent with google.com) in order to find out who made the thing. It was PCCHIPS.

      Apparently their reputation had become so bad that they choose to become a generic "no-name", rather than alert

      • Apparently their reputation had become so bad that they choose to become a generic "no-name", rather than alert customers to their bad name.

        PC chips sold things under their own name. But being a rather major OEM they also sold stuff to be rebadged, like under the Matsonic or Amptron label. Buying under one of the no name labels you might end up getting a pirated bios. Quality was pretty piss poor though if you were lucky you got one that lasted for a while with only a few oddball problems.
  • On the one hand, the technology could develop into something very cool. If you could use multiple cards and have a separate, different proc running on each one, it could be the coolest multiprocessor system around. Or simply using the motherboard as support for separate running systems in a system-on-a-card configuration (these are already available, but expensive). It currently could be a very useful little test bed if someone wanted to check performance across different processors. It could also be us
    • Forget about some sort of Chimera with multiple different parts running. Why would you want a 64-bit CPU with an AGPx1 slot?
      I'm curious if this can be twisted into a sort of multiple processor platform. Double your RAM, sure, but better still -- double your CPU! Triple it?!?
      The plug and play requirements would be staggering I'm sure, and Linux better step up quick if that happens. It might even be something Micro$oft backs to keep their edge.

      If it works.

  • SIS chipset? Uh, no thank you... (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Burn me once, shame on you. Burn me twice, shame on me.
  • ...this board allowed you to use AMD and Intel CPUs at the same time...
  • Upgradable, budget boards that will support a wide range of CPUs and memory would be useful in urban elementary and secondary schools where money for technology is limited, especially when administration considers 7-year old iMacs cutting-edge.

    With Intel-based Windows/MacOSX dual-boot computers on their way to the masses, the ability to cheaply upgrade certain hardware to extend the life of these systems would be welcome. It would take years anyway for school officials to adapt (e.g., NYC Dept of Ed has
  • By the time I get around to upgrading to a new CPU, a new motherboard (and RAM) is required. I have never taken advantage of generic sockets/slots. If you are going to buy an Athlon 64, why not just buy a MB that specifically supports only it? My only guess is that ECS is just trying to cater to poential buyers with various different preferences for CPUs. I doubt that they expect many people will actually take advantage of the flexability. It is probably cheaper to manufacture a single design that will supp
  • Ah yes, but when you upgrade from, say, an Athlon XP to a P4EE, how much is it going to cost you to get yourself a new 'SIMA' board?

  • good for OEMs (Score:4, Insightful)

    by smash ( 1351 ) on Sunday October 16, 2005 @03:33AM (#13801809) Homepage Journal
    Worried about the competition between Intel/AMD leaving one of the product lines un-fashionable?

    Buy bulk in motherboards that will support both.

    No dead stock you can't shift anymore.

    Regardless of the performance, the words "AMD" or "Intel" is enough to sell things to most of the Joe public...

    smash.

    • you still have to buy the right adaptor cards for the cpus you finally end up shipping with though and i doubt those cards will be cheap.

      i'm also pretty sure that keeping stock is a bad idea for pc manufacturers anyway as it depriciates so quickly.
  • AMD / Intel Hybrid Motherboard, eh? So what, it gets awesome gas mileage or something?
  • I was doing packaging arch builds on x86 and x86_64 EM64T and ponder if it could be easier to have two types of processor on same board for regression testing and QA. Since cross compile is just a pain in the ass, it would be some what useful if I could flip a BIOS setting to switch between Intel P4 and AMD64 without swapping parts.

    For my purpose, I think, if there was a BIOS flip switch, it would have been worth investment. However there isn't (if I'm wrong on this, correction is welcome), so it's just a
  • As I recall it was PC chips who produced the fake cache on the 486 motherboards. Look here:
    http://www.redhill.net.au/b/b-bad.html [redhill.net.au] "PC Chips fake cache 486"

    I do have an ecs board but it was before the merger. It was stable for years.

    nevertheless - there are reputable manufacturers out their so why would I care about ECS/PC CHIPS?

  • If this idea has a place in any shop its the big ones, and I would be willing to bet that is what the product is aimed at. Think about those crappy web hosting outfits that will slap whatever the hell they can find into a server. This would be great for those kinds of places because it might cut down on them having to buy newer shit. I worked at one where having boards like these would have been NICE considering how under-staffed we were - I would have drank alot less back then if I had the convenience of r

    • We buy top of the line parts for our devices and compromise nothing but our own effort to further the business.

      The rest of the world is going the other way very effectively - for instance where I work instead of getting more Sun, IBM or whatever high end machines I'm using what are effectively machines churned out in volume to be used by kids to play games. Take 24 dual cpu gaming godboxes sans video cards, each in a 1U case, and you've got yourself a nice little processing cluster for almost an order of m

  • Um... (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I don't know if anyone else here has had experience with ECS boards, but they suck. Sure maybe they perform decently right now, but what good is that when the board is dead in 6 months. ECS, and PC Chips for that matter, will never be a company i purchase from in the future, no matter how innovative their products become.

    -Psy

  • The first Pent-Athlon? (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Darn, and I was hoping I could have both CPUs at the same time and call it a Pentathlon. :-)
  • Support Apple G5 processors ? And both G5 and Intel or AMD on the same board ? And i could by hitting a switch tranfer to my Mac and Whatever :P ... that would be yumm.. and and and...
  • now all we need is a dual processor motherboard that can support 1 intel and 1 amd processor at the same time.

  • Has been done before... (Score:2, Informative)

    by Hymer ( 856453 )
    Digital DEC PC4100XL supported in this way:
    • Intel 486
    • Intel Pentium 60 & 66
    • Intel Pentium 75 and up
    • Intel Pentium Pro
    • DEC Alpha

    Compaq used same approach in:

    • DeskPro XL
    • SystemPro XL
    • some ProSignia
    • ProLiant 2000

    ...there has allways been several problems with this solution:

    • price of daughterboard were at least as high (and often higher) as new mobo.
    • a full reinstall of OS and app's is often needed
    • daughterboards and a set with the CPU (it has not been cost-effective)
    • there has been problems with the CPU cooler

    The onl

    • ...there has allways been several problems with this solution:

      * price of daughterboard were at least as high (and often higher) as new mobo.
      * a full reinstall of OS and app's is often needed
      * daughterboards and a set with the CPU (it has not been cost-effective)
      * there has been problems with the CPU cooler

      In this case, the motherboard costs $80ish and has this extra feature. The cpu is pointe

  • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 )
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • Veiled ad for Creative (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Willeh ( 768540 ) <rwillem@xs4all.nl> on Sunday October 16, 2005 @06:01AM (#13802260)
    Did anyone catch the quite obvious lip service they were giving to the Creative audio card? It got straight 6/6 across the board, as well as an ad at the bottom of the comparison, as well as advice on where to buy it (Buy it now for only ${AMOUNT})

    You'd expect them to cover it up a bit more, sheesh!

  • For people who want to make multiple optimized kernels for distribution while using only one PC.

    But not useful enough to justify the purchase. I do this, but I use separate PCs, and will continue to.

  • Say it with me... (Score:4, Funny)

    by Temsi ( 452609 ) on Sunday October 16, 2005 @06:06AM (#13802266) Journal
    Now their motherboards can suck twice as much as before.
  • I don't see why OEM's would stock these when the single-arch boards are cheaper, but one purpose I did imagine long ago when these were first announced, was for a test bench. As a PC technician I often had to put together testing rigs for four different chipsets: Intel s478, lga775, AMD Athlon/Sempron and finally an Athlon64 s939 (we were never too heavy on Socket 754). Having a single board that can take all CPU's using adapters would be great for people like me, just have one system ready to go, and swa

  • I think I can answer that question for them. Note

    Ok maybe none is a little harsh. There are always some people that will shell out for gimmicks and the like. I have to admit that I once bought a motherboard from PC Chips and it was the biggest pile of steaming faeces that I have ever seen. The first board was DOA the replacement failed after about 15 minutes the replacement for that managed a whole day before catching alight. I asked for my money back and bought a better board.

  • Recent Merger?? (Score:2, Informative)

    by halleluja ( 715870 )
    ECS has taken advantage of their recent merger with PC Chips
    ECS merged with PC Chips in the late 1990s (http://www.redhill.net.au/b/b-02.html [redhill.net.au]).
  • I attempt to build persnal computers for my friends and others through " word of mouth" and I believe could be beneficial. In addition building systems, I also fix'em. Well, if I had a board that supported two processors I could then test these processors on the same board to discover if they were 'bad'. This could cut down on having so many extra "testing" systems around the shop. I don't really know how beneficial this is, but it is an idea. On the other hand, can't recall the last time I had good endeav

  • Been there, done that,... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Decker-Mage ( 782424 ) <brian.bartlett@gmail.com> on Sunday October 16, 2005 @09:52AM (#13802961)
    burned the t-shirt. Mi Amiga 2000 could accept a daughter-board that could bus-master (or negotiate bus-mastering with SCSI controllers for that matter) the whole system. EXCEPT in it's case, that design was bright enough done to take advantage of other system components that were still left on the motherboard. Putting this through my computer hardware engineering lens here, especially where the various components are located (!!), and I see nothing of advantage to the USER. Not a thing. You are far better off purchasing similarly priced motherboards which will provide you with more capabilities. That does not even count the poor reputation that this (these) manufacturer(s) have with me, and others, historically.

    Worse, putting my economist hat on, the only people that this makes sense for are the manufacturer and a few OEM's that may be crazy enough to go for this design. None of the top OEM's I know of would even consider it. Any who would have poor reputations from what I've been able to discern historically. Someone may surprise me and come up with an economic justification here aside from those two considerations, but I haven't seen it in the threads so far.

    Nothing to see here. Move on.

  • Where's the G5 PPC cpu card?
  • A huge problem I have always had with running an AMD CPU is that the motherboards suck. The chipsets suck, the BIOS' sucks, the boards just suck all around. Even high-end stuff like the Opteron machine I'm typing this on sucks. The CPU's are great but everything that makes it run sucks. Part of the problem is because of the manufacturers and part of the problem is that there are just no good chipsets avaiable. The few AMD chipsets that exist seem to be pretty good but AFAIK there are no AMD disk control
  • ECS/PC Chips is the only motherboard manufacturer i have ever come across that had multiple occurences of Electrolytic capacitors leaking their electrolyte, split and burst ends... the quality of the components on the board are what make a good board... I wouldnt touch these boards if they were the last motherboard available on the planet.
  • Dang, I thought maybe they had produced a dual-processor board that would support an Intel and and AMD processor at the same time. THAT would be impressive.

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