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- Date:
- Sunday , December 28, 2003
- Author:
- Kyle Bennett
- Editor:
- Sean Quinn
- Google +1
Prescott and Upgrading
Very simply put, can you upgrade from Northwood to Prescott on your current mainboard? The simple answer is, some of you will, and some of you won't.
What Spec Do We Need?
Now, to elaborate a bit, VRM 10.0 is part of the bigger FMB 2.0 specification. If the FMB 2.0 spec is followed, any board manufactured under that spec should be compatible with just about any Prescott CPU available in the foreseeable future. For the Prescott CPUs that we will soon be seeing in Q1 2004, FMB 2.0 is not required, only FMB 1.5 or equivalent. As we understand it, FMB 1.5 is a subset of FMB 2.0.
Besides Gigabyte, Asus, ABIT, and MSI currently have production boards that should run the soon to be released Prescott CPUs with confidence. Does this mean that their boards meet the FMB 1.5 specification? At the moment, it doesn't appear so. It does look as though they do have designs in place that will meet FMB 1.5 qualification testing guidelines although their designs may not adhere to the letter of the FMB 1.5 specification. What we're seeing here is that the four top tier retail mainboard builders built their i875P and i865PE boards with Prescott CPUs in mind even though there was not a specification to follow at the time. They took what they knew about Prescott and hypothesized what would be needed to support it in the future.
ABIT had this to say about their current line of boards:
As a design partner of Intel, ABIT was able to design in support for future CPUs into our IS7 Series and IC7 Series of motherboards. Our motherboards follow the VRM 10.0 and FMB 1.5 Guidelines. With ABIT's 4-phase power onboard and a strengthened PWM design, ABIT users of the IS7 Series and IC7 Series are able to use current Northwood core Pentium 4s as well as upcoming CPUs.
Interestingly enough, they do not mention their new AI7/i865PE board above, but FMB 1.5 is even spelled out in the specifications as “supported” by the chipset.
Supports Advanced Configuration and Power Management Interface (ACPI) & FMB 1.5
Asus shared this:
Above are our current boards that support Prescott.
Gigabyte said this to us and points out that some of their i845 board owners might even be able to upgrade to Prescott should the proper bus speed be supported:
Gigabyte was the first to design VRM 10.0 on motherboards beginning with the 845PE/845GE based models, and we have carried it over to our 865/875/848 based boards. This allows both Northwood and Prescott support.
MSI had some very detailed comments as to their product line:
VRM 10 FMB1 (Supports up to Prescott 3.2GHz)
Intel 875P chipset
· 875P Neo-FIS2R
· 875P Neo-LSR
Intel 865 family
· 865PE Neo2-FIS2R
· 865PE Neo2-LS
· 865G Neo2-LS
· 865GM2-LS
SiS 661FX chipset
· 661FM-L
VRM 10 FMB1.5 (Supports up to Prescott 3.4, 3.6, and beyond)
Intel 875P chipset
· MS-6758 ver 2 (no marketing name at this moment, will hit the market around mid of JAN 04)
Intel 865 family
· 865PE Neo2-PFISR
· 865PE Neo2-PFS
· 865PE Neo2-PLS
· 865G Neo2-PLS
VIA PT880 chipset
· PT880 Neo-LSR
MSI evens points out that some of their FMB 1.0 boards are built to VRM10 specifications. Certainly this was very forward looking on MSI’s part.
It is our thought, after talking with engineers that have widely tested their own boards and their competitions' boards, that i875P and i865PE boards from Tier 1 retail manufacturers like ABIT, Asus, Gigabyte, and MSI are going to be overall safe choices for Prescott upgrades. This is not a guarantee, as I am sure we will find some earlier built models of some boards that do not work reliably with Prescotts.
Worthy of mention here is that both VIA and SiS have chipsets available that support Prescott CPUs, but we have sharpened our focus on Intel chipsets and boards in order to not dilute this article as i875P and i865PE mainboards have dominated the market.