Would someone please point out where I can get documentation on the AMD 990FX / SB950 north and south bridges? The 800 series stuff is at support.amd.com, but not these.Hi
Yes I have same question, but maybe AMD folks here could sched some light on documentation release plan.
I believe the 990FX and the SB950 are essentially the same thing as the 890FX and the SB850 - the same silicon. AMD just transitioned to the 900 series numbering to easily allow consumers to tell whether a motherboard has an AM3+ or an AM2 socket on there, and so whether it supports their Bulldozer family of CPUs or not.
From the Tech Report: "Led by the 990FX, this core-logic family is new in name only. The 990FX consists of the same north- and south-bridge components as its 890FX predecessor, and those chips continue to be manufactured by TSMC using a 65-nm fabrication process."
From tom's hardware: "The 990FX chipset employs the same silicon as 890FX. ... According to AMD, it’s incrementing the platform name to clarify compatibility with Bulldozer-based processors. When you see a board that centers on 990FX, the company wants you to know that its upcoming AM3+ CPUs are drop-in-compatible (again, 990FX-based boards will also take existing AM3 chips)."
From Hardware Secrets: "The AMD 990FX chipset is basically an AMD 890FX chipset with a new name, but supporting the higher HyperTransport 3.0 speeds that weren’t used before and that will be supported by the “Bulldozer” processors. The AMD 990FX chipset is targeted to the new socket AM3+ platform, while the 890FX chipset is targeted to the socket AM3 platform. This way, AMD is providing an easy way to identify the platform through the chipset name. Socket AM3+ motherboards support the forthcoming AMD CPUs based on the new “Bulldozer” architecture. So, even though the chipset is basically the same, 890FX motherboards won’t support this new generation of AMD processors."
Hope that helps! Mark
On Wed, 18 Jul 2012, Mark Nelson wrote:
Would someone please point out where I can get documentation on theAMD 990FX /
SB950 north and south bridges? The 800 series stuff is atsupport.amd.com, but
not these.Hi
Yes I have same question, but maybe AMD folks here could sched some light on documentation release plan.
I believe the 990FX and the SB950 are essentially the same thing as the 890FX and the SB850 - the same silicon. AMD just transitioned to the 900 series numbering to easily allow consumers to tell whether a motherboard has an AM3+ or an AM2 socket on there, and so whether it supports their Bulldozer family of CPUs or not.
From the Tech Report: "Led by the 990FX, this core-logic family is new in name only. The 990FX consists of the same north- and south-bridge components as its 890FX predecessor, and those chips continue to be manufactured by TSMC using a 65-nm fabrication process."
From tom's hardware: "The 990FX chipset employs the same silicon as 890FX. ... According to AMD, it’s incrementing the platform name to clarify compatibility with Bulldozer-based processors. When you see a board that centers on 990FX, the company wants you to know that its upcoming AM3+ CPUs are drop-in-compatible (again, 990FX-based boards will also take existing AM3 chips)."
From Hardware Secrets: "The AMD 990FX chipset is basically an AMD 890FX chipset with a new name, but supporting the higher HyperTransport 3.0 speeds that weren’t used before and that will be supported by the “Bulldozer” processors. The AMD 990FX chipset is targeted to the new socket AM3+ platform, while the 890FX chipset is targeted to the socket AM3 platform. This way, AMD is providing an easy way to identify the platform through the chipset name. Socket AM3+ motherboards support the forthcoming AMD CPUs based on the new “Bulldozer” architecture. So, even though the chipset is basically the same, 890FX motherboards won’t support this new generation of AMD processors."
There must be something new about the 990FX because there's support in there for nVidia SLI. Earlier chipsets don't do SLI. Look here: http://blogs.nvidia.com/2011/04/you-asked-for-it-you-got-it-sli-for-amd/
On 18/07/12 17:04, Mark Nelson wrote:
Would someone please point out where I can get documentation on the
AMD 990FX /
SB950 north and south bridges? The 800 series stuff is at
support.amd.com, but
not these.
Hi
Yes I have same question, but maybe AMD folks here could sched some light on documentation release plan.
I believe the 990FX and the SB950 are essentially the same thing as the 890FX and the SB850 - the same silicon. AMD just transitioned to the 900 series numbering to easily allow consumers to tell whether a motherboard has an AM3+ or an AM2 socket on there, and so whether it supports their Bulldozer family of CPUs or not.
From the Tech Report: "Led by the 990FX, this core-logic family is new in name only. The 990FX consists of the same north- and south-bridge components as its 890FX predecessor, and those chips continue to be manufactured by TSMC using a 65-nm fabrication process."
From tom's hardware: "The 990FX chipset employs the same silicon as 890FX. ... According to AMD, it’s incrementing the platform name to clarify compatibility with Bulldozer-based processors. When you see a board that centers on 990FX, the company wants you to know that its upcoming AM3+ CPUs are drop-in-compatible (again, 990FX-based boards will also take existing AM3 chips)."
From Hardware Secrets: "The AMD 990FX chipset is basically an AMD 890FX chipset with a new name, but supporting the higher HyperTransport 3.0 speeds that weren’t used before and that will be supported by the “Bulldozer” processors. The AMD 990FX chipset is targeted to the new socket AM3+ platform, while the 890FX chipset is targeted to the socket AM3 platform. This way, AMD is providing an easy way to identify the platform through the chipset name. Socket AM3+ motherboards support the forthcoming AMD CPUs based on the new “Bulldozer” architecture. So, even though the chipset is basically the same, 890FX motherboards won’t support this new generation of AMD processors."
Hope that helps! Mark
There must be something new about the 990FX because there's support in there for nVidia SLI. Earlier chipsets don't do SLI. Look here: http://blogs.nvidia.com/2011/04/you-asked-for-it-you-got-it-sli-for-amd/
Actually no, SLI support isn't anything to do with the actual chipset hardware (provided the chipset has the required number of PCI Express lanes and physical slots of course ;) ).
SLI certification (and so SLI support) is nVidia's way of controlling which platforms can run their GPUs in SLI mode (and making money out of it all of course). Board makers that want SLI support pay the appropriate licensing fees to nVidia (and submit their board models to nVidia for qualification) and they then receive a special key that they embed in their BIOSs which nVidia's drivers look for before enabling SLI.
You can read about this here (the article comes from when nVidia first supported SLI on Intel's X58 (Intel's first chipset to receive SLI support), but the method is the same): http://techreport.com/discussions.x/15405
"Motherboard makers who wish to have their X58 boards certified for SLI will have to submit their products for testing in Nvidia's Santa Clara certification lab, and those boards must pass basic testing for functionality, slot placement, and the like. ... Once a board is certified, Nvidia will provide the board maker with an approval key (called a "cookie") that it must embed in the system BIOS. The combination of this approval key and an X58 chipset will then unlock SLI support in Nvidia's ForceWare driver software."
The 990FX was just the first series of AMD's chipsets that nVidia allowed motherboard manufacturers to have SLI support for (prior to that their stance was, if you want SLI with an AMD CPU, we support that, via our nForce 980a chipset; but once they effectively stopped producing chipsets they had little choice but to allow board makers to certify their 990FX boards for SLI use, or to close themselves out of the high-end AMD desktop market in terms of SLI sales).
It's also not a given that just because a board is built around the 990FX chipset it will support SLI, as it relies on the board having the "enable-SLI key" in the BIOS. Take Sapphire's Pure Black 990FX board for example - it doesn't support SLI even though it has a 990FX chipset, apparently because NVIDIA is restricting AMD platform SLI licences to only those motherboard vendors who already had them for the Intel platform: http://www.techpowerup.com/146605/Sapphire-Pure-Black-990FX-N-is-Purely-for-...
There were enthusiasts out there who used SLI on their 890FX boards, it just required modified nVidia drivers, so that they enable SLI even on boards that don't have the key in the BIOS or a sanctioned chipset (this is what ULi did with a little utility to enable SLI on their chipsets (eg: M1697)).
So, with the 890FX docs, we should have everything we need for 990FX support.
Mark.
On Thu, 19 Jul 2012, Mark Nelson wrote:
Actually no, SLI support isn't anything to do with the actual chipset hardware (provided the chipset has the required number of PCI Express lanes and physical slots of course ;) ).
SLI certification (and so SLI support) is nVidia's way of controlling which platforms can run their GPUs in SLI mode (and making money out of it all of course). Board makers that want SLI support pay the appropriate licensing fees to nVidia (and submit their board models to nVidia for qualification) and they then receive a special key that they embed in their BIOSs which nVidia's drivers look for before enabling SLI.
I see. So, what does this mean for people who want to run a pair of nVidea boards on a coreboot board in SLI mode?
On 19/07/12 11:06, David Griffith wrote:
On Thu, 19 Jul 2012, Mark Nelson wrote:
Actually no, SLI support isn't anything to do with the actual chipset hardware (provided the chipset has the required number of PCI Express lanes and physical slots of course ;) ).
SLI certification (and so SLI support) is nVidia's way of controlling which platforms can run their GPUs in SLI mode (and making money out of it all of course). Board makers that want SLI support pay the appropriate licensing fees to nVidia (and submit their board models to nVidia for qualification) and they then receive a special key that they embed in their BIOSs which nVidia's drivers look for before enabling SLI.
I see. So, what does this mean for people who want to run a pair of nVidea boards on a coreboot board in SLI mode?
Yeah, it probably means native SLI support (without modified drivers) is out of the question. It is plausible that the coreboot end-user could extract the key from an SLI-certified 990FX motherboard's BIOS and somehow incorporate it into the coreboot firmware I suppose. Similar tricks were done for early low-end X58 motherboards that didn't include the key in their BIOSs but were part of a family of boards where the higher-end offerings were SLI certified.
I'd imagine that users worried about a feature like SLI support probably won't be using coreboot (at least at this stage), but it is something to keep in mind for the future.
Mark.
On Thu, 19 Jul 2012, Mark Nelson wrote:
On 19/07/12 11:06, David Griffith wrote:
On Thu, 19 Jul 2012, Mark Nelson wrote:
Actually no, SLI support isn't anything to do with the actual chipset hardware (provided the chipset has the required number of PCI Express lanes and physical slots of course ;) ).
SLI certification (and so SLI support) is nVidia's way of controlling which platforms can run their GPUs in SLI mode (and making money out of it all of course). Board makers that want SLI support pay the appropriate licensing fees to nVidia (and submit their board models to nVidia for qualification) and they then receive a special key that they embed in their BIOSs which nVidia's drivers look for before enabling SLI.
I see. So, what does this mean for people who want to run a pair of nVidea boards on a coreboot board in SLI mode?
Yeah, it probably means native SLI support (without modified drivers) is out of the question. It is plausible that the coreboot end-user could extract the key from an SLI-certified 990FX motherboard's BIOS and somehow incorporate it into the coreboot firmware I suppose. Similar tricks were done for early low-end X58 motherboards that didn't include the key in their BIOSs but were part of a family of boards where the higher-end offerings were SLI certified.
I'd imagine that users worried about a feature like SLI support probably won't be using coreboot (at least at this stage), but it is something to keep in mind for the future.
Heh, I looked again at the article you showed me and right there it says that nVidia anticipates BIOS modders would indeed add the the cookie into their hacked BIOSes, so, there we are.
On 19/07/12 11:39, David Griffith wrote:
On Thu, 19 Jul 2012, Mark Nelson wrote:
On 19/07/12 11:06, David Griffith wrote:
On Thu, 19 Jul 2012, Mark Nelson wrote:
Actually no, SLI support isn't anything to do with the actual chipset hardware (provided the chipset has the required number of PCI Express lanes and physical slots of course ;) ).
SLI certification (and so SLI support) is nVidia's way of controlling which platforms can run their GPUs in SLI mode (and making money out of it all of course). Board makers that want SLI support pay the appropriate licensing fees to nVidia (and submit their board models to nVidia for qualification) and they then receive a special key that they embed in their BIOSs which nVidia's drivers look for before enabling SLI.
I see. So, what does this mean for people who want to run a pair of nVidea boards on a coreboot board in SLI mode?
Yeah, it probably means native SLI support (without modified drivers) is out of the question. It is plausible that the coreboot end-user could extract the key from an SLI-certified 990FX motherboard's BIOS and somehow incorporate it into the coreboot firmware I suppose. Similar tricks were done for early low-end X58 motherboards that didn't include the key in their BIOSs but were part of a family of boards where the higher-end offerings were SLI certified.
I'd imagine that users worried about a feature like SLI support probably won't be using coreboot (at least at this stage), but it is something to keep in mind for the future.
Heh, I looked again at the article you showed me and right there it says that nVidia anticipates BIOS modders would indeed add the the cookie into their hacked BIOSes, so, there we are.
Yeah, it'll be great to see some a time when some consumer 990FX based boards are supported by coreboot :)
-
David Griffith -
Mark Nelson