Tuesday, February 3, 2009

Motherboard compatibility

Conroe, Conroe XE and Allendale all use Socket LGA775; however, not every motherboard is compatible with these processors.

Supporting chipsets are:

* Intel: 865PE/G/GV/G, 945P/PL/G/GZ/GC, 965P/G, 975X, P/G/Q965, Q963, 946GZ/PL, P3x, G3x, Q3x, X38, X48, P4x , 5400 Express,Intel G31 Chipset
* NVIDIA: nForce4 Ultra/SLI X16 for Intel, nForce 570/590 SLI for Intel, nForce 650i Ultra/650i SLI/680i LT SLI/680i SLI and nForce 750i SLI/780i SLI/790i SLI/790i Ultra SLI.
* VIA: P4M800, P4M800PRO, P4M890, P4M900, PT880 Pro/Ultra, PT890.
* SiS: 662, 671, 671fx, 672, 672fx
* ATI: Radeon Xpress 200 and CrossFire Xpress 3200 for Intel

See also: List of Intel chipsets

The currently released Yorkfield XE model QX9770 (45 nm with 1600FSB) currently has limited chipset compatibility - with only X38, P35 (With Overclocking) and some high-performance X48 and P45 motherboards being compatible. BIOS updates are gradually being released to provide support for the new Penryn technology, and the new QX9775 is only compatible with D5400XS.

Although a motherboard may have the required chipset to support Conroe, some motherboards based on the above mentioned chipsets do not support Conroe. This is because all Conroe-based processors require a new power delivery feature set specified in Voltage Regulator-Down (VRD) 11.0. This requirement is a result of Conroe's significantly lower power consumption, compared to the Pentium 4/D CPUs it is replacing. A motherboard that has both a supporting chipset and VRD 11 supports Conroe processors, but even then some boards will need an updated BIOS to recognize Conroe's FID (Frequency ID) and VID (Voltage ID).

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