:S i see bunch of ancient monkeys asking for S939 ressurection.

Hey,it's DDR2. And a an international companies don't make stupid move , they do make stupid products sometimes.

Well, I'm sure you have a lot of money to throw around. I guess most of us here just can't throw our rig away just to buy a new computer.

I'm sure a lot of LNY members still have good high-end 939 computer. IMHO, who wouldn't want to upgrade if AMD produce a socket-939 quad core or a socket-939 X2 6000+?

DDR2 is good and definitely faster but considering the amount of money you need to spend on a new high-performance computer just to get DDR2, an upgrade for us poor LYN people would be more feasible. Besides, the amount of speed gained using DDR2 as compared to DDR does not justify spending that much money. For instance, splurging money of DDR2-1066 to gain that extra <3%(?) @ <5%(?) speed as compared to a DDR2-800 is not worth the money! So what if you could play Battlefield at 100 fps while we play it at 90 fps.

Ask around and see how many LYN "monkeys" would like to see AMD produce a faster 939 or a quad core 939........ You'd be surprise..... Nowadays, we still go for speed but most if not all would prefer multi-core.....

More cores need more bandwidth to keep them all fed. That's where ddr2 comes in. It also uses a lower voltage and lower power, so they can save some power on the memory controller side of things. Plus they probably needed some changes to the electrical specifications for the newer chips for new power management modes etc, so they rolled it all into one package. You can't keep using the same socket forever, and they already did a good job with 939.

C'mon dude, this is a transition of technology. We can't stick to DDR forever. AM2 is a good move to prepare end user to transition from DDR to DDR2 and the same platform can be used with a quad core. There is not much gain from DDR to DDR2 for K8 because of its internal architecture. It was designed based on the BW available from DDR400 only. Like ikanayam pointed out earlier, multicores need high memory BW, DDR can never achieve that.

If the industry leaders dont push technology and forced the transition, we will not be achieving this level today, we probably are still using something as fast as Pentium only.

Besides, ppl in LYN community doesnt judge the demand world-wide. Intel and AMD do market research and get feedbacks from many customers. They need to satisfy the majority, not the minority. If we don't have money to upgrade or overhaul the system, just wait longer, stick with the older system and be more patient with the speed.

I'm not saying that we are backward people who doesn't want change. New technology is definitely good for everybody. What I'm saying (which is the main topic), is that AMD stopped producing 939 CPUs too early!

I would like to refer to a review by Anandtech (Dated April 17, First look: AM2 DDR2 vs 939 DDR performance) http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=2741&p=3

In that review, they used X2 vs AM2 vs FX60 with DDR400 vs DDR2 at different speeds. It was noted that indeed memory bandwidth does increase with DDR2. However, they also concluded that increased bandwidth does not translate to similar increase in gaming performance! Their last conclusion was "for now the move to AM2 and DDR2 memory looks like it will yield far too little in performance improvements to keep AMD competitive in the upcoming desktop marketplace"

Please also refer to a review by x-bitlabs on similar issues (dated 22/5/2006).

http://xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/amd-socket-am2.html

Their conclusions : "Summing up everything we have said about the new AMD Socket AM2 platform we have to admit that the introduction of DDR2 SDRAM support is a small evolutionary step forward. Our tests showed that the transition to DDR2 SDRAM doesn't bring in any significant performance gain. Moreover, you have to make sure that your system uses the fastest DDR2 SDRAM with 800MHz frequency and minimal timings if you want to see any performance improvement at all. The widely spread DDR2-667 SDRAM may sometimes provide absolutely no performance gain at all compared with the Socket 939 platforms supporting DDR400 SDRAM with low timings settings."

It is the same with AGP. Previously thought that AGP would die a fast death. But surprise, surpise, why is ATI and NVIDIA coming out with new AGP products such as 7800 GS and ATI 1950pro? In addition, well-known websites review of ATI 1950pro (AGP) can actually keep up with PCI-Express!!! And why is so many people still upgrading their AGPs!??!!

Please don't misunderstand my comments. I would gladly buy the most newest technology there is any day. (Probably a C2D/C4D system, if I have the money). What I'm saying is that AMD should have not left us "high and dry" with our "old" system with no path for upgrades i.e. the 939 line of CPUs was discontinued too early. After all, we did spent a lot of money on our so-call high-end system, now and then upgrading with the latest technology of that time.

Of course, when new software/games comes out that fully support multi-core, then that would be a different story. By then, I would have bought a new computer anyway! Probably a 8-core CPU!

Lastly, given the option of upgrading my rig to a X2 6000+ (939) vs buying a new high-end C2D, my limited budget (as with a lot of LYN members) who probably see us choose the upgrade path.

Addition : On ya, just a side note. Vista is the way forward. Anybody benefiting from it now?

This post has been edited by kmarc: Apr 16 2007, 06:00 PM

why don't u buy 3800+ (s939) and oc it to on par of X2 6000+?
i no need to buy FX to make it faster...

just buy the 3800+, and prepare ur money for the next 2 years.. for DDR3 platform...

if no money... don't buy...

you got your point there. IMHO, AMD stops it so quickly to have a faster transition from DDR to DDR2. This kept their manufacturing cost lower and increases the production volume because AMD doesn't need to assemble the CPUs into different packages. (as you know, AMD is suffering from high demand months ago). Besides this, not all are as educated as folks in LYN. Many people think DDR2 > DDR, and disregard Athlon64 because they uses DDR only. So the marketing people has no choice but to push DDR2 quickly. Thirdly, DDR2 consumes less power and has higher potential. This make their platform power consumption even lower and AMD can continue to advertise on their "low power platform".

Bro, X2 6000+ is at 3.0 Ghz! X2 3800+ would never reach that level! Unless you use something like phase cooling.......

Overclocking 101 (on air):

X2 3800+ : Max OC 2.6 Ghz
X2 6000+ : Max OC 3.4 Ghz
X2 10000+ : Max OC 153825356 Ghz!

This is what happened when greed is over your conscious. At that time you want it all HT1000, Dual-channel, you have to go 939. If your are an enthusiasts but you don't have enough paper, you end up regretting yourself. The least you can do is to refer the road map. It'll give you the idea and estimation of the product life cycle, so you can planned your upgrade. Yeah, AMD kinda suck introducing crippled socket each time. But we cannot do anything.

Don't you guys missed those socket A days?

Well, please state your reason why do u think AM2 is a crippled socket? I don't really understand it.

You should know that AM2 doesn't have HT 3.0. And it cannot be use for future AMD X4 chips(It might be, but no HT3.0 support). That you'll need a completely different socket AM2+.

Thinking back about the old days, it is true what you said. We went for AMD64 because of the:
1) HT1000 (which up to now, has never been over-saturated with data!)
2) Dual-channel (has always been using dual-channel ram, 1T)
3) 64-bit (the future that never arrived. Not including vista 64 which is useless for us!)
4) The bright future of 939 (at that time, there was still a roadmap for 939!)
5) The performance - beat pentium 4 hands down (if I remember correctly, no offense)

The socket itself isn't crippled, but the platform technology. I dont think HT3.0 is very important for desktop, its real target is multiprocessor system since HTT is used mainly for inter-CPU coherency communcation. Since we have only 1 CPU on desktop, HT1.x is more than enough to for us unless you lke the power management feature on HT3. AMD already confirmed AM2 platforms are compatible with its new quadcore. I am not sure about AM2+, the socket should be the same as AM2 but the chipset and bus are different.

About your complain on fast moving sockets, both Intel and AMD has no choice because of the rat race. A few years back, a new architecture is released every 5 years (K7), 3 years (K8) but now the life cycle is cut to 2 years only (K8L onwards). That is why your socket A can last you very very long, but not with the S939 or S754. Intel is able to remain LGA775 from P4 Prescott up till now because of the same FSB protocol and memory module used. Since the interconnection busses and RAM is a severe bottleneck for multicore CPU, the best way is to constantly change to higher speed busses and memory module so that the multi-core monster can get enough data for processing.

Once upon a time my parents were complaining why Intel was introducing the CPU so quickly from Pentium onwards, because the lifecycle of 386 and 486 were really really slow. What i would say is - technology is moving faster and faster, we can't compare it to oldern days.

Why would Intel and AMD doing this? All because of us, the consumers - we demand high performance processing power and they gave us as quickly as possible. New tech always comes with great price, u cant avoid it.

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Added on April 16, 2007, 9:15 pmhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socket_AM2+

You are confusing yourself. AM2 and AM2+ is exactly the same socket. For example, it is just like a socket A running on different chipset, one VIA KT600 and one VIA KT333. Can you say socket A is crippled because the newer socket A can go up to 400MHz FSB with a lot more features, while the older one only 333MHz and probably no SATA support at all?

This is exactly the same scenario for AM2 and AM2+.

This post has been edited by c38y50y70: Apr 16 2007, 09:15 PM

I am aware of that. Transition to AM2 and AM2+ is aight. Both AM2 and AM2+ CPU can be use on both platform interchangeable. Same as socket A era, same socket different chipset with different bus speed and features. No big deal with that. As long as you have the choice of CPU upgrade which doesn't require you entirely to change motherboard and memory. The sad thing about 939 is, DDR II kills it. It can't be helped. Just that I think AM2 to AM2+ is not as bad as 939 to AM2. You just loose the HT3.0. AM2+ might be have the same fate with 939 after the socket AM3 come into the scene with DDR III support. But still not as bad as 939 because newer AM3 cpu is backward compatible with AM2+.

The point is, you need to know the right time to purchase a system which have longer life span and upgrade choices. 754 to 939 dudes just had to suffer more. If you're true enthusiasts, you don't have to worry about this. Just go crazy.

there's nothing wrong for moving to AM2, it's simply a step to adapt a new platform that is DDR2.

DDR2 is cheaper than DDR and consumes less power. Energy efficient is what is IN today.

enthusiasts only made up less than 25% off the whole computer market, bigger profit comes from OEM as well as the mainstream market.

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Added on April 16, 2007, 10:02 pmyou forgot about the internal memory controller which enables the memory access directly by cpu without getting thru fsb (to the northbridge).

This post has been edited by soulfly: Apr 16 2007, 10:02 PM

ha.. got your points now
Yes, it is a true pain, but as i mentioned in previous post, this might be AMD's move to reduce production cost for multiple sockets. Nowadays "converge" is the word which helps to increase the efficiency and make things simpler, so a move to AM2 to unified S754 & 939 is a must i'd say.

Actually AMD can make the DDR2 version using existing 939 socket because 30 over pins on the older K8 are reserved. I am not sure why, but i guess maybe AMD is afraid of careless users who drop the old DDR K8 into a new DDR2 platform... During socket A, dropping a barton into an SDRAM platform doesn't harm because the mem controller is in the NB, but now the mem controller is in the CPU. Dunno the consequent though, but it *might* burn, hahahah. I guess the upcoming AM3 version of Barcelona will have some detection mechanism to prevent this scenario happens, when dropping the AM3 K8L into AM2+ platform.

This post has been edited by c38y50y70: Apr 16 2007, 10:06 PM

Ya, how can I forget! Sorry. Internal memory controller meaning one less northbridge to cool down!

Those unused pins are usually there for mechanical purpose (strength/warp/crack) and have no signal or just grounding.

Typically they'll just change the pin-out i.e. pin A2 used to be VCC is now VSS etc. Worse thing that could happen is the machine not booting up. It has nothing to do with IMC or NB.

One major difference btw AMD and Intel is AMD goes for more pins than necessary to support a few generations while Intel goes for the bare minimum for cost reduction at the expense of more frequent socket change. But I believe given the cost of substrate and assembly going up AMD will eventually have to go for the minimum pin-count approach.

Did they make a 1950xtx or a 7900gtx on agp (high end)? No. There will be no dx10 high end for AGP either. And IIRC AMD is already capacity limited even for AM2 right now, so why would they want to divert some resources to an outdated version?



It would still be pointless to use the same socket for ddr2. You still have to change the RAM socket (change your mainboard), change your CPU (to get DDR2 support), change your memory to DDR2. It would be just like what intel has been doing with 775. Yay, same socket, but you still have to change everything. Also does "reserved" necessarily mean "unused"? They could be there for some kind of testing.



775 has lasted a long time. But intel have been complete pricks about their chipsets. Practically every new chip needs a new chipset, or vrm, or just something trivial like that. I think AMD did a pretty good job with 939. It's just time to change.

You got the point there. I've read somewhere (cant recall) that AMD did mention about the reserved/unused pins on their K8 S939. They said it is necessary to add an extra pin for some future designs purpose (i guess it is for Barcelona support). Well, maybe I was wrong.

Yes exactly. Socket A has so many version of chipsets and VRM. The latest AthlonXP is not guaranteed to run on much older socket A which uses SDRAM platform.