Maybe we should make an "appeal" to AMD to revive the 939 line of CPUs.

You know, like last time, when there was an appeal for a better AGP card besides the ATI X850PE. The industry finally came to their senses and produced better AGP cards!!

I'm stuck with a 3500+ but am willing to upgrade to 6000+ (or higher!) if it is available! (within an acceptable price, of course)

To AMD, read this!!!!

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.....

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

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!

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)

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

As a matter of fact, they did! Look at the Gainward Bliss 7800 GS+ 512mb AGP. It is a G71 graphics core (7900 core with a full 24-pixel pipelines!!!). Maybe you've never heard of it but it is in some reviews (only available in Europe). For your information, the G71 core is used to power the Geforce 7900GT and GTX!!!

This card is essentially a 7900 GT but labelled as above.

Why don't you google this card and read some reviews.

I would like to refer you to another review regarding ATI 1950pro:

http://www.firingsquad.com/hardware/powerc...iew/default.asp

In that review, although the AGP is a dying breed, it could more or less keep up with its PCI-E version. In some cases, there were negligible differences!!!

So, the question arises as to why they did not make "higher-end" AGP cards. Well, maybe it is because of their marketing strategy, to push users to using PCI-E. Maybe it is because they thought people would jump on the PCI-E bandwagon ASAP, since it is supposed to be faster. Maybe it is because AGP can't handle current graphics requirement (although reviews seem to say otherwise). Whatever the reason is, one thing is sure, there are still a lot of AGP users out there!

Previously, people say that there won't be any AGP version for the Nvidia 7 series. But it came out anyway.

Then, people say that there won't be anything higher that the 7800 GS. But Gainward made them eat their words.

Then, people say Gainward is the last high-end AGP. But out came the ATI 1950pro!

So, are you so sure that an AGP DX10 won't come out? I think it will!!! Because the market is too large for companies not to tap into. However, as you said, I don't think the card will be for the enthusiast group, probably more for the low-end group, you know, for them to run vista and new less-GPU-demanding games.

That's my 2 cents.......

[COLOR=red]Addition : Look at Valve survey summary:

http://www.steampowered.com/status/survey.html

(As of 1st March 2007)

AGP users (4x-8x) : 46.89% (257342 users)
PCI-E users : 45.67% (250645 users)

I rest my case.

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Added on April 19, 2007, 12:28 pmUpdate
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Found out that there is a X1950XT X series!!!! Check out Gecube ATI X1950XTX. It uses ATI Radeon R580+ GPU with GDDR3 256mb.

What is more important is the x-turbo fan with built-in TEC chip!!! (Thermo electric chip). With overclocking, the GPU temperature is maintained at 70-80 degrees only!!!

Another review that is relevant to the main topic:

http://www.tgdaily.com/content/view/31666/118/

Basically stating that AMD is losing its market share.....

In addition, remember that new graphics card series e.g. Geforce 7 series and ATI 1000 series are built PCI-E native. Meaning that for AGP cards, they have to have a bridge (Realto brigde, I think) to convert PCI-E to AGP. That is one of the reasons (among many) of why AGP can sometimes be slower (but now always).

This post has been edited by kmarc: Apr 19 2007, 12:28 PM