Shadow Lady

yes i actually havent been waiting for this to happen like 2 years or so

__________________
so like... who likes to game?

liqnit

i am still pro 939 because as we all know the first version of any new hardware is usually either with bugs or worse then second generation take for example Nforce 2 rev 1 comapre it to rev 3

-anibalX-

mmm.. i think AM2 is very new to be compared with the 939.. My question is, what's is going to happen with the high latencies of ddr2.. If there is not northbridge between processor and memories the high latencies have to be very low for best perfomance, or i'm wrong? Oo

Basty

better we wait to see it more cleary

Geoff

Good choice Basty because i don't think AM2 will not last that long.... because AM3 is allready in development...

IF i MUST choose between AM2 & socket 939 then 4 sure i would:
1. await the hype of AM2
2. buy then the lowered priced socket 939 and sit out the ride until AM3 has really proven it self...

Read this post below about AM3 & 'shiver' why AM2 will not be long lived...
Another post just released today about the socket-939 & socket-AM2 (socket-940)
you can read page 6 (the final word) here first
And if you want 2 read the total article (6 pages) titled: AMD Socket-AM2 Performance Preview you go here:

Just my 10 cents worth of info...

gOJDO

The transition to DDR2 needs new mainboard implementation of the K8 processor. The difference is in the IMC number of connection lanes to RAM. The DDR is connected with 144, while the DDR2 is with 240.
Extra pins were not needed, but new socket was becouse of the DDR/DDR2 interface incompatibility.
sAM2 is upgrade path for the K8 and the DDR2 that soon will became mainstream. It was needed now, but AMD didn't made any improvements on the architecture to benefit from the new memory interface. With the IMC and the excelent cache hit rate, the K8 is more dependend on the memory subsystem coherency. Current singlecores and dualcores are not RAM bandwidth starved, but all K8 are suffering of the high RAM latencies. The DDR2 is high latency memory. Thats why the sAM2 K8 with its unoptimized DDR2 IMC is not performing better than s939. The s939 has double the bandwidth of the s754 and it is only 0-5% faster clock-for-clock. Why should we expect the same architecture to perform better from more memory bandiwdth?
AMD are late, they have nothing particular improved on their K8 since introduced.
The sAM2 system with same performance is more expensive than the s939. The DDR2-800 CL4 that sAM2 needs in order to perform like same clocked s939 with DDR-400 CL2 is almost twice expencive. The new sAM2 CPUs and mainboards are a bit more expencive than the s939 ones, also.

RingWraith

I voted AM2 for a reason that can be summed up in 1 word = Fetch64

Cannyone

I was intending to wait things out until next year at least (and I have 3 754 pin systems). But then I heard that AMD will drastically reduce the prices of their single core 939 pin CPUs. If this happens I might actually upgrade at least one of my systems to 939 pin. Because while features such as "fetch 64" sound tempting, I know that many of these things will not pan out in the long run. I feel like you shouldn't have to upgrade until your system won't handle the software you want to use.

... well maybe the kicker is that I'm a cheap arse! :P But I just can't see myself going for AM2.

gOJDO

what does it mean fetch64?
is it a feature unsupported by the older K8?

RingWraith

Not to be confused with Fetch4, which is a GPU technology utilized by ATi.

Fetch64, is a nickname for a technology AMD is using to reduce Cache misses in the L1/L2/?L3? memory. The cool thing about it is that you only see a benefit with CPU intensive applications, which is when you need the most performance. More accurate cache hits equate to a nice leap in performance.

This isn't just another gimmick, IBM has used this technology for a while.

EDIT: The Gamecube uses this technology.