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#1
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Waiting for Socket 939?
I've been sitting here for an hour thinking about a new system, mainly about
the best time to buy (never really a good time with computers though!). I've just read about socket "939". This May should bring with it the announcement of this new socket (a 940 with a pin removed to use non-ECC memory). I want an Athlon 64 FX, but after hearing about the 939 I'm gonna wait. http://www.anandtech.com/cpu/showdoc.html?i=1985 Anyway, I want an Asus (or similar quality) socket 939 board with a Athlon FX-53, with support for DDR2 (will that be possible with these boards/processors at all), Gigabit LAN, PCI-Express (1x and 16x), 8x USB 2.0 ports, SATA RAID, while keeping all the IDE and floppy ports too. Oh, and I'll of course be needing a PCI-X graphics card, anyone know of developments on that side of things? Regards, Tony. (tony.cue(at)tiscali.co.uk) Discogs: building the definitive database of electronic music... http://www.discogs.com -- Asus A7N8X Deluxe (Revision 1.04, BIOS 1007) AMD AthlonXP 2400+ @ 2800+ (TBred-B, 13.5 x 166, 1.7VCore) Coolermaster X-Dream HSF 1Gb (2 x 512) Samsung PC3200 400Mhz DDR RAM Dual Channel (M368L6423DTM/CC400) Leadtek WinFast GeForce 4 Ti4200 128Mb (A250LE TD MyVIVO) 19" Mitsubishi 1280x1024 100Hz 0.24 dot pitch (Diamond Pro 930SB BK) 2 x 120Gb Maxtor Diamondmax Plus 9 8Mb Cache (6Y120P0, Primary Master, Primary Slave, no RAID) Samsung 48x/24x/48x/16x CDRW/DVD-ROM (SM-348B, Secondary Master) Samsung 52x CD-ROM (SC-152A, Secondary Slave) Lope i-Tee Silver ATX Case Windows XP Home (SP1, DirectX 9.0b) |
#2
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On Sun, 21 Mar 2004 16:56:57 +0000, Tone-EQ wrote:
I've been sitting here for an hour thinking about a new system, mainly about the best time to buy (never really a good time with computers though!). I've just read about socket "939". This May should bring with it the announcement of this new socket (a 940 with a pin removed to use non-ECC memory). I want an Athlon 64 FX, but after hearing about the 939 I'm gonna wait. http://www.anandtech.com/cpu/showdoc.html?i=1985 Anyway, I want an Asus (or similar quality) socket 939 board with a Athlon FX-53, with support for DDR2 (will that be possible with these boards/processors at all), Gigabit LAN, PCI-Express (1x and 16x), 8x USB 2.0 ports, SATA RAID, while keeping all the IDE and floppy ports too. Oh, and I'll of course be needing a PCI-X graphics card, anyone know of developments on that side of things? Regards, Tony. (tony.cue(at)tiscali.co.uk) Discogs: building the definitive database of electronic music... http://www.discogs.com The first socket 939s are only going to have half of the cache as the 940 pin Opterons so you should expect to see some performance degradation although there maybe some other improvements that make up for this. The reason for the switch to the 939 pin package is not to get rid of ECC, that will undoubtably be supported, but to simplify the pc board layout which will both reduce the cost of the motherboards and allow for the use of non-registered RAM. I'd guess that the savings for the motherboard isn't going to be that great, maybe $50. The price difference between registered and unregistered RAM at the 512M level is only $25, it's more at the 1G level, closer to $100. Pricing for the 939s isn't known yet but it's expected to be less than the FX chips. However the current FX is just a rebranded top of the line Opteron 1xx which is priced at more than twice the price of next speed step down (Opteron 148: $710, 146: $294, 144: $211). The clock difference between each speed step is only 10% which isn't noticable so dropping down to the 146 or even the 144 will cut the price of your system considerably without any significant compromise in performance. Bottom line is that there is probably not much reason to wait for the 939s. If quality is a real concern then you probably want an Opteron system anyway. The 939 boards are going to be optimized for price not quality, 940 boards are server class boards, 939s are consumer class. |
#3
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Bottom line is that there is probably not much reason to wait for the 939s. If quality is a real concern then you probably want an Opteron system anyway. The 939 boards are going to be optimized for price not quality, 940 boards are server class boards, 939s are consumer class. Yes and great memory performance in 939 for consumer class since its supposed to have two memory controllers like the opteron and FX: http://www.anandtech.com/cpu/showdoc.html?i=1884&p=10 5315MB/sec memory bandwidth and lowest latency ever. |
#4
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The Lord rebuke you. Satan is a liar, and the father of lies. He doesn't
have a sister. You are a fool to align yourself with the hater of all mankind. "Satan's Little Sister" wrote in message ... Thus spake Tone-EQ: I've been sitting here for an hour thinking about a new system, mainly about the best time to buy (never really a good time with computers though!). I've just read about socket "939". This May should bring with it the announcement of this new socket (a 940 with a pin removed to use non-ECC memory). I want an Athlon 64 FX, but after hearing about the 939 I'm gonna wait. http://www.anandtech.com/cpu/showdoc.html?i=1985 Anyway, I want an Asus (or similar quality) socket 939 board with a Athlon FX-53, with support for DDR2 (will that be possible with these boards/processors at all), Gigabit LAN, PCI-Express (1x and 16x), 8x USB 2.0 ports, SATA RAID, while keeping all the IDE and floppy ports too. Oh, and I'll of course be needing a PCI-X graphics card, anyone know of developments on that side of things? Yeah, I've been waiting for the 939 boards, too. Like General Schvantzkoph said in his post, the missing pin has nothing to do with ECC memory. It's equal parts simplify the boards (four layer, instead of six layer) and allow the use of unbuffered RAM, plus the vital incompatibility with socket 940 (you don't want your server customers buying cheaper consumer level chips, like with MP and XP). As for DDR2, that will require changes to the CPU core as well as a new motherboard. Right now DDR2 doesn't make sense for Ath64/Opterons. With an integrated memory controller the smaller latencies of DDR are better than the higher bandwidth of DDR2. I doubt there will be DDR2 Ath64s before next year. A PCI-X graphics card? I think you're confusing PCI-E(xpress) and PCI-X. PCI-X, found mainly in servers, is a 64 bit, 66/100/133 MHz extension of the original 32 bit 33 MHz PCI. PCI-E (formerly know as 3GIO, 3rd generation input/output) is an entirely different animal, based on serial instead of parallel transmission. Anyway, VIA is making a southbridge that will do both PCI/AGP and PCI-E. Should be out around mid-summer or early fall. -- sls |
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