Socket 939 - the new socket A?

[Steve]

Socket A has served AMD users since the thunderbird core and has seen some three other core revisions supported thorugh it (ignoring the budget duron cores.)

Now that Socket 939 is here, do you think AMD are settling down for another long serving socket? I can't see either of the other AMD64 sockets lasting as long as 939, but I still get the feeling that another socket type will be along in a year's time...

What do you think?

[r1zeek]

I think 939 will be here for awhile.
Though I heard somewhere that Athlon XP's were gonna move to Socket 739 (or whatever the old Athlon 64 socket was)
I'm not sure 939 will endure as many different cores as Socket A did though...

[da_ging]

im fairly sure socket 754 is set to become the budget setup with a64 chips but with the 64 bit stuff disabled as a successor to socket a

[directhex]

so what that the socket (a) has been about a bit? can you use a 3200+ barton on a KT7?

[ERU]

If AMD can make a statment stating/hint that it will be here for a while it will keep them in the good position they are in now and offer improvment.

[Rave]

so what that the socket (a) has been about a bit? can you use a 3200+ barton on a KT7?

I ran a Tbred quite happily on a KT7A V1.0, so it isn't beyond the bounds of possibility.... A bit of pinmodding would be required though.

However, implementing DDR2 support on hammers will require a revision of the chip as I understand it, so I'm pretty sure AMD will introduce a new socket with the new chips to stop people plugging a DDR1 CPU into a DDR2 board or vice-versa.

Rich :¬)

[spazman]

Thats if AMD support DDR 2 at all

[Firelord]

Hmmm good question

Possibly yes it might do as AMD likes to keep a single platform for quite a while They used So7 for a long time then Slot A was a year n a half and SoA is well been a round for ages

They'd be sensible to keep the socket because if its the same people are more inclined to stay with it. Just look at the intel So423/478 fiasco!

[Rabs]

IHowever, implementing DDR2 support on hammers will require a revision of the chip as I understand it, so I'm pretty sure AMD will introduce a new socket with the new chips to stop people plugging a DDR1 CPU into a DDR2 board or vice-versa.

Rich :¬)

I agree with you on this point, as A64's leave P4's for dust anyway they dont need a boost from DDR2. At this current time the gains are only 3-5% between dual channel DDR and dual channel DDR2. DDR will be with us for years and DDR2 is good news as DDR will go down in price.

The vast majority of enthusiasts will go A64 anyway due to the spiraling thermals of Prescotts and the price premium on DDR2 and PCI-E gfx cards.

Skt 939 is good and will be the next socket A, I look forward to some overclocking niceness...

[spazman]

Arnt AMD going to back a different memory standard to DDR2, QDR RAM or something like that? (I cant remember exactly). If this was the case then we would see another Intel AMD memory face off, this would mean more sockets. I dont think Socket 939 will last TBH.

[malfunction]

Not sure (as my crystal ball was stolen) but I think AMD will adopt DDR2 at some point and that doing so will mean a new socket.

[Rave]

I agree with you on this point, as A64's leave P4's for dust anyway they dont need a boost from DDR2. At this current time the gains are only 3-5% between dual channel DDR and dual channel DDR2. DDR will be with us for years and DDR2 is good news as DDR will go down in price.
<snip>
Skt 939 is good and will be the next socket A, I look forward to some overclocking niceness...

Well, I don't think it will be the next Socket A. Like it or not, DDR is approaching the end of the road, it can't really be ramped much further. It's likely that PC3200 will be the last JEDEC approved spec. It only took a couple of years from the launch of DDR for it to be not only faster but cheaper than SDR. DDR2 is expensive now, but in a couple of years when it's ramped to 667 or 800 MHz DDR speeds and is the same price as or cheaper than DDR then AMD will have no choice but to come up with a new hammer stepping and a new socket. Socket A survived because new memory simply means a new chipset; with an onboard memory controller new memory almost certainly means a new chip and socket as well.

Does that mean you shouldn't buy Socket 939 now? No, as long as you accept that your £90 board will be outdated in a year and a half's time- nothing new there then. However, I personally would give it a month or two, because apparently NVidia's NForce4 chipset will support dual PCI Express-16X, and hence their new dual graphics card setup. That, on a socket 939 FX is going to whoop mucho a$$.

Rich :¬)

[Applecrusher]

I thought A64's didnt like DDR2 because of its Extreamly high latencys?? And dont A64's thrive on latency??

But I am hoping that 939 stays... Becasue then they will become cheap enough for me to get

[Butuz]

so what that the socket (a) has been about a bit? can you use a 3200+ barton on a KT7?

I think the point is that i stayed on the same socket from a duron 600 to a duron 800 to a tbird 1250 to a xp1800 before i bothered to buy a new mobo (barton 2500)

What would you rather, that, or intel "change sockets more than Butuz changes his pants" ? I know what i would rather, and i know whats better for the enthuseast and less confusing for the general public!

Butuz

[unrealrocks]

I think with the speeding up of new hardware etc. (as is now) then formats will speed up.

[Steve]

I think the point is that i stayed on the same socket from a duron 600 to a duron 800 to a tbird 1250 to a xp1800 before i bothered to buy a new mobo (barton 2500)

What would you rather, that, or intel "change sockets more than Butuz changes his pants" ? I know what i would rather, and i know whats better for the enthuseast and less confusing for the general public!

Butuz

I'd rather you eased up on the pants changing, as that may actually cause more confusion for the general public...