Socket 754 vs. Socket 939 ?

[Ben_UK]

Hello,

Friend of mine is looking to upgrade his PC.

He currently has AMD 2400XP, Abit KD7, 1Gb DDR333.

He is looking to upgrade to a 64bit system. Upgrading just mobo, cpu and ram.

Whats the advantages/disadvantages between Socket 754 and Socket 939 ?

He has DDR333 RAM, do u need DDR400 RAM for a 64bit system ?

He wants the upgrade to last for a few years, so the parts need to be future proof

What would u recommend 754 or 939 ?

Thanks

[Swafe]

754 for price

939 for performance

[BUFF]

If he gets a 90nm Winchester 939 CPU there won't be a big difference in price.

[Ben_UK]

Any idea on this,

"He has DDR333 RAM, do u need DDR400 RAM for a 64bit system ?"

[Swafe]

not 100% sure as im not a 64bit man, yet

pretty certain he will need DDR400 tho

[Rave]

You can use PC2700/DDR333 no problem. However:

He wants the upgrade to last for a few years, so the parts need to be future proof

There's the problem. AGP graphics cards are being replaced with PCI Express, so if he buys a board with an AGP slot because he wants to keep his current graphics card, then he's limiting the future-proofness of the board. I'd keep the DDR333, and buy a S939 NForce4 board with PCI-E and something like an NVidia 6600 or 6600GT to go with it.

Rich :¬)

[BUFF]

You will lose about 5% performance running PC2700 instead of PC3200 on a 754 (at least that's what happens if I set mine to run as PC2700 instead of 3200 ).
I suspect that on a 939 you might see no loss as the CPU can't use all the bandwidth in Dual Channel anyway.

[m0nKeY]

Id go for the S939, but as mentioned the AGP is slowly going to phase into PCI-E and while thats going to have no advantage for a long time I have no idea if any of the next gen gfx cards will be avaliable in AGP form.

[Ben_UK]

Thanks for the info lads

Gonna stick with DDR333 RAM, if the performace drop is only 5%. Will save £120 on DDR400

Gonna go for a, AMD Athlon 64 3500 Newcastle 130nm (Socket 939) - Retail

Not 100% sure about mobo, but its looking like this MSI K8N Neo2 Platinum (Socket 939) Motherboard. Could u recommend another one ? (he will not be overclocking, just wants a stable fast mobo)

He wants to upgrade before Half Life 2, so wait for Nforce 4 is out of the question.

I am sure AGP graphics cards are gonna be a round for a while yet, he currenlty has a 9800 Pro 128Mb. For example he could just buy a second hand 6800 Ultra AGP next year.

One last thing, the parts need to work straight out the box, do u think i will encounter any problems ?

Cheers

[m0nKeY]

Asus A8V Deluxe Rev.2

^ My recommendation for main board...