Socket AM2 birth scheduled for 6th of June

Dapperdan

Dapperdan

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http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=29682

AMD has a fixed date for its socket AM2 launch. We can now finally confirm that AMD has decided to rename its socket and to call it socket AM2. All of the dual core performance, mainstream and extreme gaming versions of the AM2 CPUs will sample by the end of this month. The production of these socket AM2 based CPUs or revision F is scheduled for April 30th while the channel orders will begin on May the 15th.

As of Tuesday, June the 6th, you will be able to buy these CPUs in the stores. AMD plans to reveal the CPUs at Computex, the Taipei based show. DDR 2 memory should boost the Athlon's performance but we still wonder why AMD didn't wait a while and adopt the upcoming DDR3. Some memory manufacturers think that now is the right moment to move from DDR one to DDR 2 as the cost is almost the same, and with DDR 2 667 or DDR 2 800 you can really see the performance difference.

AMD will continue to use its brands as Athlon 64 FX dual core processor, Athlon 64 dual core processor and Athlon 64 single core processor.
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Now the question is, wait for AM2 or get in now on a opty or X2....grrr
 
quadnad said:
why do you have to say birth. what an image.
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Says the man whose name inspires me to think of a 'container with four spheres in it' :p



Why is it that they say that DDR2 will enhance AM2's performance when as we all know, it's not bandwidth limited? Do they even bother doing any research or have they become like the national inquirer of chips?
 
mwarps said:
Says the man whose name inspires me to think of a 'container with four spheres in it' :p
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ahahahahahaha
ahahahah

oh man...that just made me laugh out loud and everyone is now looking at me.

touche.
 
mwarps said:
Why is it that they say that DDR2 will enhance AM2's performance when as we all know, it's not bandwidth limited? Do they even bother doing any research or have they become like the national inquirer of chips?
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have you seen any benchmarks on the new cpus?
 
Damn, I want to build a new computer since I'm stuck on an XP3200, but this looks so tempting.

hmm now I gotta decide to order now or wait.
 
I want to see some prelim benchmarks on the new platform. I cant imagine DDR2 will have that much of an advantage over DDR1 for Athlon64’s especially with the higher latency. Rumors are that DDR 2 will soon be cheaper than DDR1 so a marginal performance boost while being cheaper is fine by me. I will probably upgrade this summer.
 
mwarps said:
Why is it that they say that DDR2 will enhance AM2's performance when as we all know, it's not bandwidth limited? Do they even bother doing any research or have they become like the national inquirer of chips?
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think dual core.
If you actually use both cores, yoiu're only looking at about 3.2gb/s per core (assuming 2 memory intensive processes), AMD got a modest bump from single to dual channel DDR400, it would reasonbly follow that upping that to 5.4 - 6.4gb/s with DDR2 667 or 800 dual core chips would get another modest bump in performance for dual core chips.

I too am rather skeptical of its benifit for single core parts.
 
At this point, I really think AMD is shooting themselves in the foot. DDR2 will bring no real advances, and as the article states, it might have been wiser to wait for DDR3.
 
FreiDOg said:
think dual core.
If you actually use both cores, yoiu're only looking at about 3.2gb/s per core (assuming 2 memory intensive processes), AMD got a modest bump from single to dual channel DDR400, it would reasonbly follow that upping that to 5.4 - 6.4gb/s with DDR2 667 or 800 dual core chips would get another modest bump in performance for dual core chips.

I too am rather skeptical of its benifit for single core parts.
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I've already thought dual core, I have one. 3.2GB/s is far more than enough for the current platform.

The comparison between 754 and 939 is, for the most part, not an apples to apples comparison. Chipset development for 754 has been stagnant for a while. 939 has been going pretty strong until recently. Back when it was nearly apples to apples we saw some instances an increase of what? 5-10%? (I think the Epox SLI board is neat, but a fluke)

Is 5-10% worth a new mobo, ram, CPU? Left up to the purchaser. Isn't for me, I'll say as much.

Unless they make huge pipeline changes, we're not going to see increased performance other than memory intensive applications and benchmarks, and even then, we're going to have to shell out for the wicked high end memory.
 
Bona Fide said:
At this point, I really think AMD is shooting themselves in the foot. DDR2 will bring no real advances, and as the article states, it might have been wiser to wait for DDR3.
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aren't ddr3 latencies a lot higher?
 
paladin0 said:
Rumors are that DDR 2 will soon be cheaper than DDR1 so a marginal performance boost while being cheaper is fine by me. I will probably upgrade this summer.
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You don't have to rely on rumors. You can go to the store and check for yourself

internet even

I was thinking about picking up a s939 board/cpu in a couple of months when am2 was out. I could probably get mature product (board) at decent prices when on sale.

But ddr2 memory prices may change my mind. I watch fry's prices regularly and the cheapest I have seen single 1GB ddr was about $80. Tomorrow's fry's ad has 2GB of ddr2 for $99 after a $30 MIR. It looks like ddr1 has already bottomed out and will likely bounce along this bottom for a while before going back up in price. AM2 boards aren't even out yet so it is likely to be able to buy cheaper ddr2 by the time it comes out.

guess my barton setup lives on for several more months
 
mwarps said:
..., and even then, we're going to have to shell out for the wicked high end memory.
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I'm never buying high end memory again. It is probably the worst performance/cost ratio of all teh important parts. I'd rather put the difference towards a better videocard or just save it

So YOU can choose to buy wicked high end. But I won't
 
mwarps said:
I've already thought dual core, I have one. 3.2GB/s is far more than enough for the current platform.

The comparison between 754 and 939 is, for the most part, not an apples to apples comparison. Chipset development for 754 has been stagnant for a while. 939 has been going pretty strong until recently. Back when it was nearly apples to apples we saw some instances an increase of what? 5-10%? (I think the Epox SLI board is neat, but a fluke)

Is 5-10% worth a new mobo, ram, CPU? Left up to the purchaser. Isn't for me, I'll say as much.

Unless they make huge pipeline changes, we're not going to see increased performance other than memory intensive applications and benchmarks, and even then, we're going to have to shell out for the wicked high end memory.
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I doubt anywhere near 10%. 3-5% more realistic for dual core parts. That was enough for AMD to justify S939, it ought to enough for M2.
AMD is going to have to obsolete a lot of early S939 boards this year anyway with the 65nm parts. The original S939 boards were designed with 70-75A parts in mind, the high end X2s/Dual core opterons push that to almost 80A as it is. At 1.275-1.3V the 65nm parts will be late this year, you're looking at a 90-100W thermal envolope to maintain that sub 80A IDD_max.

AMD must move away from the old S939 NF3 / K8T8xx based boards, they might was well take advantage of what's out there. DDR3 is not going to be ready before AMD moves to 65nm, and at least part of the existing S939 lineup is an artificial limit to scaling 65nm CPU speeds (and possibly 90nm as well if AMD wants to push it). AMD has to make these changes this year, I think this is about the best they can do with it.

I agree, the vast majority of S939 owners are not going to want to upgrade, and I don't think they should. But for those Socket A, 754, LGA775 owners out there, M2 will offer something most S939 boards cannot, an upgrade path.
 
as a current user of socket a, am2 will definately bring a new upgrade option. But like everyone has stated what will ddr2 actually bring to use. I am personally gona wait for benchies to come out before making my decision. I mean 939 aint jsut gona vanish off the face of the earth.
I had a look on the amd roadmap and it says ddr2 in 2006, fbdimm in 2007 and ddr3 in 2008. So is the fbdimm gona be replacing ddr2?
If so how are they gona do that?
 
Meh....

Like most say, gonna wait for the benchmarks...I purposely didnt go with the dual core when i recently upgraded my PC because of the AM2...now if it doesnt show substantial performance boosts (and so far it isnt looking good), Im just gonna let it lower the dual core prices and upgrade to X2's....
 
It's not supposed to offer ginormous performance increases right off the bat. Right now, I think we're just looking at potential. Should take off down the road though...

Remember the early days of PCI-E? Same idea...

Anyway, everyone waiting to upgrade will still be put in a good position because new socket = price cuts on old one. :D

 
FirePhoenixctk said:
ah ok. So this am2 really is just a stepping stone eh. Sucks
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Only for people who plan on buying it then replacing it with an AMD based server the following year
 
So now everybody is asking the same question: go AM2 come summer, or hold out for 939 price drops?
 
Slartibartfast said:
So now everybody is asking the same question: go AM2 come summer, or hold out for 939 price drops?
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Either way, you'll be waiting until the summer. Lets see some benches!
 
gwai lo said:
It's not supposed to offer ginormous performance increases right off the bat. Right now, I think we're just looking at potential. Should take off down the road though...

Remember the early days of PCI-E?
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I can't really say that PCI-E is any faster than AGP. There are still precious few PCI-E devices, and those devices that are both PCI-E and PCI/AGP, (unless someone has seen otherwise), show no performance increase.

Besides, AGP 3.0 can support more than one slot, so technically, (again, feel free to prove me wrong), SLI *could* work via AGP, too. AGP also has the added benefit of having direct CPU access, whereas PCI-E, (unless I am totally off-base), does not.
 
mateo said:
will DDR3 memory work with the current motherboards?
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I don't think so, given that it has a different pin out, and the voltages are different.
 
Is it just me or does it seem like AMD is just coming out with a new socket simply to increase sales. Socet A was around for years, and now in the last two years we've seen 3 (four if you count s940) different AMD sockets.

It all seems like marketing ploys to get people to upgrade, when the old specs are still not fully saturated (much like SATA II , PCI-express ).
 
Jpitzo said:
Is it just me or does it seem like AMD is just coming out with a new socket simply to increase sales. Socket A was around for years, and now in the last two years we've seen 3 (four if you count s940) different AMD sockets.

It all seems like marketing ploys to get people to upgrade, when the old specs are still not fully saturated (much like SATA II , PCI-express ).
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I've been wondering the same thing. I was under the impression that AMD wanted to keep each socket around for a long time, so people would have the upgrade option. Instead, though, 754 had barely been released when 939 was announced, and now 939 is getting killed off after...what, two years? It might actually be a marketing ploy, much like PCIe, because people think "ooh, they had to make a new socket for the new processor--it must be a lot better!."

Far from making me want to run out and get a new CPU/MB/RAM/GPU, it makes me want to wait until things stabilize a little more. I'm planning on replacing my aging computer this year, but with the introduction of AM2, I may just have to wait longer.

 
Jpitzo said:
Is it just me or does it seem like AMD is just coming out with a new socket simply to increase sales. Socet A was around for years, and now in the last two years we've seen 3 (four if you count s940) different AMD sockets.

It all seems like marketing ploys to get people to upgrade, when the old specs are still not fully saturated (much like SATA II , PCI-express ).
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original 104W/1.5V S939 part: 72A
current 110W/1.4V Dual core parts: 78A
65nm dual core parts, say 110W/1.3V: 85A (88A for a 1.25V 110W part)
theoretical absurdly fast 65nm dual core FX parts, say 125W/1.3V: 96A.

Like I said earlier, AMD is going to have to ditch comptability with early S939 boards no matter what socket they use with the 65nm parts. (That or limit all their 65nm parts to under 100W TDP). They might as well get all they can out of it.
Most people with mid-high end S939 parts aren't jumping on the M2 bandwagon early anyway, and those that do aren't likely to consider the cost of new motherboard and ram a big hurdle to clear.
 
It's a shame that AMD is increasing their TDP specification while Intel is decreasing it. Or does that mean "nothing" as power consumption will be reduced regardless of the TDP?
 
perplex said:
It's a shame that AMD is increasing their TDP specification while Intel is decreasing it. Or does that mean "nothing" as power consumption will be reduced regardless of the TDP?
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It's important to keep in mind that AMD's TDP is the peak power dissipation of their processors, while Intel's is the average, or typical, power dissipation. Often, AMD will cop out and just slap a single power rating on a whole line of processors (all S754 Athlon 64's are rated at 89W, and all SocketA Semprons are at 62W, for example). Which means that the lower-rated processors likely use even less power at peak than their rating.

That being said, I think that it's admirable that Intel have been able to reduce the power consumption of their processors, but they've had to toss out an entire architecture to catch back up with AMD. And don't forget that AMD's move to 65nm should again decrease the power consumption of their CPUs.

 
perplex said:
It's a shame that AMD is increasing their TDP specification while Intel is decreasing it. Or does that mean "nothing" as power consumption will be reduced regardless of the TDP?
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Keep in mind, AMD has only increased their TDP 6W since debute of the FX line at 104W.

If Intel manages to put all their 'normal' Conroe desktops into the 50-65W TDP range that's been rumored, AMD may have some trouble keeping up in the performance per watt department on the desktop.
If Intel has to push Conroe into the 80-90W range that Woodcrest is supposed to occupy to compete in straight up performance with AMDs high end dual cores, I doubt power is going to be much of an issue in the latter half of this year.
 
When the hell is Socket F going to come out? A few months later? I wanted Socket F because it will support quad-core Opterons. I won't wait past June to build my new PC, so it looks like I'll be going the AM2 route.
 
Jpitzo said:
Is it just me or does it seem like AMD is just coming out with a new socket simply to increase sales. Socet A was around for years, and now in the last two years we've seen 3 (four if you count s940) different AMD sockets.

It all seems like marketing ploys to get people to upgrade, when the old specs are still not fully saturated (much like SATA II , PCI-express ).
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Meh, s939 has been out for what, over a year and a half now? Granted it didn't really catch on 'till the cheaper 90nm parts but still... That's a lot longer than most of Intel's sockets have lasted as of late. :p

There has been valid technical reasons for most of the socket changes ('cept for going down to s939 after starting off on s940 w/A64s?) and no one's forcing you to upgrade to the latest and greatest. By the time AM2 comes out in another 5 months you can probably find some very decently priced s939 X2s.
 
natermeister said:
When the hell is Socket F going to come out? A few months later? I wanted Socket F because it will support quad-core Opterons. I won't wait past June to build my new PC, so it looks like I'll be going the AM2 route.
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Socket F = AM2

its just been renamed
 
It appears that my 3 year upgrade will hold true. In this case, DX10, Vista and AM2 are teh driving factors. My 3 years is up in June 2006. I'm surprised that my A64 3400 has held up so well on the games I like to play.

This time more RAm though. 2Gb out of the gate.
 
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