939 or AM2?

S

Shay Ken

Weaksauce
Joined
May 7, 2006
Messages
85
hello,

my problem: I was planning on getting a 939 set up:
AMD Athlon 3700+
Asrock 939SLI32-Esata2 mobo
7900GT
1 gb OCZ Platinum EL

but the AM2's seem to be priced nicely, but since there are no AM2 budget mobo's it wouldn't be SLI compatible, the DDR2 timings are slower too, but I don't know what that means.

The asrock mobo has some sort of extra slot with which you can upgrade to AM2/DDR2 later with a daughter card

would it be better to just get the 939/sli and use the daughter card thing to get AM2 or just get a AM2 setup right away, but no SLI.

And how does this daughter card thing actually work?
 
That is a hard decision. I still have s939s, and plan to bypass Conroe to get a kentsfield and k8l setups. Abyway, that is neither here nor there.

if it were me, I would get a s939 and use that for a bit until k9l. AM2 is still unmature, and good ddr2 is expensive, and the performance gain may be noticeable in synthetics, but not in the end user experience. The only problem with s939 is that there is no upgrade path for cpu, but I expect ddr to stick around for a bit.

If you plan on getting one of the next gen platform in the next 18 months like Conroe, Kentsfield, or K8L, then just get s939, spend less money, and upgrade down the road.

But am2 is a decent choice. I am just not familiar with ddr2 as much as ddr.

Good luck.
 
If you dont own a 939 socket now(which looks like you dont), and plan on going AMD, then just go AM2. AM2 will provide some future proofing hopefully. When ever AMD released there new gen of processors they should work on it with a BIOS update(hopefully..) DDR2 isnt that much more anymore and can get great deals on it. Plus with AM2, DDR2 will be gaining alot more support.
 
I am also in a similar dilemma...

IMO if you want to go AMD you should go AM2, especially since you're buying ram anyway. DDR2 isn't much more than DDR, and prices are supposed to drop. Why buy old hardware?

Also the nForce 500 series of chipsets look REALLY good and have lots of new features, there is a good article here

Personally I am also considering picking up a Pentium D930 (65nm, 3GHz dual core) as they will be dropping in price by about 30% or 40% in the next week, down to $178. Pick the right board and you could upgrade to Conroe later on.
 
I've been looking at AM2 and it seems to be around the same price, so I thought of this,

MSI K9N SLI Platinum
AMD Athlon 3200+
PQI Turbo Memory DDR2 pc-4200
7900GT

anything uncompatible?
there's a PC-5400 module also available, what would be the advantages of that?
and what heatsinks would fit on a AM2 board?

TIA
 
seeing that, I think it's better for me just to get an AM2 board,

I also found that the Arctic Cooling freezer 64 Pro fits on the AM2 boards, so that's good

Thanks for the help :)
 
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