Question about Opteron's socket future

[lelliott731]

Hey guys, I'm planning on setting up a Dually Opteron setup real soon, depending on my insurance settlement. Otherwise it will be a dually MP setup. But what I want to do first is check as many sources as I can about their future. I know that the AthlonFX is moving from the 940 to the 939 package sometime this year, but is the Opteron? I want to make a workstation out of (2) Opteron 248's, 2GB PC3200 per processor, and a PCI-X storage solution, but I want to be able to in the future plug in more processing power, but if they move to 939, is that possible? Also on a side note, what is going on with the plain vanilla Athlon64, are they staying 754? Any thoughts or know-how would be greatly appreciated!

 

[MTB2Live Live4Comps]

this is my understanding
754: mainstream processors
939: standard Athlon64 and Athlon64FX chips
940: Opteron for life. well, almost (they might up the hypertransport speed, but this won't break compatibility w/ current chipsets)

 

[shtfk]

Socket 940 is the permanent home for the Opteron.
Socket 939 is going to be all athlon 64's, vanilla and FX.
Socket 754 will turn into the value socket and is going to have athlon 64's with their 64-bit extensions disabled.

Edit - lol

 

[lelliott731]

What the heck is the point of an AMD Athlon 64 socket starting off with 64-bit, then cutting it off? That's the dumbest thing I've heard. So basically they are going to move all 64-bit processors to dual channel memory, and the line between the Athlon 64 and the Athlon 64FX will disappear?

Do you know where I could find a AMD roadmap by any chance? And do you know when they plan to kill the 754 64-bit deal? Because I just invested in a K8V Deluxe and I don't like being screwed over like Intel used to do.

 

[shtfk]

There's a roadmap in the FAQ. I think it says that they're going up to the 4000+ on 754.

 

[xonik]

Originally posted by lelliott731
the line between the Athlon 64 and the Athlon 64FX will disappear?

And do you know when they plan to kill the 754 64-bit deal?

The line won't disappear. The Athlon 64 will be dropped to 512 kB L2 cache in exchange for the dual channel memory controller. The FX will still be the only one with fully adjustable multipliers.

I think the jury is still out on whether or not Socket 754 will continue to see new processors of worth to enthusiasts. At worst, it'll feature 32-bit versions of the Athlon 64 under the name Athlon XP.

 

[tdg]

If you want PCI Express then sometime around April or so they should be coming out. If your settlement is enough, Tyan will be building a quad s940 Opteron board with 4 DIMM slots per processor supporting 32GB of RAM total, dual independent PCI Express controllers, IDE/SATA/SCSI, dual Gigabit ethernet, back massager, etc, eventually. Should be powerfull enough to run Quake 12 and Half-Life 5. It'll likely be a tad on the expensive side though

The reason for disabling the 64 bit extensions is simple, make one core and disable features not neaded for mainstream, and keep the extensions enabled for the high end setup which brings a premium

 

[Wrench00]

I use Opteron's for all my stuff and I am never switching. Reason why is because I don't have to upgrade so much. I know that now and in the future there will be a 940 socket CPU

 

[Joves]

Originally posted by tdg
The reason for disabling the 64 bit extensions is simple, make one core and disable features not neaded for mainstream, and keep the extensions enabled for the high end setup which brings a premium

Yep! For the general market 64 Bit wont catch on for awhile nor, will it be offered in general user PC's. Most of the general public users dont even have current versions of programs like IE or, the plug-ins. I know people still using IE4 !