Hi,

I'm thinking about buying a high end opteron board, but before i shell
out the money i want to make sure that it'll be good for a while. Last
week i was reading an article in PcMag which talked about the timeline
for CPUs over the next two years(i'm starting to realize they put out
this article every year around now). Anyway, i was reading about the
new opterons slated to come out in the 4th Quarter of this year
codenamed Venus Troy and Athens for the 100, 200, and 800 series
respectively. Will motherboards out now be able to use these cpus? If
so will they also be able to us the next update codenamed Denmark
Italy and Egypt? I can't imagine the latter would be true, or anybody
would know at this time, but i'm curious about the first thing.

thx for the help,

dan

If you want just a straight answer, this isn't it.

As you may already know, assuming that the current Opterons and the Athens
Troy and Venus chips are using the same socket, and are electrically the
same, then the *only* thing that *may* prevent them from working in an
Opteron board is BIOS support. Since that can be easily fixed with a BIOS
flash, it shouldn't be a problem.

But, that is only if you believe they will be the same electrically. If
they change the voltage, it would be contingent upon the VRMs being able to
supply the lower voltage of the newer chips in order for a BIOS fix to
actually be feasible.

Perhaps somebody knows more about this than I do, in that specific knowledge
of this circumstance is known to them.

Also, by "electrically the same" I also mean that the bus speed is not
changed, or if it is changed that is supported by the northbridge of the
motherboard (or as you can wish to call it, chipset).

"Dan Irwin" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:(E-Mail Removed)...
> Hi,
>
> I'm thinking about buying a high end opteron board, but before i shell
> out the money i want to make sure that it'll be good for a while. Last
> week i was reading an article in PcMag which talked about the timeline
> for CPUs over the next two years(i'm starting to realize they put out
> this article every year around now). Anyway, i was reading about the
> new opterons slated to come out in the 4th Quarter of this year
> codenamed Venus Troy and Athens for the 100, 200, and 800 series
> respectively. Will motherboards out now be able to use these cpus? If
> so will they also be able to us the next update codenamed Denmark
> Italy and Egypt? I can't imagine the latter would be true, or anybody
> would know at this time, but i'm curious about the first thing.
>
> thx for the help,
>
> dan

"Dan Irwin" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:(E-Mail Removed)...
> Hi,
>
> I'm thinking about buying a high end opteron board, but before i shell
> out the money i want to make sure that it'll be good for a while. Last
> week i was reading an article in PcMag which talked about the timeline
> for CPUs over the next two years(i'm starting to realize they put out
> this article every year around now). Anyway, i was reading about the
> new opterons slated to come out in the 4th Quarter of this year
> codenamed Venus Troy and Athens for the 100, 200, and 800 series
> respectively. Will motherboards out now be able to use these cpus? If
> so will they also be able to us the next update codenamed Denmark
> Italy and Egypt? I can't imagine the latter would be true, or anybody
> would know at this time, but i'm curious about the first thing.

I think AMD is committed to keeping the Opteron's Socket 940 form-factor
pretty stable for a while yet. However, the Athlon 64's a slated for a
socket changeover from Socket 754 to Socket 939 in the next few months. From
that point onwards, it looks like Socket 939 will remain pretty stable.

Yousuf Khan