Waiting for Socket 939?

[Tone-EQ]

I've been sitting here for an hour thinking about a new system, mainly about
the best time to buy (never really a good time with computers though!). I've
just read about socket "939". This May should bring with it the announcement
of this new socket (a 940 with a pin removed to use non-ECC memory). I want
an Athlon 64 FX, but after hearing about the 939 I'm gonna wait.
http://www.anandtech.com/cpu/showdoc.html?i=1985

Anyway, I want an Asus (or similar quality) socket 939 board with a Athlon
FX-53, with support for DDR2 (will that be possible with these
boards/processors at all), Gigabit LAN, PCI-Express (1x and 16x), 8x USB 2.0
ports, SATA RAID, while keeping all the IDE and floppy ports too. Oh, and
I'll of course be needing a PCI-X graphics card, anyone know of developments
on that side of things?


Regards,
Tony. (tony.cue(at)tiscali.co.uk)

Discogs: building the definitive database of electronic music...
http://www.discogs.com
--
Asus A7N8X Deluxe (Revision 1.04, BIOS 1007)
AMD AthlonXP 2400+ @ 2800+ (TBred-B, 13.5 x 166, 1.7VCore)
Coolermaster X-Dream HSF
1Gb (2 x 512) Samsung PC3200 400Mhz DDR RAM Dual Channel
(M368L6423DTM/CC400)
Leadtek WinFast GeForce 4 Ti4200 128Mb (A250LE TD MyVIVO)
19" Mitsubishi 1280x1024 100Hz 0.24 dot pitch (Diamond Pro 930SB BK)
2 x 120Gb Maxtor Diamondmax Plus 9 8Mb Cache (6Y120P0, Primary Master,
Primary Slave, no RAID)
Samsung 48x/24x/48x/16x CDRW/DVD-ROM (SM-348B, Secondary Master)
Samsung 52x CD-ROM (SC-152A, Secondary Slave)
Lope i-Tee Silver ATX Case
Windows XP Home (SP1, DirectX 9.0b)

 

[General Schvantzkoph]

I've been sitting here for an hour thinking about a new system, mainly about
the best time to buy (never really a good time with computers though!). I've
just read about socket "939". This May should bring with it the announcement
of this new socket (a 940 with a pin removed to use non-ECC memory). I want
an Athlon 64 FX, but after hearing about the 939 I'm gonna wait.
http://www.anandtech.com/cpu/showdoc.html?i=1985

Anyway, I want an Asus (or similar quality) socket 939 board with a Athlon
FX-53, with support for DDR2 (will that be possible with these
boards/processors at all), Gigabit LAN, PCI-Express (1x and 16x), 8x USB 2.0
ports, SATA RAID, while keeping all the IDE and floppy ports too. Oh, and
I'll of course be needing a PCI-X graphics card, anyone know of developments
on that side of things?


Regards,
Tony. (tony.cue(at)tiscali.co.uk)

Discogs: building the definitive database of electronic music...
http://www.discogs.com

The first socket 939s are only going to have half of the cache as the 940
pin Opterons so you should expect to see some performance degradation
although there maybe some other improvements that make up for this. The
reason for the switch to the 939 pin package is not to get rid of ECC,
that will undoubtably be supported, but to simplify the pc board layout
which will both reduce the cost of the motherboards and allow for the use
of non-registered RAM. I'd guess that the savings for the motherboard
isn't going to be that great, maybe $50. The price difference between
registered and unregistered RAM at the 512M level is only $25, it's more
at the 1G level, closer to $100. Pricing for the 939s isn't known yet but
it's expected to be less than the FX chips. However the current FX is just
a rebranded top of the line Opteron 1xx which is priced at more than twice
the price of next speed step down (Opteron 148: $710, 146: $294, 144:
$211). The clock difference between each speed step is only 10% which
isn't noticable so dropping down to the 146 or even the 144 will cut the
price of your system considerably without any significant compromise in
performance.

Bottom line is that there is probably not much reason to wait for the
939s. If quality is a real concern then you probably want an Opteron
system anyway. The 939 boards are going to be optimized for price not
quality, 940 boards are server class boards, 939s are consumer class.

 

[Satan's Little Sister]

Thus spake Tone-EQ:

I've been sitting here for an hour thinking about a new system, mainly about
the best time to buy (never really a good time with computers though!). I've
just read about socket "939". This May should bring with it the announcement
of this new socket (a 940 with a pin removed to use non-ECC memory). I want
an Athlon 64 FX, but after hearing about the 939 I'm gonna wait.
http://www.anandtech.com/cpu/showdoc.html?i=1985

Anyway, I want an Asus (or similar quality) socket 939 board with a Athlon
FX-53, with support for DDR2 (will that be possible with these
boards/processors at all), Gigabit LAN, PCI-Express (1x and 16x), 8x USB 2.0
ports, SATA RAID, while keeping all the IDE and floppy ports too. Oh, and
I'll of course be needing a PCI-X graphics card, anyone know of developments
on that side of things?

Yeah, I've been waiting for the 939 boards, too. Like General
Schvantzkoph said in his post, the missing pin has nothing to do with
ECC memory. It's equal parts simplify the boards (four layer, instead
of six layer) and allow the use of unbuffered RAM, plus the vital
incompatibility with socket 940 (you don't want your server customers
buying cheaper consumer level chips, like with MP and XP).

As for DDR2, that will require changes to the CPU core as well as a
new motherboard. Right now DDR2 doesn't make sense for Ath64/Opterons.
With an integrated memory controller the smaller latencies of DDR are
better than the higher bandwidth of DDR2. I doubt there will be DDR2
Ath64s before next year.

A PCI-X graphics card? I think you're confusing PCI-E(xpress) and
PCI-X. PCI-X, found mainly in servers, is a 64 bit, 66/100/133 MHz
extension of the original 32 bit 33 MHz PCI. PCI-E (formerly know as
3GIO, 3rd generation input/output) is an entirely different animal,
based on serial instead of parallel transmission.

Anyway, VIA is making a southbridge that will do both PCI/AGP and
PCI-E. Should be out around mid-summer or early fall.

 

[Arnfinn Haraldsen]

Bottom line is that there is probably not much reason to wait for the
939s. If quality is a real concern then you probably want an Opteron
system anyway. The 939 boards are going to be optimized for price not
quality, 940 boards are server class boards, 939s are consumer class.

Yes and great memory performance in 939 for consumer class since its
supposed to have two memory controllers like the opteron and FX:

http://www.anandtech.com/cpu/showdoc.html?i=1884&p=10

5315MB/sec memory bandwidth and lowest latency ever.

 

[Wayne Wastier]

The Lord rebuke you. Satan is a liar, and the father of lies. He doesn't
have a sister. You are a fool to align yourself with the hater of all
mankind.

 

[Satan's Little Sister]

Thus spake Wayne the Waste:

The Lord rebuke you. Satan is a liar, and the father of lies. He doesn't
have a sister. You are a fool to align yourself with the hater of all
mankind.

How is that related to 64-bit computing?