what would be the best motherboard

[somebody]

i thought the current amd 64 fx 51 was socket 940.........whats the
difference between socket 940 and 939........thanks

Yes, I said so. The FX51 and its successor FX53 are on socket 940.

There will shortly be dual channel Athlon64s available on socket 939.
It's assumed that some AthlonFX will also move to 939, perhaps the
successor to FX53.

Socket 940 uses registered (which I think is the same as buffered) ECC
ram. This may have considerable performance advantages with large
amounts of RAM. OTH, higher memory speed seems to be first available
on common unbuffered DDRAM. Which is also cheaper. The 939 package is
also cheaper I think, due to manufacturing tricks.

Athlon64 is the 'value' desktop, so this will be on 754 and 939. More
sophisticated users have the Opteron on 940.

AthlonFX, (my guess) is simply going to be in whatever package offers
best performance.

( Just to clear up a possible misunderstanding, FX is not the family
of dualchannel Athlon64s. There's sofar been no other name than the
same, 'Athlon64'. The AthlonFX is a special product, not a family, and
there will only be one in production, at any time.)

ancra

 

[somebody]

How so? -Dave

Don't worry. There's no problems building an AMD.
The Socket A CPUs, Duron, AthlonXP are possibly a bit more fragile
than P4. So what? You're not going to use violence on them anyway.

Just pay attention to how the heatsink is intended to be mounted.
There are instructions available on AMD website, and CPU-cooler
manufacturers websites. Also make sure it fits, and that there isn't
anything under it, on some edge, like a spring holding Northbridge
heatsink, or capacitors etc. And all will be well.

ancra

 

[Justin]

thanks is a amd fx 51 worth getting and which is the best motherboard for
socket 940...i have looked at a asus sk8n & sk8v & gigabyte what do you
think........

 

[somebody]

thanks is a amd fx 51 worth getting and which is the best motherboard for
socket 940...i have looked at a asus sk8n & sk8v & gigabyte what do you
think........

IMO, no. I don't think either FX or 940 is worth it. 754 and 939 (if
you can wait a little while) seems much better value.

If you're aiming for gaming performance? - You might be interested in
gaming benchmarks on anandtech, aceshardware, and firingsquad.
Even the single channel socket 754 A64s does very well.

This is actually a Prescott review, and the 'relevant' comparison is
mostly against P4C and P4EE, but 64_3200/3400 and FX participates.
Game benchmarks start here:
http://www.firingsquad.com/hardware/intel_prescott_3.2ghz_review/page10.asp
The article starts here:
http://www.firingsquad.com/hardware/intel_prescott_3.2ghz_review/
As you can see, particularly considering their price, 3200&3400 really
kick ass.

I'm sort of aiming for a socket 754 64_3000+ myself. Cheap and good
enough. I try to avoid paying that extra 2-3 times the money, for 20%
extra performance.
But it won't be next week. As I have a decent machine, I have some
difficulty justifying an A64, right now.

I think KT800 seems to be the best chipset right now. It's the
preferred choice by most mobo manufacturers. I'm afraid I've mostly
looked at 754 boards, and not paid much attention to 940.
But there's two new chipsets that I'm interested in, SIS755 and
nForce3-250 (current nForce3 is '150'). Boards with these should soon
be on market.

I can't choose between Gigabyte and Asus for you. Both have good reps.
But Asus is always my first choice. I've been a coward, and only did
Asus and Abit until recently. I successfully tried a cheap EPoX board,
and I think I'm going to start doing more cheap boards now.

Problem area with the Athlon64 boards seem to be some intolerance to
RAM. Not entirely new story, I had to make a couple of turns on a
XP3000+ too.
(And 940's have failed to run some benchmarks... :-( )

ancra

 

[We Live For The One We Die For The One]

No it wont

But if you have any PCI graphics card they will or any pci device i
think works in the slot.

 

[Ruel Smith (Big Daddy)]

IMO, no. I don't think either FX or 940 is worth it. 754 and 939 (if
you can wait a little while) seems much better value.

I just read somewhere (Xbit Labs?) that Via is intending on building in
support for AGP and PCI Express in the Socket 939 chipsets so that the
motherboard manufacturer can decide which to include. I assume you'll find
both available on the market, so the original poster my conceivably use his
Radeon card with the new socket/processors coming out in Q2 this year.



--
Big Daddy Ruel Smith

My SuSE Linux machine uptime:
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