So... What's the real benefit of waiting for S 939?

J

jellysandwich

Limp Gawd
Joined
Dec 4, 2003
Messages
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The two most obvious benefits that come to mind are:

1) Dual Channel Support
2) Future Upgrades

But I've been thinking,.. Are those two really waiting for?
I've been reading a few forums, and some people have been saying that dual channel doesn't really offer much more than single channel.

And as for future upgrades... Well, I'm pretty sure tat AMD is planning on using S 939 for is mainstream products. So I know that it'll be useful to have a motherboard that I can use for a while, and that I'll only need to buy a new processor. But what about when PCI-X comes out? I'm pretty sure my 9800 Pro is going to be relatively weak in 2 years or so, and I'm going to want to upgrade to PCI-X. Then I'll still need to get another motherboard.

So... Back to the topic. Is there really a point to wait for S 939? Should I just go and get a S 754 now?

Or did I miss something?
 
939 will run at 1000mhz HTbus
Have agp and pci lock(hopefully)
and the MAIN reason to wait is that youll be able to run the dual channel FX's with out using ECC/REGISTERED RAM

Hope that helps some.
 
Originally posted by jellysandwich
The two most obvious benefits that come to mind are:

1) Dual Channel Support
2) Future Upgrades

But I've been thinking,.. Are those two really waiting for?
I've been reading a few forums, and some people have been saying that dual channel doesn't really offer much more than single channel.

And as for future upgrades... Well, I'm pretty sure tat AMD is planning on using S 939 for is mainstream products. So I know that it'll be useful to have a motherboard that I can use for a while, and that I'll only need to buy a new processor. But what about when PCI-X comes out? I'm pretty sure my 9800 Pro is going to be relatively weak in 2 years or so, and I'm going to want to upgrade to PCI-X. Then I'll still need to get another motherboard.

So... Back to the topic. Is there really a point to wait for S 939? Should I just go and get a S 754 now?

Or did I miss something?
Click to expand...
First of, its PCI-EXPRESS you're waiting for, PCI-X has been out a while, and is used in servers ;)

Also, when they make the transition soon after they'll be turning to the 90nm process, so if you wait till 939 you'll be able to upgrade, or just get a 90nm CPU. Also i heard that VIA's first chipset to support 939 would also support PCI-E
 
Id wait for motherboard features like PCI Express and the next version of SATA.

The current 64 bit platforms are fine, but the motherboards dont really add anything that old Socket A boards have. THe first gen AMD 64 bit chipsets arent all that spectacular either. It would almost be worth the wait for the next offerings from VIA and Nvidia if it meant better overclocking and speed.
 
Things that will happen with 939-pin transition:

1) FX no longer needs registered ram

2) Hyper-Transport upped from 800mHz 16-bit to 1gHz 16-bit (won't give that much of a performance boost, just in I/O and AGP performance)

3) Dual-Channel memory

4) 0.09 micron for better ocing (0.13 micron is nearing the end of its scalability as seen by the relatively poor ocing of the A64s with air-cooling)

5) Bill Gates probably gets off his ass and decides to screw Intel and finally release Windows XP-64 (hehe, just a hope)
 
FX no longer needs registered ram

There are not that many people who are going to be buying the FX series.
 
Guys, s939 isn't just FX cpus. It's going to be both a64 with PR ratings and FX cpus.
http://www.anandtech.com/cpu/showdoc.html?i=1947
You won't be able to get an FX-53 any cheaper on s939 than you will on s940.

I'm pretty sure they're going to be the same chips, just on different die sizes. The only advantage will be memory bandwidth (due to the dual channel capabilities), but that only improves synthetic benchmarks like Sisoft Sandra. You can tell by the current benchmarks of A64 3000+/3200+/3400+ that you really don't need dual channel, it doesn't offer many real life improvements as the single channel 3400+ is just as fast in some instances as the dual channel FX-51.

The only real improvement I see is better overclocking ability on the new 90nm process. And possibly more mature motherboards with *probably* minimally faster chipsets (IE: Nforce 3 250 and K8T800 Pro).
 
Unfortunately, dual channel only really gives benefit in workstation apps. If you're mostly going to be doing gaming/office/media stuff, you won't see any benefit. The only real reason to wait is for some better chipsets to come out, but with the on-chip mem controller, chipset really won't make much of a performance difference. Also, AMD plans on going to at least the 4000+ with socket 754, so you should be able to upgrade in a years time with a faster chip anyway. According to the roadmap on anandtech, when socket 939 comes out the difference between the a64 and fx will be the l2 cache. a64 should have 512k and fx 1mb. As the benchmarks of the a64 3000 vs 3200 have shown, it's a pretty small performance difference, and coupled with the almost nonexistant difference between single and dual channel, the FX really doesn't make any sense unless you're going to be doing heavy 3d rendering work. Also, pci-express and btx is probably a good year off for widespread implementation and bug free operation (remember the compatibility problems with early 8x agp boards?), so if you can wait a year to upgrade then don't bother. If not, this seems to be a good time to upgrade.
 
Originally posted by AirBornX
FX no longer needs registered ram

There are not that many people who are going to be buying the FX series.
Click to expand...

So what? I was just remarking changes.
 
It will be a format that should have some legs - it should last several months. Most likely not as long as Socket A, but still several months.


w00t - [H]ard|Gawd!
 
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