will u be changing to AM2??

unklerosco

There's been much discussion about the upcoming battle between Intel's new Conroe desktop chip and AMD's new platform AM2. Some interesting theories are emerging...

To give some context, we saw Conroe playing FEAR back at the Intel Developer Forum in March and reported our initial impressions. Those impressions were that Conroe - which is based on a new low-power architecture - is going to be a stonkingly fast gaming chip.

AMD's next iteration of its desktop technology for gamers will be a continuation of its current processor family but on a new platform. AM2 is a new socket type and moves AMD users to DDR 2 memory. New processors based on AM2 will also have lower power requirements, with chips that today come in at 89W - such as the X2 line - moving down to 65W and even 35W in some cases, giving similar thermal profiles to Intel's efficient Conroe chips.

Anandtech has been benchmarking AM2 and has come to the conclusion that not only is it only barely faster than existing AMD solutions, but it's clearly not going to hold a candle to the performance leap that Intel will be making - so they suggest. This has gotten AMD fans up in arms about testing and next generation chips.

After all, if there's no performance increase through moving to the new architecture, why should users bother upgrading - or why should AMD bother moving?

Ars Technica has an interesting write-up addressing just that issue. In a nutshell, they believe that the extra bandwidth of DDR 2 memory - which won't really make much of a performance difference on the desktop - will be a massive benefit to server systems that user two, four or even eight individual processors, each with dual or quad cores. The on-chip memory controller that AMD has might well allow it to beat down Intel in this server space, despite Intel's attempts to ramp up the FSB on newer chips.

The speculation is that AMD will ramp up the pressure on Conroe later on in this year or early next year with some 65nm chips of its own, for higher clock speeds and a possible new architecture.

Emmm... i thinks not

ghost26ie

i'll wait and see how both am2 and conroe compare.

unklerosco

Well i'll be sticking with S939 for a while.... Deffo wont be going to AM2 as i cant see any reason to.. Conroe is interesting tho

astrofool

As stated in a few articles, AM2 is needed because DDR memory's production is going to slow, also the extra bandwidth will eventually be needed (think in terms of AGP8x or PCI-E x16), but it makes sense because the cost of an AM2 board + Ram will be the same, or less(eventually) than the cost of a 939 board + RAM

unklerosco

But what i mean is if u have s939 will u sell to buy a new cpu, mobo n ram for a minimal, if any, performance upgrade???

Bandwith wise, agp never used its full bandwith n i doubt pci-e will in its time either...

Cuddlesworth

No, if Conroe turns out to be as good as they say it will be then I will be going down that route.

astrofool

unklerosco wrote:

But what i mean is if u have s939 will u sell to buy a new cpu, mobo n ram for a minimal, if any, performance upgrade???

Bandwith wise, agp never used its full bandwith n i doubt pci-e will in its time either...

You'd be fairly silly to buy a new mobo/ram without a chip anyway. Unless you're gonna get an upgraded chip with it, in which case u'd be fairly silly to get S939/DDR when AM2 is available.

stevenmu

I'll probably be doing a new build around the start of next year so it'll be an option then. I certainly wouldn't plan an upgrade around it. It's hardly surprising that it's only an incremental improvement, generally new technologies are, despite whatever hype the manufacturers try to put out.

BadCharlie

When will AM2 be out ? And when will intel have its first new chips out ?

awhir

http://www.trustedreviews.com/article.aspx?page=6225&head=48

B00MSTICK

Just built a rig so ill stick with it. SSIA matures April '07 though....

Khannie

I'm gonna get every last drop out of my current S939 setup. After that, I'll go with whoever gives me the most bang for buck.

Dooom

Yeah, I'm going to stick with 939 for a while yet. AM2 doesn't look worth an upgrade, this year at least.

I'm planning to switch to an X2 at the end of the summer (along with a new system build probably - PhysX card! ) and sell off my beloved FX-55.
Course those Conroe chips look quite nice indeed..So I might wait till next year, but isn't UT2007 out at the end of this year?

Christ I hate this industry.

Stephen

I think the only upgrading i'll be doing this year is replacing my A64 3200 with a nice X2 model. All my other components will remain the same.

BadCharlie

Was thinking of building a real cheap 939 system. System in spec is what i use for gaming and i think its very good would use the 939 system for backing up files, fileserver and buring some dvd's.

conzy

Hey, Dont be slating AM2, Its a good 1.4% faster:D

http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=2738&p=4

Anandtech benches^

So anyone with an overclocked S939 system, wont be upgrading to AM2 for a long time.....

I hope Conroe is affordable:o

CyberGhost

One thing I don't get, if AM2 is new socket, shouldn't it have new processors too? or if current ones go with it and don't give much benefit maybe the future ones will take advantages from that extra memory bandwidth?

Dooom

As far as I remember (and I doubt it's changed), AM2 runs on a 940pin socket. They are bringing out a new line of CPUs, but they're just higher or similarly clocked X2's. Albeit with a few extra bits and pieces.

jesus_thats_gre

Nope not at the mo... Am glad I didn't decide to wait 2 or 3 months to be honest and bought when I did..