939 or AM2 can decide

[keviheit]

Is it worth it to buy a 939 or should I wait for the AM2

 

[Kakumba]

Well, I guess it depends on how soon you are keen to buy. Personally, I'm looking to go 939, as I am currently with no system, and cant wait.

So, can you wait, or not? To me, the only reason to go AM2 is because its the future. I dont think there are any real changes worth bothering about (DDR2 isnt exactly gonna give a performance gain from what Ive read)

 

[keviheit]

If I would wait would the price of the CPU be a lot higher or do you think they will keep it about the same

 

[dguy6789]

I would go for 939 now. A dual core machine with pci express will last anyone quite a while, and since 939 supports and has both of these, then I see no compelling reason to wait for am2.

 

[Kakumba]

I reckon CPU prices should stay fairly stable, with AM2 eventually being the cheaper socket, obviously. but that wont happen for a few months. A decent 939 system will keep you going for at least 2 years, when you upgrade to AM2, or an Intel offering, and Vista (or Linux).

 

[Geomagick]

There is nothing 'wrong' with 939 at the moment.

There is always a penalty in reliability when moving to a new platform and chipset, although it's not too bad these days.

Personally I would hold out till AM2 comes along and then see if you can get some good deals on outgoing higher end 939 kit.

 

[Zebo]

939 with low latency mem should beat AM2 from results posted thus far at toms and anand.. granted those chips are said to have been broken but even looking at when AMD made the skt 754 to 939 transition, which gave AMD DOUBLE bandwidth they got negilible gains for that double bandwidth....with AM2 it's not even as rosey as double bandwidth - because they won't get double and AMD will be sacrificing Latency with DDR2 , which they did'nt have to in 754 to 939 trasition since both used LL DDR1. A64 loves LL and is not bandwidth starved, never has been.

Also there is some spyware BS and unique serials implanted in AM2 which I'm not too crazy about - but you can look into that information if its of concern to you.

Cost may be another hurdle - AMD will charge lots more than existing sockets for the new stuff like they always do... 939 has percipitated about as far as they can this year...

 

[Rottie]

now long will AM2 last after it comes out? I understand that 939 will stay until after 2007.

 

[Arachnotronic]

From what I've seen of AM2 benchmarks, it doesn't look like DDR2 will offer much of an advantage over standard DDR, at least not right away. So personally, I'd go with the 939.

 

[Duvie]

I agree...I would look at getting an opteron 140's if single core or opteron 160+ for dual core....that way you get the FX size l2 cache...PLus they seem to be better ocers if that means much to you...

 

[Arachnotronic]

I agree with Duvie. You can also choose to upgrade to an Opteron 165 or other dual core chip later on when software finally takes advantage of it, and those chips will be dirt cheap.

Socket 939 couldn't be better right now because it's fast, stable, cheap, and future-proof!

 

[Zebo]

I don't - I can't beleive D is hyping cache - get a 3800 X2 if dualing, much more flexible multiplier than ****** 9x inside 165, cooler because less transistors, and cheaper.

146 or 148 is however the way to go in single core..

 

[spittledip]

Are there any prices suggestions for the AM2 cpus yet?

 

[3chordcharlie]

The only reason to wait for AM2 is memory configs higher than 2x1gb should be cheaper and more available.

Edit - When things switched from edo to sd ram, there wasn't any real advantage to sdram... but a few years later, some of those systems ended up with 256 or even 512 mb of sd ram at a fraction of the price of getting 128mb into an edo-based system.