A64 socket 939 is here!

M

mczak

Veteran
Well, almost, here's a review, in french, but graphs are universal as always: http://www.x86-secret.com/popups/articleswindow.php?id=105
Just as I suspected, the loss of half the cache (512KB vs. 1MB) is basically compensated by the dual-channel ram, but the increased rating (3500+ instead of 3400+) doesn't quite seem justified.
Now, if AMD would only introduce some reasonably priced 3300+...

mczak
 
mczak said:
Well, almost, here's a review, in french, but graphs are universal as always: http://www.x86-secret.com/popups/articleswindow.php?id=105
Just as I suspected, the loss of half the cache (512KB vs. 1MB) is basically compensated by the dual-channel ram, but the increased rating (3500+ instead of 3400+) doesn't quite seem justified.
Now, if AMD would only introduce some reasonably priced 3300+...

mczak
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Yes, the 3500+ rating does not seem justified, the bright side is even thou the 3500+ has a higher rating than the 3400+ it does AFAIK not carry a price premium.
 
Nothing that I didn't predict would happen. The only significant increase between the 3400 and the 3500 is the memory test in PCMark04, for obvious reasons.
 
Tim said:
AlphaWolf said:
The power requirements startled me.
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The TDP (104W) is for all future socket 939 CPUs, it has little to do with current chips.
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I wasn't expecting them to surpass the prescott. Well certainly not this soon anyway.
 
AlphaWolf said:
I wasn't expecting them to surpass the prescott. Well certainly not this soon anyway.
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They haven't surpassed the Prescott the first Socket 939 uses nowhere near 104W. The 104W TDP is the maximum that any socket 939 CPU will use ever. Socket 939 will exist for years any CPUs that use 104W is far away.
 
Tim said:
AlphaWolf said:
I wasn't expecting them to surpass the prescott. Well certainly not this soon anyway.
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They haven't surpassed the Prescott the first Socket 939 uses nowhere near 104W. The 104W TDP is the maximum that any socket 939 CPU will use ever. Socket 939 will exist for years any CPUs that use 104W is far away.
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And the tdw for prescott is 103W. 104 > 103.
 
AlphaWolf said:
And the tdw for prescott is 103W. 104 > 103.
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And? AMDs TDP = max power for the whole CPU line. Intels TDP is only around 80% of the current CPU. The max power of the 3.4GHz Prescott is 127W the max power of the 3800+ is around 85W.
 
Please remind me: If dual channel A64 isn't faster than single channel because of smaller cache, why am I waiting for socket 939? Do I just like having to fiddle with paired DIMMs? Or is it PCI Express?
 
horvendile said:
Please remind me: If dual channel A64 isn't faster than single channel because of smaller cache, why am I waiting for socket 939? Do I just like having to fiddle with paired DIMMs? Or is it PCI Express?
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Future upgradeability might be a reason. Socket 754 is dead, there will be new cpus, but nothing you want to upgrade to (athlon 64 turned xp with even less cache). So, the 3700+ will be the fastest cpu on that board ever. You SHOULD be able to use 90nm future hammers on socket 939 boards, but chances are no such things (except the budget low-cache athlon xp chips) will exist for socket 754.
Also, you CAN get 1MB cache socket 939 cpus - the athlon fx. And a socket 939 athlon fx will be (slightly) faster than a socket 940 athlon fx, not to mention the ram will be cheaper.
And manufacturing costs for 512KB socket 939 cpus should be quite a lot cheaper than 1MB socket 754 chips. This is of course no immediate benefit for you, but those socket 939 prices could drop a lot, if AMD decides they wanted to sell a lot of chips for cheap instead of only a handful for a lot...
If you don't plan on upgrading the cpu, then I guess it's perfectly reasonable to buy a 3400+ (or slower) socket 754 cpu, even more so since AMD obviously doesn't plan on selling lower-clocked and cheaper socket 939 cpus for now.
 
I am still patiently waiting till this stuff sorts it self out some more. My 2500 mobile helped my patience as well ;)
 
horvendile said:
Please remind me: If dual channel A64 isn't faster than single channel because of smaller cache, why am I waiting for socket 939? Do I just like having to fiddle with paired DIMMs? Or is it PCI Express?
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The big advantage of socket 939 will be next year when AMD launches dual core chips. So if you want to do a cheap upgrade in a year go with the s939.

Cheers
Gubbi
 
horvendile said:
Please remind me: If dual channel A64 isn't faster than single channel because of smaller cache, why am I waiting for socket 939? Do I just like having to fiddle with paired DIMMs? Or is it PCI Express?
Click to expand...

Aren't the 939s offering superior performance at a lower mhz? At least I thought they were. Shouldn't this 939s be performing almost on the level of the fx, if the only superior thing fx had was dual channel? Well, lets see, fx was like 20% faster than its clock speed, the loss of 512KB cache took off like 10% performance, so the net increase is 10%.(not always though, there were times that even a normal athlon 64 at the same speed as an fx would perform as well or better)

I think the real benefit of dual channel may be seen when 64 bit finally arrives. Socket 754 may not have the bandwidth to fully utilize it. Same for as the chip's speed increases, pc3200 could last for quite a bit longer.
 
To all the helpful replies: Yes, I guess upgradeability would be the thing, provided that there is no real performance difference.

Personally though I have started to wonder whether I should stop considering that when I by myself a new computer. You see, a pattern has emerged in my computer buying habits: I never seem to replace the CPU. In a computer's lifespan I will probably switch graphics board, but so far I have never exchanged my CPU (not counting a failed attempt to exchange a 486 DX-33 for a DX4). Perhaps I should learn from past experience and stop caring about CPU upgradeability? Learning from the same experience though, PCI Express might be important.

That said, of course I agree on the upgradeability advantage in general terms.
 
horvendile said:
To all the helpful replies: Yes, I guess upgradeability would be the thing, provided that there is no real performance difference.

Personally though I have started to wonder whether I should stop considering that when I by myself a new computer. You see, a pattern has emerged in my computer buying habits: I never seem to replace the CPU. In a computer's lifespan I will probably switch graphics board, but so far I have never exchanged my CPU (not counting a failed attempt to exchange a 486 DX-33 for a DX4). Perhaps I should learn from past experience and stop caring about CPU upgradeability? Learning from the same experience though, PCI Express might be important.

That said, of course I agree on the upgradeability advantage in general terms.
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Usually upgrading just the cpu will not give ideal benefits, you usually have to upgrade the whole system. However, because the athlon 64s have the memory controller built in, motherboard upgrades may not be needed for it as far as performance goes.(considering all current motherboards perform about the same) But typically, the only way you'll get a significant improvement is if you buy a really slow cpu when the cpu you actually want is out, and then when its price go down you buy that.
I've always upgraded my cpu more than my video card though, it's just a more crucial component, you can turn down video settings, but you generally can't turn down physics, geometry, and ai. But generally memory, cpu, and motherboard have to be upgraded together to get large performance increases.
 
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