Socket 754 opinions

O

oddfellow

Regular
I'm thinking of upgrading from socket A to an Athlon64 based system.

The socket 754 DFI Lanparty NF3 UT board seems like a scorcher! Coupling it with an overclocked 3100+ Sempron or 3200+ Athlon64 looks like a good proposition. Plus it'd also mean I could keep using my AGP GF6800.

However, I'm just wondering if you guys think it's worth jumping on the socket754 platform now that 939 is upon us. I'm not bothered about performance, despite using dual channel DDR, the 939 boards don't seem to be much faster than 754 boards anyway, but I have no idea of how long 754 Athlon's will be available for, or if it's going to be quickly phased out.

What do you guys think?
 
IIRC Socket 754 Athlon64s are to be phased out reasonably quickly although the A64-based Semprons will remain. You won't get dual core chips in Socket 754 either.

However, as you would like to stick with your decent AGP card, you should consider that you probably won't be able to upgrade the graphics much more on an AGP board anyway.

I'd have thought that an overclocked A64 (make sure you get a 90nm 'Winchester' based chip which will overclock better and run cooler) should keep you going for a while, especially as you mention that you aren't too bothered about top range performance.
 
oddfellow said:
I'm thinking of upgrading from socket A to an Athlon64 based system.

The socket 754 DFI Lanparty NF3 UT board seems like a scorcher! Coupling it with an overclocked 3100+ Sempron or 3200+ Athlon64 looks like a good proposition. Plus it'd also mean I could keep using my AGP GF6800.

However, I'm just wondering if you guys think it's worth jumping on the socket754 platform now that 939 is upon us. I'm not bothered about performance, despite using dual channel DDR, the 939 boards don't seem to be much faster than 754 boards anyway, but I have no idea of how long 754 Athlon's will be available for, or if it's going to be quickly phased out.

What do you guys think?
Click to expand...

AMD wont release any s754 A64 faster than the 3700+ and there wont be any 90nm A64s for s754. The s754 A64s will be phased out by the end of q3, but you will most likely be able to find some in the channel a bit later than that.

Sempron will move to 90nm in late q2/ early q3 and might very well gain 64bit support at that time (Intels Celeron processors are going to get 64bit support at the end of q2).

I would not buy a the Sempron 3100+ the A64 2800+ is only slightly more expensive, has twice the cache and 64 bit support, the Sempron might overclock a bit better but not enough to ofset the advantage of the A64. A A64 3000+ is also a good choice.
 
AMD has said that they will continue to release Semprons (even 90nm ones) on the 754 socket, and as said before, even the A64 3700 130nm. No 90nm A64 will ever get to s754, though, but I'd give you a 70/30 chance that AMD will end up enabling x86-64 on Semprons anyway, given that Intel seems to think their Celerons should be able to do 64bit in the near future. If that happens, the only difference between the A64 line and Semprons would be the cache size.
 
I wouldn't go S754 at this point, not if I'd plan to upgrade the CPU in the future, as it's pretty much a dead end. (and btw, most of the S939 boards are still using AGP-based chipsets, so you could keep your graphics on either platform)
 
Ah - I didn't realise that the 90nm chips weren't going to be produced in Socket 754 format also.

This being the case, I'd certainly recommend you go with a 90nm Socket 939. As incurable mentions, most S939 motherboards support AGP and you should be able to overclock a 90nm A64 higher than the 130nm equivalent.
 
Has anyone ever upgraded the CPU only in the last 7-8 years? I know of noone I know...

Even if they were to release some 4500+ socket939 somewhere in the far, far future, you'd bet your ass there's something prohibiting it running on your mobo you bought today, be it Vcore settings, FSB, bios, whatever... Been there far to many times with my BH6(wrong rev. for coppermine) and KR7A(no barton). Last time I successfully upgraded the CPU for a tangible substantial difference were a P90 for a P166MMX in 1997. And that was only because I bought the mobo a couple of months before the MMX...

I consider mobo/CPU a unit nowadays. :-/
 
MPI said:
Has anyone ever upgraded the CPU only in the last 7-8 years? I know of noone I know...

Even if they were to release some 4500+ socket939 somewhere in the far, far future, you'd bet your ass there's something prohibiting it running on your mobo you bought today, be it Vcore settings, FSB, bios, whatever... Been there far to many times with my BH6(wrong rev. for coppermine) and KR7A(no barton). Last time I successfully upgraded the CPU for a tangible substantial difference were a P90 for a P166MMX in 1997. And that was only because I bought the mobo a couple of months before the MMX...

I consider mobo/CPU a unit nowadays. :-/
Click to expand...

The same motherboard I used for my 1.4ghz athlon tbird worked for my athlon xp 2000+, and my athlon xp 2600+. But then I upgraded to an nforce2 motherboard because the performance increase from the 2000 to 2600 was almost nonexistant, the nforce2 destroyed the kt333 based motherboard in performance. And a kt266 motherboard could have run the 2600+ as well. Actually, I even had a barton, a mobile barton so I could set the fsb and multiplier as I wanted, and an unlocked or underclocked barton would have worked as well, or if the motherboard was a good enough overclocker to reach 166mhz.

BTW, current 939 mobos are supposed to be able to support dual core cpus, a bios update might be required for it though, along with the 90nm athlon 64s.
 
I'm looking to cram a s754 uATX MB into an Antec Aria. As there's no uATX s939 MB that I'm aware of, I'm limited to s754. This isn't a problem, as I'm not looking to OC or move to dual-core in the future. My main concerns are price and low heat output. I could go with an nF2 and Athlon XP, but I figure I may as well go for a more modern A64.

My question is, do s754 CPUs (and MBs based on the Via K8M800; specifically, this MSI) support Cool 'n Quiet? The Aria isn't the breeziest of cases, but I think a CnQ A64 should compare favorably to even an XP-M. Thoughts?
 
Pete said:
I'm looking to cram a s754 uATX MB into an Antec Aria. As there's no uATX s939 MB that I'm aware of, I'm limited to s754. This isn't a problem, as I'm not looking to OC or move to dual-core in the future. My main concerns are price and low heat output. I could go with an nF2 and Athlon XP, but I figure I may as well go for a more modern A64.

My question is, do s754 CPUs (and MBs based on the Via K8M800; specifically, this MSI) support Cool 'n Quiet? The Aria isn't the breeziest of cases, but I think a CnQ A64 should compare favorably to even an XP-M. Thoughts?
Click to expand...

Some motherboards support CnQ, I don't know if that one does.
BTW, the XP-Ms had some form of CnQ, but nforce2 motherboards didn't support it.
And if you wait a few months you'll probably start seeing mATX s939 motherboards.
 
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