AMD to Adopt DDR2 Next Year

Hack Jandy writes "According to Anandtech, AMD has already developed a new processor lineup for Athlon 64 processors with DDR2. The article states that internal AMD roadmaps indicate the processors should debut early next year and will require a new 1207 pin socket."

Comments

DDR2

[Anonymous Coward]

So we have to dance to get the damn thing to work?

Socket 1207

[fr0dicus]

Will pincounts be the new megahurtz?

Re:Socket 1207

[Basje]

They need the extra number for the integrated PCI Express controller, integrated on the chip. Chips without that controller will have less pins.

I think they will try to keep the number of pins down: more pins is more expensive to manufacture and transport.

Re:Socket 1207

[Petersson]

Will pincounts be the new megahurtz?

My wallet hurtz... But I've discovered I don't need it, since after almost twenty years of gaming I've quitted and I use my Athlon XP system mostly as DVB PVR, video player, some video editing and dvd burning. What I ask for is better OS, not hardware.

BTW since all most of the controllers are on CPU, I expect motherboard prices will decrease since there is not much to remain on them. In extreme, why spend money on the processor pins and the socket itself? Why not solder the CPU to motherboard, like in the old times of some 386 boards? With adequate hole in mobo, we can cool the CPU from both sides.

Socket A

[tor528]

What happened to the good old days, when pin counts lasted years and years?

Re:Socket A

[Shanep]

I forgot to mention that at least slut A always comes with at least 3 ports. The others come with a maximum of 2, but usually only come with 1 unreliable port which is hard to get working. These common units tend to be expensive to run and also come with an output only port which is very noisy.

1207 and Virtualization

[StarHeart]

The blurb mentions 1207, but the article only talks about M2(940). I have read mention of 1207 in relation to chips with the PCIe controller onboard. But not signs of tha in this roadmap.

This roadmap seems to suggest at least that virtualization will only come in chips with the M2 socket. I will be disappointed if that is true. I had planned to upgrade to dual core chip with virtualization, but keep my 939 board. Maybe by then I will be looking to upgrade to PCIe and won't care. I have an AGP board now.

PCIe too

[Max Romantschuk]

According to the Inquirer AMD plans to integrate PCI Express as well. This would be very nice indeed, but I guess it's not exactly press release grade information at this point.

Re:Aarrrrgh....

[NerveGas]

Personally, I never buy a motherboard with future CPU upgrades in mind. It's just not worth it, upgrading your CPU within the same general architecture rarely gives you much real-world performance.

The real performance boosts come from radical architectural changes - new memory subsystems, new processer types, new interconnect, etc. - and for any of those, you're going to need a new motherboard, period.

steve

Not yet.

[aaron_ds]

1207 pins, pffft!

I'll hold out for the 1337 pin AMDs.

I for one welcome our elite cpu overlords.

Re:Of course they changed the socket... again...

[eddy]

So on x86 when you think about upgrading that 2 year old CPU to something new

Stop blathering. On Socket-A I went "Duron 800", "Athlon 1333" and then "AthlonXP 2400+". That's three processor upgrades on one platform and the VERY SAME MOTHERBOARD.

Just recently I bought a new Socket-A MB (they're dirt cheap) and 2GB of DDR (which is similarly dirt cheap), so the last CPU has seen a MB upgrade too.

And do you know what? I play modern games on that sucker.

(I'll go S939 soon with a nice Venice and get a real use for all that memory)

First Prime Factorization Post

[2*2*3*75011]

1207 = 17*71. I wonder why this beautiful factorization isn't mentioned in the article.

It doesn't matter that they change the socket.

[Ihlosi]

Really, it doesn't. Since the memory controller is integrated in the CPU, there is no way to make one of these things run in todays DDR1 mainboards, regardless of the pin count. And since DDR2 has a different pin count than DDR1, of course the pin count of the memory contoller has to change, hence the pin count of the CPU changes.

Anyone complaining about "yet another socket" apparently hasn't understood this.

Re:Offtopic

[TheRaven64]

This comment is informative[1]. If you have moderator points, please apply the appropriate moderation to it.

[1]in a self-referential kind of way.

Re:Is DDR2 worth waiting for?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you want to use your AGP-card then 939 is the way to go since there will be almost 100% PCI-express graphics on the new sockets, and since you can reuse your ram with good performance (DDR2 in itself won't give you much extra) go for broke right now

Re:Oh, so now we're getting into an oldest...

[TobyWong]

I have a rusty abacus at home that I use for my banking. My wife wanted one too after she saw me flying through my interest calculations but I told her "we don't waste money on newfangled technology" and bought her a pile of shiny beads to do her counting with instead.

AMD Tech Tour Q and A with engineer

[valhallaprime]

Well, I am freshly back from the AMD tech tour event in East Brunswick last night, and this specific question came during the Q and A with "TEH EXPERT5" - The question of DDR2 support.

The actual engineer on staff at the event answered it, and stated flat out that there was no performance gain until at least DDR2-667, and that alone "was only about 5% or so faster than DDR400 running in dual channel mode". He even went so far as to say that "DDR2-533, with it's increased latency over DDR400, has a negative impact of OVER 5%", and makes no sense to jump to. This was because of the efficiency already inherent in the HyperTransport bus, according to him.

He talked for about 5 minutes on the issue, and the gist of it was that until DDR2-667 specifically started to become more affordable, the incremental speed boost didn't make any sense for anyone, including and users and AMD Proc Support.

Incidentally, he also mentioned that DDR2 would (of course) require significant redesign in the built-in memory controller of the 939 chips, unless registered memory was used. This sorta implies in a friday morning-drove-all-night-from-NJ way that the current 939's would not support DDR2 if there were to be 939 mobo's with DDR2 support.