AMD Bumps Up Socket AM2 Launch Date

Thrill-Ki1l writes "According to DailyTech AMD has moved up the launch date for their new socket AM2 processors. The manufacturers of the new AM2 chipsets and motherboards have their hardware ready to ship early so AMD decided to launch the chips 2 weeks early. The new launch date is May 23rd."

Comments

summary

[The_GURU_Stud]

what should also be on the summary is that it was bumped up to coincide with Intel's paper launch.

Is it really worth it?

[Bin Naden]

Is it really worth it to be an AMD processor with a DDR2 memory controller? Sure this meant a lot for the intel architecture but from what I understood the AMD architecture will not gain a lot from this memory speed increase. Also, the latency on the memory will likely also increase which might cancel all gains made from the increased speed. Therefore, I'm waiting and seeing before I get me one of those.

Re:condolences

[Bob_Robertson]

Actually, the release of new hardware should drop the price of dual and quad 939 motherboards to buyable levels, as well as the dual core 939 CPUs.

It's not like the 939 performance has dropped, only that the bleeding edge has cut another swath. Let them go, and enjoy the savings!

Bob-

Re:Too many sockets!!!

[Z0mb1eman]

Y'know... I used to reason along the same lines. After 10 years of building/upgrading my own computer, however, I realized one thing:

Not once has it made sense to upgrade the processor. Every time it would've provided only a small gain compared to the expense and hassle. I've upgraded the RAM, hard drives, and video card several times - but by the time I felt I needed a better processor, it made more sense to replace the entire motherboard and go with a new generation (or build a new box entirely).

To each his own, of course. But in the future I'm going to worry about the upgrade paths a motherboard offers for the RAM, drives, or video - and not the CPU, because I know I'll never bother.

Then again, so far I've mostly had AMD boxes, so maybe there is some truth to what you say. :)

Re:fake?

[Bin Naden]

This is what we call a paper release as pioneered by IBM in the good old days. When the competitors threaten to release a better product then yours, you claim that you are developing an even better product than them in order to prevent consumers from switching to the competitor. The actual release date doesn't matter, all that matters is that consumers anticipate that you will have an awesome product coming along that they will want to save money for. And as IBM proved, you don't even have to release the product. You might just want to do this in order to cause your competitor financial hardships.

Re:condolences

[toddestan]

Actually, I feel sorry for the people who built 754 systems back in the day. It seemed that AMD moved onto Socket 939 pretty quickly after that one.

Though I really feel for anyone who has a Socket 423 Pentium IV system. Very short lived standard (1.3-2.0Ghz), expensive rambus memory, 100Mhz bus ("quad pumped" to 400Mhz), and really odd CPU coolers that screw into the motherboard that are virtually impossible to get replacements for.

Why, exactly?

[Weaselmancer]

You would hope anyone building a system would have done their research and would have known that new chips were coming.

Putting aside that new chips are always coming up, why would this matter?

Only reason I can think of is that you're suggesting that you might want to put a faster cpu in later on. Is that it? If so...is that a really common thing to do? Because it seems kinda....well, dumb to me. You unplug your existing cpu and stick it in a box. Then buy another one that's only a few percent faster. Then unplug that 3 months later...and stick it in a box. Seems like a waste of money to me.

Every time I've done an upgrade, it's been a whole system upgrade. And then, I only do it every 5 years or so. Is there really a need to stay on the bleeding edge all the time that I'm missing?

Re:Why, exactly?

[Znork]

"Then buy another one that's only a few percent faster."

As far as I can tell, AM2 will be a merge of the desktop sockets, which means you'll eventually have a fairly large range of performances.

If AM2 reclaims the same kind of staying power that socket A had, this also means you get the capacity to do cascade upgrades once you have a few systems. Stick a new CPU in your desktop? You dont stick the old one in a box, you move it to the server, which gets faster... and your old server CPU can be moved to the media frontend, which also gets faster... etc.

"Every time I've done an upgrade, it's been a whole system upgrade. And then, I only do it every 5 years or so. Is there really a need to stay on the bleeding edge all the time that I'm missing?"

Mmm, if that's how you do it, you probably wont benefit, no. In fact, it's far better to _never_ stay on the bleeding edge; bleeding edgers always get hosed by the price/performance ratio, and someone spending half of what you spend every 2.5 years will probably have a higher average performance over time on his systems, and twice as many systems. And again, once you reach the number of systems and component standardization needed for rolling upgrades, that's when you really start getting the payoff...

Re:condolences

[buswolley]

I just built an AMD 64 3800+ X2. I researched for quite a while, and was completly aware of the new socket. This does not bother me.

1)I can't really imagine anytime soon when I will need more power than I have with this system.

2) The price was good.

3)You can overclock the shit out of them.

4)I can scan for viruses, rip a cd, and play a top end game concurrently without a glitch or slow down.

5)It is a stable mature technology(socket 939). I previously made the mistake of purchasing the first edition of a new intel socket, and regretted it for years.

Let the new sockets, chips and boards work out their chinks before you buy, I say.