Athlon64 939

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enricong

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Mar 17, 2003
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I'm looking to upgrade my CPU and MB (and memory)
The Toledo with the dual core sounds very interesting but thats over a year away. I read that they recently changed to the Socket 939.
Does anyone know of the Toledo will use Socket 939?

I'm thinking that perhaps I can get something like an Athlon64 3500 now with a MB and then just upgrade the cpu in a year or later.

I am hoping that they will still be using that socket.

The problems that I see with this plan are that Socket 939 is new so there aren't many MB and they will prob improve alot in the near future so getting one now may not be a good idea. and Its possible the toldeo won't even use the 939.

Any suggestions or ideas on what I should do?
My plan is to upgrade sometime this month. I just don't know what to upgrade to.
 
Well... socket 939 and pci-ex and ddr2 are all coming up very soon. So if you decide to go for socket 939, get those features for a fully future-proof board. However, that will cost you a boatload of cash and the soul of your first born. On the other hand, you could build a decent socket 754 system now. I think AMD has some higher steppings coming out for 754, and I don't think people are going to stop making pci cards and ddr memory anytime soon. So in my opinion, take what cash you have, build the best socket 754 system now, upgrade as needed, and prob wind up building another system in 2-3 years.

"If I owned this place and hell, I'd rent out this place and live in hell" - Toombs
 
Most likely toledo will fit into a S939 board. AMD has confirmed dual core opterons will work in existing S940 boards, so I really don't see a whole lot of reaons why Athlon FX (which is basically an Opteron) would suddely require a new motherboard.

That being said, I have to agree with most of what the above poster said (I only disagree DDR2 would be around the corner for AMD chips, not you'd want any, but it wil take until next year at least, and PCI-E is still a few months at least). I wouldn't worry too much about keeping your motherboard, you are about to spend almost $500 on the cpu, and Toledo will likely cost closer to $1.000 so who cares about the cost of a $100 board :| Especially if you think PCI-E is a concern, because a PCI-e videocard will likely add another $400+ to your upgrade, so you're looking at $1500 allready. A waste of money anyhow, but definately makes the cost of the MB irrelevant. Sell the old one on ebay, and recover half your money.

= The views stated herein are my personal views, and not necessarily the views of my wife. =
 
Well, assuming the toledo comes out in about a year, I was thinking that the price would start dropping eventually.
I'm thinking that if I get something now, the MB will be about 20% of the cost, so I would hope that whenever I decide to get a toledo, the cost would have dropped enough for it.

but I suppose I see what you mean.
So if being able to keep my MB is not a factor, is there any point in getting a 939 MB. I think it would be cheaper and I might beable to get one of those CPU's with the 1mb cache. Plus the 754 motherboards are more mature.
But I hear that the 939 supports a faster memory bandwidth.

What would you suggest?
I'm just thinking that I need to upgrade THIS summer, but maybe I'll get something alittle slower/cheaper so that my next upgrade can come sooner.

Also, I have no interest in PCI-E or ddr2 at this point so that is not a factor.
 
>Well, assuming the toledo comes out in about a year, I was
>thinking that the price would start dropping eventually.

It is slated for 2H05, which typically means december or januari :) Don't count on it dropping fast in price either, its not like the "old" FX51 is a bargain chip now at $724.

>So if being able to keep my MB is not a factor, is there
>any point in getting a 939 MB

Not really.

> I think it would be cheaper and I might beable to get one
>of those CPU's with the 1mb cache. Plus the 754
>motherboards are more mature.

Yep. If I where buying today, I'd get a S754 for sure.

>But I hear that the 939 supports a faster memory bandwidth.

True, socket 939 chips have dual channel memory controllers, whereas S754 have single channel. However, S939 chips also have only halve the cache of S754 at the ~same rating and clockspeed (and therefore same price). The net result is they perform about identical, so it doesnt matter a whole lot. Performance wise a S754 3400+ (2.2/1MB/single channel) is identical to a S939 3500+ (2.2/512Kb/dual channel). The only real "advantage" of S939 is its ability to use more memory modules, but that comes at the price of having to install at least 2 (dual channel capable) of them

>What would you suggest?

I don't know what your budget or requirements are, but if you considered an FX, I guess budget aint the problem. Still, unless you really need the fastest thing out there, I'd say the sweet spot is around the A64 3200+. you can't go terribly wrong with that chip, and it should serve you well for quite a while. If you want it cheaper, consider a 3000+ Newcasttle, want something faster, get a 3400+ but I wouldn't go much lower or higher.

= The views stated herein are my personal views, and not necessarily the views of my wife. =
 
i would agree for the most part excpet for one thing...

if he wants to get an ahtlon fx chip, then id say go for s939. the fx-53 939 is about the same price as the s940 part and you get the added luxury of being able to use any ram you want, instead of being restricted to registered memory. if it was me and i was looking at the FX, id go for 939
 
no, I'm not looking to get an FX cpu.

I read that the 939 can have up to 14.4gb/s mem bandwidth while 754 only is 9.6gb/s This seems like a big difference especially since its memory bandwidth.
I guess it really depends what I'm running if I'm gonna compare the performance diff between a larger cache and a larger memory bandwidth.

I mainly plan to use the computer for normal desktop use and for video compression and editing. I suppose video compression might not untilize the cache very well so the increased bandwidth might be more important but all this is just speculation.

BUT, I just looked at the amd site and it seems the 3700 is the only one with 1mb cache while the 3400 only has 512kb cache. A 3700 would be alot more expensiving making the 3500 look much better
 
check some reviews of S939 that use the programs you use, and see which one performs better. I honestly don't think the difference will ever significantly exceed 2-5% between the 3400+ and 3500+ or 3700+ vs 3800+. AMD's rating does a fairly good job of hiding implementation details (cache, clock and single/dual) and giving a good idea of respective performance. There are also few apps that really "break" it by loving either the cache/clock or the memory bandwith much more. Encoding might indeed favor bandwith over cache, but I doubt it will warrant the price premium for socket 939, and I'm positively sure you'll never notice the difference.

= The views stated herein are my personal views, and not necessarily the views of my wife. =
 
ok, thanks for your suggestions.

but I am still alittle confused about the 3400 with 1mb cache.
is there one which has 1mb cache? or was it a typo?
 
<A HREF="http://www6.tomshardware.com/cpu/20040601/socket_939-06.html" target="_new">http://www6.tomshardware.com/cpu/20040601/socket_939-06.html</A>

As far as I can tell simply from looking at these charts on thw, the athlon 64 3200+ comes in two cores at this time:
athlon64 3200+ 2000 mhz with 1024 l2 cache (claw hammer) also comes in
athlon64 3200+ 2200 mhz with 512 l2 cache (newcastle).
----------------------------------
Athlon64 2800+ is 1800 mhz with 512 l2 cache.
Athlon64 3000+ is 2000 mhz with 512 l2 cache
--------------------

Athlon64 3400+ is 2200 mhz with 1024 l2 cache
-------------------------------------------
Athlon64 3500+ is the entry level socket 939 at this time. The socket 939 uses dual channel memory but drops l2 cache back to 512. Socket 939 also has 1gh hyper transport (instead of 800 mhz hyper transport in 754 cpus-whatever the heck that is.)
thus at:
Athlon64 3500+ is 2200 mhz and 512 l2 cache. Which in the tom's article listed above (on the gaming benchmarks I looked at) performs (usually) a bit better than the 3400+ but not by much (if at all) due to the advantages of the new platform.
 
>but I am still alittle confused about the 3400 with 1mb
>cache.
>is there one which has 1mb cache? or was it a typo?

AFAIK, all 3400+'s are clawhammer cores, 2.2 GHz, 1 MB cache, single channel. There might be 2.4 GHz 512 Kb cache newcasttle versions later, but they don't exist AFAIK.

Maybe you meant to say there are no 1 MB 3500+ parts though, these chips are indeed all 2.2 Ghz / 512 Kb cache / dual channel.

Don't worry too much about these things though, like I said, the rating does a good job hiding the implementation details. There isn't much (anythin) to be gained by specifically getting a certain cache/clock configuration for a given rating (price) except maybe for overclocking where you might want a lower clocked (bigger cache) A64 to possible have more frequency headroom for the $/rating.

= The views stated herein are my personal views, and not necessarily the views of my wife. =
 
thanks, I looked some more and found some stuff about the clawhammer and the newcastle.

I'm thinking a 3200 clawhammer might be good enough. I think I'd rather have the 1mb cache than the 200mhz.

Although, I am running at 1.4ghz now with a tbird and the 3200 clawhammer is only 1.6ghz I think.
Perhaps I will beable to push that up alittle.

I happen to have two sticks of Geil pc3500 dualddr ram. Hopefull it will work with the MB I get.
 
No.... the 3200 runs at 2.0GHZ, look in that table that was posted on page 1. And if you plan to OC the A64, you're only going to be able to do it via the FSB, because A64 have locked multipliers. But still, the 3200 is the best deal. I'm pretty sure if you graphed cost vs. MHZ, the 3200+ -> 3400+ is where it gets unreasonably steep.

"If I owned this place and hell, I'd rent out this place and live in hell" - Toombs
 
>but most of the ones on pricewatch say 1600mhz
>http://www.pricewatch.com/1/3/5742-1.htm

1600 MHz <b>bus</b>. its referring to the hypertransport bus, which really runs at 800 MHz (1 Ghz on socket 939à, but since its ful duplex (so 800 Mhz upload and 800 MHz download simultaneously in theory) marketeers will tell you it runs of a 1600 Mhz bus.

None of this matters though, the HT bus on A64 is only used to connect the southbridge and AGPbridge to the cpu, and really doesn't require anything that fast, let alone faster. Early nForce3 150 only had it running at 600 or so Mhz, and it made absolutely no difference. Memory is connected straight to the cpu, so HT is not a bottleneck, and the "1600" number is just marketing against intels "800 MHz FSB"

= The views stated herein are my personal views, and not necessarily the views of my wife. =
 
ooohhh. I was thinking that, but I remembered thebus was 800Mhz. thanks for clarifying.

I think I will be getting a clawhammer 3200.
Now its just a matter of picking a motherboard that works with my ram.
 
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