Intel's playing catch-up

[amdfangirl]

^ Even so, they should have followed it up better. An Athlon X2 here and there?

I never really bought a 754 or 939 thank god.

I would think socket A enough to do it. Should've stuck to the classics...

 

[MU_Engineer]

^Its hard to say what you said since you haven't been able to compare. And to say the truth you wont be able to unless you have at least a Phenom 9750BE. The Q6600 will easily beat out your older system even in 64bit.

And you are very right. AMD made a mistake by dumping S939 so fast and screwing over a lot of people like yourself in the process. I don't see how they couldn't just adapt S939 to DDR 2 and why the extra pin was that neccisary. But what can ya do.

They couldn't switch Socket 939 to DDR2 as the socket has a pinout for 368 memory traces (dual-channel 184-pin DDR) and AM2 has a pinout for 480 traces for dual-channel 240-pin DDR2. DDR and DDR2 are in no way, shape, or form compatible, so even if you make a "939+" DDR2 socket that had 939 pins and was physically compatible with the DDR 939 CPUs and sockets, it would have a different pinout due to the extra traces and be electrically incompatible. AMD wanted to make it easy for people to get the CPU and memory correct, so they changed the socket so you couldn't screw up. It's the only logical choice.

Now did AMD get rid of Socket 939 and DDR too soon? That's a whole different can of worms. Truthfully I do not think so- I think that they never should have made socket 754 and just had 939 from the get-go, then migrated to AM2 and S1 when the X2s came out. DDR2 was mature enough that AMD didn't have to wait that extra year between the 939 X2s debuting and socket AM2 replacing them.

@amdfangirl: There is nothing wrong with Socket 754 or 939. 745 had a long life and was about as flexible as Socket A ever was- you could make a heck of an HTPC by putting Turion 64 MTs in a desktop 754 board, for example. 939 was a powerful socket for its day and as long as you do not intend to try to upgrade (which is always a dicey move), it was a fine choice. I run a 939 system and am very happy with it. Of course, I intended for the motherboard and its CPU to remain forever married and to simply replace (er, actually, repurpose) the entire shebang when it is time.

 

[jimmysmitty]

I don't think it was a mistake to move from DDR to DDR2. But they really let a lot of people down with the jump by just one pin. Of course what you said makes some sense but still it hurts the wallet.