The Reasons Behind 754, 939 and 940 pins
Omega65
Philadelphia, Pa
The Inq: <a href="http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=11789" target=_blank><b>Athlon 64 sockets explained</b></a>
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At the technical symposium following the Athlon 64 launch, Mike Goddard, AMD Director of Technical Marketing of the firm's Computation Products Group, explained it in a way that it has left almost as many questions unanswered. But the long and the short of it is that <b>Socket 940 requires a 6 to 9 layer motherboard and Socket 939 only requires a 4 layer design</b>, making the motherboards much cheaper for chips using the latter.
Goddard is a seriously technical guy, he comes from a background of designing chips himself and knows a thing or two. He said that Socket 939 would allow later Athlon FX chips to use standard DDR memory rather than the current requirement for ECC registered DDR.
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<a href="http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=11789" target=_blank>read the rest here</a>
<i>
At the technical symposium following the Athlon 64 launch, Mike Goddard, AMD Director of Technical Marketing of the firm's Computation Products Group, explained it in a way that it has left almost as many questions unanswered. But the long and the short of it is that <b>Socket 940 requires a 6 to 9 layer motherboard and Socket 939 only requires a 4 layer design</b>, making the motherboards much cheaper for chips using the latter.
Goddard is a seriously technical guy, he comes from a background of designing chips himself and knows a thing or two. He said that Socket 939 would allow later Athlon FX chips to use standard DDR memory rather than the current requirement for ECC registered DDR.
</i>
<a href="http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=11789" target=_blank>read the rest here</a>
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Comments
Athlon FX (939pin - 4 layer design motherboards) will use regular Unbuffered DDR333/400 (~$75 / 512MB stick)
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Although IMO it seems strange that One pin can make that much of a difference. I think AMD is trying to stratify it's CPU market into High, Mid and Low end via Motherboard sockets. They're ignoring the fact that one of the reasons thry're popular among enthusiasts is that one Socket 462 was good for all the Athlons and Durons.
They should drop Socket 754 and 939 just use Socket 940
Powerful or not, if it's extremely expensive, enthusiasts and regular users won't go for it.
IMHO, they should keep 940 for the Opteron's and keep 939 for the Athlon 64 FX & Athlon 64. Even though the Athlon 64 only needs 754 pins, they could use the others for nothing or extra ground lines.
Nicely put!
It appears that they are betting that people will not care how much it costs to go to 64bit...
I wonder... will the AMD faithful step up and pay the price for the 64... Can you allow your self to by the low end CPU knowing that you can't ever upgrade to the higher tear CPUs they might offer...?
It will be interesting to see how it all plays out...
"g"