Near Future of AMD64 CPUs

By winter this year, I will most likely have an AMD64 system. With all the transitions the AMD64 interface is getting with DDR2, PCI-Express and Socket 939, its really a bad time to be purchasing a upgradable system untill all these specs are launched.

I'm trying to put together the puzzle and any help would be appreciated. Ok, so now that Athlon64 is getting Dual Channel memory soon with the move to Socket 939. So what I'm wondering is what will be the key differences between the Athlon64 and Athlon64 FX.

After doing some research, it seems that the Athlon64 is only going to have 512KB of cache in the future with all Socket 939 Athlon64 CPUs. The Athlon64 FX on the other hand will not only keep the 1MB of cache but gain a boost in FSB memory speeds and take advantage of DDRII memory. The Athlon64 FX is supposed to move to 1GHz FSB throughput which means its going to require PC2-4300 memory to operate at its full potential.

Athlon64 on the other hand is supposed to stay on 800MHz FSB and use PC2-3200 DDRII memory.

HERE'S A BIG QUESTION... Is Socket 939 only support DDRII memory?? Or does it support the old DDR as well?

There was a picture on watchtoimpress asain site of an Athlon64 FX-55 operating at 2.60GHz with a 1.00GHz FSB and PC2-4300 memory. Ohh man, that would be sweet to have!!


OC-Master

The thing that will determine whether you're gonna have DDRII support is gonna be the CPU. As the memory controller is found on the CPU itself. The chipset on motherboard will most likely play some role as well, early 939 pin chipsets might not support DDRII, but later ones should have support for both RAM types