Re: An AMD64 or my (or your) dreams - what to buy?
On Wed, Jun 30, 2004 at 03:48:51AM -0500, Chris Cheney wrote:
> I would suggest getting one of the new Socket 939 motherboards for
> upgradability reasons since they are replacing Socket 754. Currently it
> appears only the 3500+ and 3800+ use 939 so it may be out of your price
> range, the 3500+ is ~ $500 and 3800+ ~ $700. A low end 2800+ (S754)
> is only around $180 so it depends on your budget. :)
While we're talking about sockets, what's the difference between an
Athlon64 FX and an Opteron 1xx? Isn't an FX just an Opteron with the sync
HT links disabled? Or do they actually have a smaller die that doesn't
include the extra HT links at all? And they are pin compat, right? You
could use an Opteron in an Athlon64FX mobo, and vice-versa, right?
And what do people think about the possibility of CPU upgrades? With
Athlon socket A, the socket remained unchanged for a long time, but the FSB
kept going up, so you couldn't run a 333FSB Athlon in an old board. It
seems like it makes the most sense to keep CPU and mobo together, and get
both new, instead of trying to upgrade just the CPU. Then you can make
another computer, too... Maybe things will be different with AMD64, because
of the onboard memory controller, though. Still the traces between CPU and
memory have to be designed to handle high frequencies, so it's not
guaranteed that a faster CPU and faster RAM will work in an old mobo a few
years down the road. comments?
If you're not going for the very cutting edge, socket 754 is probably ok.
When you want to upgrade, get a new CPU and mobo. I don't like having a
still-good CPU lying around that I'm not going to use. If you have more
than one computer, upgrading the fastest one can start a trickle down that
lets you upgrade the mobo+CPU in another one.
Oh, and Radeon 9200 is the fastest Radeon that has open-source 3D drivers.
I don't have one (yet), though.
--
#define X(x,y) x##y
Peter Cordes ; e-mail: X(peter@cor , des.ca)
"The gods confound the man who first found out how to distinguish the hours!
Confound him, too, who in this place set up a sundial, to cut and hack
my day so wretchedly into small pieces!" -- Plautus, 200 BC
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