What is so special about the new AM2 CPUs? Is it just me, or are new computer products getting released a lot faster than before? It seemed as though the 939 is still new and they are already replacing them.

The AM2's are dead now they have been replaced by the AM4's. By the time you finish reading this the AM8's will be out and the AM16's will be in production!

If you could produce a product that the consumer wanted to replace every other week wouldn't you?

^ You were being sarcastic but at the same time you were basically explaining how it is now.

AMD has to keep up with Intel, but also has to keep up with the current trends in memory/RAM. Intel has gone to DDR2 & AMD has to too. That meant a redesign in the A64 memory controller (among other things). I don't know if the socket change was warranted or not, but certainly new motherboards with DDR2 DIMM slots & different chipsets were necessary. And I suppose they could argue that the socket change prevents a CPU with DDR2 memory controller from being placed in a board that supports DDR1 only (or vice-versa).

DDR3 is not far off...it's been used on video cards for some time now. As soon as JEDEC agrees on a standard, we'll be seeing that popping up. Of course, DDR4 is already in the works.

They will always be changes & improvements in technology....some will be necessary, others will be solely done to keep us buying. We live in a consumer-based society & they have to keep us consuming! This isn't a PC specific thing, it's a trend in all technology based products (cars, TVs, cellphones, etc) & actually, it's a trend in marketing in general.

The odd thing about it was why now did AMD go to DDR2 this late? DDR2's lifespan is halfway over. AMD should have just shocked everyone including Intel and went with DDR3 early next year with the AM3 platforum. I think AMD made a mistake by going to AM2 DDR2 platform this late in the game. It would have made more sense to keep socket 939 as their current board until jan 2007 and just skip DDR2 altogether and go with the AM3 DDR3 platform with their new redesigned chips.

To me AM2 was more of a marketing ploy then anything worth upgrading upon, because if you look at the preformance diff between the AM2 and socket 939 platforms and processors, you can see that there isn't much of a diff in preformance, especialy not enough to make the switch from socket 939 to AM2 at this point.

AMD Athlon 64 X2 4600+ OC 2.7ghz
2GB Dual Channel DDR 3200
Nvidia 7900GT
SATA II 2x 200gig 7200rpm 16mb cache RAID-0
Gigabyte Nforce 4 SLI

Well with the leap of going to AM2 this article states that you can upgrade to AM3, also you wont have the hypertransport tech. 3.0.

http://blogs.zdnet.com/hardware/index.php?p=34

Jim R

But in order to go to AM3 you have to buy an AM3 cpu, you can't put an AM2 cpu onto an AM3 motherboard becuase the AM3 motherboard socket is minus a pin from that of the AM2's socket. Which almost hints that AM3 cpus will have 939 pins considering that you will be able to use an AM3 cpu on an AM2 with 940 pins. Now if both AM2 and AM3 processors are going to seat the same, then that will automaticly rule out any chance of throwing a socket 939 AMD processor on an AM3 motherboard.

The way I see it is once AM3's are released AMD is going to put all of their mainstream cpu's on it while the bugdet cpus will stay on the AM2. Sort of of like they did with Athlon 64's moving to Socket 939 and while 99% of Semprons stayed on Socket 754.

AMD is just getting more complex to figure out each generation. I mean the stuff I mentioned above can test even the most advance users not to mention people that are novice.

AMD Athlon 64 X2 4600+ OC 2.7ghz
2GB Dual Channel DDR 3200
Nvidia 7900GT
SATA II 2x 200gig 7200rpm 16mb cache RAID-0
Gigabyte Nforce 4 SLI

Seems to me amd is becoming like intel of the late 90`s--every 18 months a new platform

Seems that way it used to be once every 3 to 4 years a socket change now it's more like once ever year.

Intel is the worst they have had 3 chipset changes in on one socket in less then 3 years from the 915/925, 945/955/975A to the 965/975B

AMD Athlon 64 X2 4600+ OC 2.7ghz
2GB Dual Channel DDR 3200
Nvidia 7900GT
SATA II 2x 200gig 7200rpm 16mb cache RAID-0
Gigabyte Nforce 4 SLI