939/734 pin?

Spamdini

Senior member
May 24, 2004
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what exactly is the difference i dont understand what having more pins does...plz explain i am new...just wanna understand
 

mechBgon

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Oct 31, 1999
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Originally posted by: inidmaps
what exactly is the difference i dont understand what having more pins does...plz explain i am new...just wanna understand
The CPUs that fit the Socket939 or Socket940 have two memory controllers instead of one, so they will perform faster at a given MHz, all other factors being equal. They'll also be able to run more memory modules at DDR400 speeds (or maybe above) since they have more than one memory controller. People are especially interested in them because Socket754 will top out with an Athlon64 3700+ or so, while Socket939 will carry forward past the 4000+ range.

Welcome to the Forums, hope that helps a little :)
 

Spamdini

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May 24, 2004
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helps alot since im in the market for a new pc right about now u seem to know alot do u think u could help me out?
 

mechBgon

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Originally posted by: inidmaps
helps alot since im in the market for a new pc right about now u seem to know alot do u think u could help me out?
Sure :) How about answer these:

  • give some typical things you'll be using the computer for (gaming, video editing, student/office stuff)
  • how soon you plan to buy your hardware
  • what hardware (if any) you'll want to re-use (monitor, keyboard, mouse, video card, drives or so on)
  • do you have an operating system you can use on it already (if so, what one?) or will you need to buy one?
  • And of course, what budget you want to stay within! :)
I'm going to bed pretty soon, maybe someone else can look at your answers and propose a parts kit :)
 

Spamdini

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May 24, 2004
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the sytem will be used motly for gaming i guess. and i was planning on buying around the 6th of june i wont be reusing any of my old hardware and i already have windows xp pro SP1 to use. My budget is no more than $1600 CDN not including monitor. but i wouldnt mind paying less than that, im also looking at something that is going to last a while.

*im also very curiouse about when PCI-E is going to be released in canada aswell as when socket 939 is going to be released in canada.
 

imported_Aelius

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Apr 25, 2004
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PCI-E is total junk for an AMD system as things stand right now. All it is, is a faster bus. However vid cards haven't even toped out AGP 4X let alone AGP8X and they sure as heck aint gona be toping out PCI-E. Its junk technology if your looking at video performance so don't wait for it. The only good thing about it will come from having tons of PCI cards in those mobo (motherboard) slots. Personally I will have only 1 at most so it makes absolutely no difference.

If you want a system that will last a while but your only on a value budget then I suggest waiting until socket 939 CPUs and motherboards arrive in early to late June. By then hopefully a budget CPU will have arrived for socket 939 which is what your going to have to get. The other CPUs are going to be fairly costly in comparison. Just make sure you get a very good mobo that will allow you to upgrade your CPU later on if need be. This is where mobo chipsets come in. nVidia has an outstanding nForce3 250GB chipset that pretty much blows every other chipset out of the water on both features and performance. I'm hoping that they will transfer this technology to socket 939 mobos because it would make the perfect mobo. We will have to wait and see but the best one of those right now is an ASUS mobo with that chipset.

RAM is a major consideration. You will spend a considerable ammount of your cash on RAM. Always go with Dual Channel RAM, especially with the socket 939 CPUs. Your only concern is either going with 512MB or 1024MB of RAM in either 2X256MB DIMs or 2X512MB DIMs. I can't quite suggest an exact RAM specification other than this because we don't know yet how current RAM will work with the new socket 939 CPUs. We will have to wait. I think its likely that we will be waiting until the end of June before benchmarks and good recomendations hit the Internet. Which is just as well since that will allow prices to settle down a bit.

For a video card you should get an ATI 9800Pro 128MB for best overall price/performance. Do not buy a 9800SE card because its junk.

Optical and Hard Drives are pretty much by preference. I don't know how much stuff you gona store on your computer so I can't recommend anything on this front. You just have to decide, but by the time you get to a hard drive you won't have much cash left so I suspect you will either have to go with a high performance 7200RPM drive or if you are not going to store anything major on your drive I suggest the WD Raptor 36GB 10,000RPM drive which will cost about the same as a high performance 250GB 7200RPM drive but the performance on the Raptor will be much higher.

Sound card will likely be a non issue. Assuming ASUS and nVidia stick with their current best chipset and include something like SoundStorm on the mobo you will not need a sound card at all. The onboard sound in this case will be virtually the same unless you have really good ears, plus it should support 6.1 sound.

Speakers are another question mark. Again this is perference. Wait until you find the right motherboard before deciding on speakers since if they don't include something like SoundStorm on the mobo you gona have to buy a sound card which will bite into your budget and will leave you even less for a sound system.

The case is not unimportant. Get a decent case and not some plastic toy. This will depend on your budget of course. Its hard to recommend anything in this area since its again perference and it depends greatly on your budget by the time you get to picking out a case.

The one thing you should never skimp on is a power supply. Get a good high quality PS from Enermax or a similarly good company. 350-430Watt PSU should be good enough. Getting a low quality PSU will result in system instability, damaged parts or total system failure. I see it every day at work where our IBM workstations are dropping like flies due to poor PSUs.

My new system won't be that dissimilar from yours, I even live in Canada so I know how hard it is to find good computer parts online or elsewhere. The only difference is that my budget is about double yours, which will be sunk into the CPU, video card, hard drive, and lots of high performance RAM.

Anyway this is also my first system. I have built many, including a major overhaul of my current rig but never built one for myself from scratch.

Its so exciting I can't hardly wait. =D

P.S. Edit: I forgot to mention why AMD. AMD is for gaming and it costs less. If you compare a whole Intel system to AMD your looking at a hefty price difference. Intel is better at number crunching and some applications but not games so it aint worth the price, especially when your on a budget.
 

Spamdini

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May 24, 2004
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thanks thats alot of help...just one question at beginning u said
However vid cards haven't even toped out AGP 4X let alone AGP8X and they sure as heck aint gona be toping out PCI-E.
u mean games havent topped out AGP4X right? not vid cards, as in there arent many games that have pushed a card to need more than AGP4X. just to be clear.
 

imported_Aelius

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Apr 25, 2004
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No I mean Video cards.

There was 1X, 2X, 4X and 8X AGP. If you benchmark the exact same card in 4X and 8X variety, which you can still find reviews for in the GeForce4 series then you can see the difference between the two is virtually zero.

Reason is simple. On the video card itself the bus runs at something like 36GB/sec and the AGP slot only runs at around 1GB/s. PCI-E will run at 2GB/sec. I might be mixed up a bit. AGP 8X might be 2GB and PCI-E 4GB. Either way its not even close to the onboard bus of the video card. From what I understand the onboard calculations would be faster if it could be done in conjuction with the CPU/mobo (this is theory not fact) but since the external bus is so slow its instead done on the card itself and it only talks to the CPU/mob when it absolutely needs to. Frankly I don't see how an external bus would be faster in this regard even if it was 36GB, which it isn't. However I'm not an engineer and I'm sure someone at nVidia or ATI could come up with a whole new bus interface between the video card and the CPU/mobo if the PCI/AGP slot would be fast enough to actually talk to the CPU/mobo at the speed that is demanded by today's games.

It doesn't so it makes absolutely no difference. So forget PCI-E. Technically its impossible to use it the way that video card makers and Intel specifically want you to think that it can. What marketing does is say gee 8X is bigger than 4X so it must be better (it isn't) so PCI-E has twice the bus of AGP8X so it must be twice as good but lets not get sued and say that so they will write something like "Double bandwidth over AGP 8X" on the cover in hopes of selling more video cards to people whom don't know better.

Its all a marketing ploy that sadly I also fell into when I got my video card. My only saving grace is that the card I have only came in AGP 8X but it would have made no difference if it was or not. At the time tho I thought that 8X was better than 4X simply based on marketing and looking at overall benchmarks of the card and not 4X and 8X variations, which existed in this type of card just not from the company I got it from.

I hope that clears it up. I'm sure I made some mistakes in explaining this but its from memory when I did research on this some 8 or 9 months ago so forgive me if I made a mistake. However the overal idea of what I'm trying to explain is sound and this is how it does work.
 

Spamdini

Senior member
May 24, 2004
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alright.

also i was looking at the price lists of my local place and the nforce 3 250 mb are only amd 64 bit CPU boards is that correct?...

and obviously a whole new line of CPU will have to be released with the socket 939 mobos right?
 

DAPUNISHER

Super Moderator CPU Forum Mod and Elite Member
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You answered both your questions so you seem to have a handle on it now.
 

imported_Aelius

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Apr 25, 2004
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Your getting a hang of this. Pretty soon you gona be schooling your friends on how to build a custom rig that will chew through anything. =)
 

Spamdini

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May 24, 2004
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i guess but what i wanted to know was what would be the best CPU to invest in and i guess with being told to get the nforce3 which is only for Athlon64 the answer would be Athlon64.

so now all i have to wait for is socket 939 to come out where i live and i can finally buy
 

imported_Aelius

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Apr 25, 2004
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You got it.

You wanted a computer that will have a lasting value and presumably the ability to upgrade it easily.

This will do it.

Just gota wait for all the new CPUs to get released.

There is one thing to keep in mind that I probably should have mentioned earlier.

AMD will have 3 CPU types for desktop (not counting the Opteron server CPU).

1. AMD Value (unsure of name yet as it hasn't been released but it is the "Duron" of the AMD family of CPUs and it is only 32 Bit, it is not a 64 Bit CPU line. They are actually the AlthonXP line of CPUs that are currently out that are being transfered over to the new socket 939. It makes sense since its a cheap alternative to the Intel Celeron CPUs and they are WAY better).

2. AMD64 (this one is a transfer over of the current AMD64 CPUs such as the 2800, 3000, 3200, and 3400 but they will likely start at somewhere around 3500 on socket 939 and may release some lower level CPUs like 2900, 3100, 3300 just to make it easier to pick them out from the family of so many AMD CPUs.

3. AMDFX (this is the top of the line CPUs that are currently the FX51 and FX53 on socket 940, the next in line will likely be FX55. This is beyond your budget and it is also beyond mine. This will skyrocket the price of your system easily due to the high cost of these CPUs, plus the AMD64 CPUs are not that far behind in performance and are generally far cheaper)

I hope this gives you a better idea of what to look forward to as far as CPUs are concerned. There is going to be dozens of CPUs to choose from in socket 939 so I'm sure you can find one that will fit your budget.

Edit: I forgot to mention something. I know that the current nVidia chipset is for 64bit CPUs only but with the AMD Value line of CPUs going to socket 939 it may very well change with the coming of new mobos, or nVidia will rename it something else so people can get even more confused. =p Either way we just gota wait and see.
 

Spamdini

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May 24, 2004
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sounds good thanks...

with a socket 939 mobo i can still get a video card say that is out now cause it still runs AGP right?

and do u have a more specific date than june for a release date of socket 939 in canada?
 

imported_Aelius

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Apr 25, 2004
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Yes any card will work with it but its not the socket but the motherboard you gota look at.

If the motherboard says its AGP 8X or it says it has 1 AGP slot then you gona have to buy an AGP video card. If it will say, and some will say this, that it has 1 PCI-E 16X slot and a whole bunch of other lower level PCI-E slots then you have no choice but to buy a PCI-E video card.

You won't find PCI-E video cards slots along with AGP slots since they don't mix. So eventually we will have no choice BUT to go with PCI-E but the point is that AMD isn't pushing it and it is not a requirement yet so there is no point in spending a penny for it. Get it only when its your only option.

I won't touch a PCI-E motherboard until the day when AGP video cards are no longer made, which likely won't happen for AMD for at least a year if not more.\

As for a release date, quite honestly your guess is as good as mine. I think the previous release date was yesterday but it was pushed to June 1st. Not sure. Either way expect to wait until the end of June.

Not because CPUs won't be out, but because you won't find any really good motherboards and you won't have an idea what to buy. Plus you gota give time for people to review the RAM with the new CPU/motherboard combinations. It won't happen overnight.

Just gota wait. Its the hardest part. 8(