New technology introduced and accepted too hastily?

Kosmo

Around couple a months ago, I upgraded my system and choose the AMD x64 3000+ cpu for socket 939 in the hopes of upgrading it in the future to a more powerful cpu. Now I'm not saying that I can't do that, I'm more like questioning the need for new 940-pin socket M2 that AMD is adopting second quarter 2006. Now AMD expects that socket 939 processors are going to "phase out" one year after the introduction of the new socket M2. As for plans to release new single and dual core processors for socket 939 during this "phasing out" has not been confirmed. I understand that coming from 3000+ cpu I have a good 20 models or so on top of my processor to upgrade to, but when this might be the case, the speed bump when changing from the 3000+ model to the X2 processors which (thank god) my mobo supports is not that good. So how do you guys feel about this?

3stripe

It's just Moore's law I guess dude... techno-land is a harsh world :-(

Jazzman

If I had a company that invented a CPU that could run like 10.000 GHz, I would never release that! I'd first release CPU's that go about 2000 GHz. Next year a release with 4000 GHz... and so on... I think that's what Intel and AMD are doing... and that's why there are no specific sockets... If you want to play it right, you let the consumer buy as much as possible...

Kosmo

Yeah well that is like business and economy 101, but what I'm asking is are we accepting these things too hastily, it's not that Intel and AMD have just begun to take this business model, the market is clearly there, why else would they do such thing if there was no profit there? Basically what I'm saying is that the end user has created this problem.

giginger

This socket changing shit really pisses me off. Why can't they just stick with 1 socket for a minimum of 5 years or something?

I know there's a company that does adapters but I don't know how good they are.

chimaira

Socket changing is annoying - but I suppose that for technology to advance, things need to change...

lech

Cpu sockets change for the better, most of the time. But if you look at it, many parts of the computer stay the same, we've had AGP for at least 8 years and now it's being taken over by pcix. Upping the pin count on cpu's gives them a little more flexibility and more bandwidth within the box and across the motherboard so it's not that all of a terrible thing. However I do agree that they should stick with a familiar pin count for a stated ammount of time.

Felipe

I'm always glad to buy second hand computers that rock. Good news! :-D

Kosmo

Do you know why AGP was here for so long? First of all, it was based on familiar technology so minimal advancement from PCI, second AGP actually changed during the years, several times actually, from AGP 1 to AGP 1.5, 2 ,4 and lastly 8, it was backwards compatible but slower AGP ports a) could not produce the same speeds as the faster ones b) could not produce as much power as the newer ones, creating a need for upgrade. And the third and last thing was, at 3dfx that was one of the main supporters of AGP figured out a quick roadmap where 3d accelerators would be going and reserved enough headroom for AGP to last for years. Kinda like what PCIe is doing. So, why not make a socket that has enough bandwith for future changes, why not make the socket downwards compatible, so if I buy a faster CPU but don't change the MOBO it would be slightly slower because of the bandwith issues. The transfer speed changes are not THAT large.

lech

Kosmo, very true indeed. But unlike AGP and PCI-X, cpu pinning isn't a standard, and neither is any class of mobo. I think that's where the line is drawn down to. Each different CPU takes advantage of all the other different controllers and chipsets on the MOBO and the instruction sets limit it to pretty much just that. While I wouldn't mind going for a co-processor that can handle these radical changes, I don't think it would be helpful if you say, upgrade to a P6 from a P4 or any other chipset. It's usually a change in the motherboards offerings that differ more greatly than what the cpu's generally have to offer and for the most part those offerings increase with each revision it seems.