I am thinking of buying an am2 system when conroe comes out for a cheaper option. I have been comparing prices between s939 and am2 components and came across the AMD Athlon 64 3800+. All other 939 & am2 chips are very similar in price apart from this. The s939 version is £196.17 Including VAT and the am2 version is £99.82 Including VAT. Why is s939 double the price? Is there a massive performance difference?
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AMD Athlon 64 3800+ (AM2 v 939)
- Thread starter djcj
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There is no massive performance difference - depending on the RAM used the AM2 version might be a fraction slower, but nothing massive. The main reason for the price difference is that AMD wants to get more AM2's sold for awareness of the new socket over the S939 version, plus the S939 version is kept artificially high because the San Diego 3700+ and 4000+ are staying higher in price (AMD chose not to do price cuts on 1Mb cache cores).
Associate
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Are you sure you're not comparing a S939 3800X2 vs a AM2 3800? AMDs "post-conroe" prices seem to be coming through now on single cores (thus 3800 has almost halved in price) but the dual cores still seem to be holding to the old prices. Thus while 3800 and 3800X2 used to be about the same price the 3800 is currently much cheaper than the 3800X2. (Hence, I'm delaying my proposed upgrade for another month!)
Soldato
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The AM2 socket is the replacement for Socket 939
The CPUs on each socket are clocked the same with the same amount of cache. The only difference is that AM2 uses DDR2 memory and S939 uses DDR memory
In some cases the AM2 setup can be a fair bit quicker, in other cases it can be a little slower all due to the memory used
As AM2 is the new socket and all future CPUs come out on this socket I would build a PC around AM2. As the AM2 chips are cheaper this is just an added bonus!
The CPUs on each socket are clocked the same with the same amount of cache. The only difference is that AM2 uses DDR2 memory and S939 uses DDR memory
In some cases the AM2 setup can be a fair bit quicker, in other cases it can be a little slower all due to the memory used
As AM2 is the new socket and all future CPUs come out on this socket I would build a PC around AM2. As the AM2 chips are cheaper this is just an added bonus!
djcj said:
To clarify - are you comparing dual core AM2 v's dual code 939, or single core AM2 v's single core 939?
The £196.17 Including VAT price you mention, sounds like a dual core 3800+, whereas the 99.82 Including VAT price sounds like a single core.
It could also be the retailer you are sourcing from has made a pricing error?
Associate
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hes on about single core for both
