Motherboard, CPU, RAM and $400 USD

[Qmanol]

@mouselock

I thought it was just a geek thing until I stumbled across mention on Anandtech of the fact that the new FX is the last socket 939. Didn’t socket 939 just come out like a year ago? Are the CPU manufacturers changing sockets to force a video-card like business model where you have to upgrade your friggin’ MB every time a new line of procs comes out for huge profits on the MB chipset sales? Not sure I’m going to bother building that X2 939 system now if it’s not upgradable in any way in the future, processor wise. :P

(Seriously, what’s with the seemingly much faster cycling through sockets these days? My GF’s computer needs fixed. It was built 2 years ago, and is a Socket A. In the meantime we’ve gone through socket 754 and by the middle of this year 939. That’s approximately 1 per year. Are die sizes shrinking that quickly?)

Well, Intel have been doing it for the last 4 years or so, but I think AMD have just made a few boo-boos. 754 was a mistake. It was intended to be the desktop socket while 940 was the server socket. Everyone wanted their extra bandwidth, so 939 was created. But it can’t support DDR2, and I think the socket needs an extra pin for that, so we have M2. (Note: last sentence is completely non-authoritative.)

[Qmanol]

Hooray for double posts.

[Not_One_Of_Us]

So, what’s the take on the current CPU lines? Is FX really worth it over the 64? What’s this M2? Has Intel finally made a chip worthwhile?