As with many folks, the tax refund is on its way, and I’m looking to upgrade. Last I checked, people were a little leery about S939 because it’s a new technology. I did a quick search here and at Anand and didn’t see anything jumping out with a “yea” or “nay” on this technology, which I assume means that it works just peachy. Any reason to avoid it?
While I’m at it, for years now I’ve bought my computers at the local PC Club, which I like because they let me specify exactly what parts I want, don’t make me buy anything I don’t need (like speakers/keyboard/mouse), and then they put it all together for a modest fee. But are there any hot online PC makers that I should check out for price comparison? I’ve been hearing the name Monarch, is that place good?
Yeah, Monarch has decent prices on most components. Sometimes newegg is cheaper, sometimes monarch is cheaper. If I didn’t have the time to build my own, I’d gladly let Monarch put a computer together.
We’ve bought two PCs from Monarch in the last 14 months, and so far I’m pretty happy. You could check http://www.resellerratings.com/ as well.
Another similar competitor: http://www.ibuypower.com/ – I like Monarch better because you can be more precise about the components, though. (e.g., last I looked Ibuypower would let you specify a 3500+ AMD processor, but they wouldn’t let you specify 90nm). But I’ve known folks who had a good experience with ibuypower.
I’ver been running an Athlon64 3500+ (90nm) on an MSI Socket 939 motherboard for about 3 weeks. I haven’t run any benchmarks so can’t give any concrete numbers but I’ve been very happy with the performance relative to my previous system and haven’t experienced any problems or system instability so far.
Socket 939 is, in fact, “just peachy.” It’s socket 940 without the need (or support) for registered RAM.
If you get a nice new board that supports the 90nm Athlon 64 CPUs, it will likely also support the dual-core CPUs this fall with only a new BIOS update. Easy.
I’ve built and tested “lots” of socket 939 systems, and there’s nothing wrong at all. It’s not inherently better or worse than 754 or 940 (though not needing registered RAM is a good thing).
