I've been shopping around for a new system, but I'm running into a lack of information. Please correct me if I'm wrong, but does it look like AMD is going to stick with the Socket 939 chips? I'd like to try that never-successful route of upgrading to the cheapest processor, then upgrading to the top of the line once it's out and cheap enough. But in order to do that, I need for AMD to make up their mind between the 754, 939, 940, and whatever the hell else they have up their sleeves. I recollect reading that the Socket 939 would be the layout they'd stick with, but I don't have any confirmation of that.

So what I'm trying to firgure out is if my above assumptions are correct, and if there's somewhere I can go to find info like this. Any ideas?

Every new CPU one buys, invariably requires a new socket, a new motherboard, and new RAM. Regardless of brand or model.

it's not worth the time trying to figure that stuff out.. you never know what AMD or Intel are going to do with sockets.

939 looks to be a more stable upgrade path.. but it's almost never worth it to upgrade chips in the same board anyway.

Since it doesn't seem like you have a need for a specificaly fast CPU, I would just save your money and buy a reasonable box, with enough ram (1gb or so) than waste time/money worrying about upgrade path.

an Athlon XP 3000 is $110, and if you arn't going to run linux or the beta 64bit windows.. it's probably more than powerful enough for you. Why spend an extra $50 on socket 939 CPU, and possibly more on a motherboard for what ammounts to the same speed (Athlon 64 3000 $160 or so)

I feel it's just easier to hand-me-down hardware to other tasks than to try and upgrade stuff.. this way i maybe spend $500 on machine parts, and get something reasonable, but not super-great.. and then a year or two later, i can spend another $500 and get what might have cost me $1500 the first time around Then again, I do 90% of my work on my thinkpad (which i'm on now) so I don't buy much desktop hardware.

That all seems to echo my own research today. I did eventually find a decent site with some explanation of the differences between the 754 and the 939.

I know it's proably foolish to plan on upgrading within the same CPU line, but last time I upgraded I went with the middle of the line (the 2100+), so I feel like I had less room to squeeze performance improvement from the same line. Looking back, if I had started out with a 1500+ and then upgraded to 3200+ later on, it would have been far more worth it.

No, I don't need a super fast PC, but I would like a decent amount of processing power. I won't be playing the latest games, but I will be doing quite a bit of video stuff, like capturing, editing, converting, and DVD creation. That all takes a lot of time. I'd like to shorten that time. So basically I'll be looking to get a better CPU, and go inexpensive on the video card side.

I just went through the same decision process yesterday. The socket 754 is EOL'd for everything except the low end consumer chips. Socket 939 is supposed to be where it is at for at least the first half of '05 for Athlons. There won't be any new Athlon 754s so if you go that route I'd buy at the higher end of the spectrum today rather than plan for a minor upgrade later on.

Personally I went for the low end socket 939 Athlon 64 (this is for my personal file/web/video/etc server running FreeBSD). It is already a huge speed improvement over the 5 year old celeron system it is replacing and if I decide I need another upgrade in a year or two I know that I'll be able to get a new CPU that is at least 50% faster than this one so the upgrade may actually be worthwhile. The price difference was only like $50 compared to an equivalent 754 system and worth it for a little future proofing in my opinion. Not to mention your getting a newer motherboard chipset in the process with additional features.

-Mike

I wish I had read this before I order my Asus socket 754 motherboard w. an Athlon 64 2800+ a few weeks ago! What's the fastest socket 754 Athlon 64 they are going to make?

Yeah, I think that's the way I'm leaning towards. There's two ways to look at it:

1- The 754 chips are a whole $50 cheaper for the same CPU speed
2- The 939 chips are only $50 more for better features

What you've said echoes what I've been reading today. Apparently the socket 939 chips run cooler, require less power, has double the memory bandwidth, and will probably be replaceable in a year.

*edit*
The reason I'm asking these questions is because I'm not really upgrading my current machine. I'm replacing it. I went a little overboard with my last PC case (Lian-Li PC75), and it really isn't suitable for a desktop PC. It was a reaction to the cramped, horribly designed Dell case I had in early college. Now I know better, and I'm looking at a cramped, extremely well designed Shuttle case. I love the design and the size, and it would be nice to take it over to a friend's house if I needed to work on something there (we sometimes do video projects together, and it sucks working at one person's place at a time.

I'm looking at the SN95G5. So all I'd need is that, a cheap video card, a stick or two of RAM, and I'd be set. I've already got the DVD burner. I've totalled it up, and it comes to about $600. $800 if I want a new hard drive (which I might that new Maxtor is sweet).