AMD today launched their new socket AM2 platform for desktop users. The Socket AM2 from AMD is designed to enable next-generation platform innovations such as AMD Virtualization and high-performance, unbuffered DDR2 memory to the award-winning AMD64 architecture. Read on to take a look at what the changes are and how the impact your purchases.
If you own a 939-pin A64 X2 4800+ processor and want to move up to an AM2 4800+ you will have to buy the new processor, motherboard, and DDR2 memory to gain reap the 1% performance increase. With that said AMD is trying hard to promote their new energy efficient models and let the world know that AMD's reliability and stability has greatly improved over the years.
Right now I am still stress testing these new boards. I'm not sure how many other sites do that these days, but I still like to. Right now I have the system under full load with 4GB of Corsair's just released PC2-6400C3 memory under full load to see how the new AMD memory controller is doing.
I'm using the Corsair Nautilus 500 Water Cooler... For the price man it's a killer water cooler and the quick connect lines mean you can remove the cooling unit in uner 10 seconds with little fluid loss.
AM2 has been overclocking nicely... You'll see in the upcoming days.
If you read my article you will notice that I have been going through a number of BIOS revisions and drivers, but am still having some issues on getting these AMD AM2 based boards running right. Just now I have found out the issue, and a big thanks goes out to Corsair Memory for letting me know what the issue was.
I have been benchmarking and testing on the ASUS M2N32-SLI Deluexe motherboard revision number 1.02g. This is an early pre-production revision I am now told and revision number 1.03 has been released more recently and fixes a number of issues with the memory and greatly improves overclocking on all aspects of the platform.
So, the ASUS M2N32-SLI moves over to the graveyard with it's number of pre-production issues and ASUS is overnight mailing me a new board. Since it's a new revision with a number of changes all my current numbers are going to have to be trashed.
In the meantime I have moved over to the Foxconn 590SLI motherboard and will try it out.
im honestly interested for the first time in a low end AM2 set up. I think buying a decent board with some decent DDR2 and a sempron could give a quick and cheap entry into AM2. Oc the hell out of the board and the memory and who knows maybe you get a decent performer for less than the full blown price of a X2 AM2 rig.
"Don't open that! It's an alien planet! Is there air? You don't know!"
Skippman wrote:Do you not get any ATI Crossfire boards to review? Or is there just not any decent Crossfire boards out there?
No I have a number of AM2 motherboards with ATI chipsets, but nvidia has really pushed the limits with their BIOS and has crazy memory features not to mention SLI-Memory, which has EPP and was designed to run on the nVidia nForce 500 series.
