Originally posted by: Furen
Huh? Just how should AMD have made AM2 and 939 "cross compatible"? The only way to have possibly done this would be to have thrown 100+ extra pins on socket 939 back when it came out
Um excuse me, The current design doesnt nearly use all its pins.. and beside all hints devulged so far say that AM2 will be another 940 layout(incompatible with the orginal ofcorse).
Originally posted by: RichUK
I don?t think there was a physical constraint or a necessity for AMD to add an extra pin for AM2 functionality over the current s939. As about ~20% of the pins in the current s939 K8?s are redundant (they were there to allow for future expansion, DDR2? Well not anymore because of the introduction of s940 AM2). .
AM2 as far as I am aware is supposed to support a vast array of future expansion options. I cant see that extra pin counting for much, except for forced incompatibility with current s939 motherboards.
Some people don?t understand that the chipsets for example NF4 used on today?s s939 motherboards are literally just hubs, which allow all the motherboards I/O devices to communicate down one HTT tunnel. Which then allows for a more efficient motherboard design, and future designs for that matter, as PCB layers, tracers and electrical noise is reduced.
What I'm was trying to figure out is why AMD cannot give their memory controller slightly more flexability, I'm willing to bet that in 2 years we will have another socket change for DDR3 or what happens to be the next best ram standard then. Sure 939 was alot better than 940/754, but still one can fantasize that there will be another Socket 370 standard i guess.