I'm a hardware noob, but I was just wondering, does a converter exist to allow you to use socket 939 cpus on boards made for the other type of amd64 cpus (socket 757 or whatever it is)?

I was thinking of maybe upgrading my CPU with christmas money, but I have one of the other types of AMD64 at the moment, not 939, and it seems all the CPUs now are 939 so an upgrade would involve a new cpu, new motherboard, and prolly a new video card as well because my current one is agp, and I can't afford all that.

You can still get 939 motherboards that are AGP. The only downside is you'll have to upgrade again later on, which means a new motherboard, video card, and then probably ram at that point :)

That "downside" assumes that your next upgrade wouldnt need a new mobo vid card and ram anyway.

khel i think there are some asrock mobos that take both cpu's with some kind of adapter and have agp/pcix.

So you have an Athlon 754 CPU and you want to upgrade it to an Athlon 939. You will need a new MB. There are no such converters in existence that will allow you to do that.

There are MB's that support both the 754 and 939. These have the uli m1689 chipset and by their design are slower than most non-combo boards and I would not recommend them.

There are also boards that support both AGP and PCI-Express. Some of the ones with the uli m1695 chipset are actually pretty good and perform on par with higher end boards. This may be worth considering for you.

There are no boards yet that support both CPU sockets and both video slots together.

Unfortunately you are in a position where you may need to upgrade both your mb and cpu and maybe your video card.
If you decide to keep your AGP video card and go with a combo video slot mb then I recommend this board. It is missing some features like firewire and gigabit lan but it will save you money for now and it performs well -

http://www.asrock.com/product/pro=duct_939Dual-SATA2.htm

Dont upgrade

whats your current cpu? if its 754 then it wouldn't be that old, and the whole cool thing about 939 is the whole ddr2/pcix/sata/x64 big leap in technology.

CPU/Motherboards are like a 1-2 year computer lifecycle, where as videocard ports are around 5-10 years. If your hoping to get a little bit of extra speed out of your system I wouldn't bother, in a years time you will have to upgrade again, and because of the lifecycle, ANOTHER new motherboard/cpu, PCI-X and new ram.

and the whole cool thing about 939 is the whole ddr2/pcix/sata/x64 big leap

So much misinformation in your post:

1. PCI-X is not the same as PCI Express.
2. Last I checked, DDR (not DDR2) is used for 939 boards.
3. SATA doesn't have anything to do with Socket 939

in a years time you will have to upgrade again

How about he never upgrade since there will always be something faster around the corner? Mmm ?

I've seen heaps of websites say pci-x video cards

If its on the internet it must be right.

they say PCI-E unless its a very s***ty website made by someone with no clue.

I agree with NOT upgrading.
I went from a s754 AMD3000+ with AGP 6800NU to a s939 3500+ with dual 6600GT's and I will be f***ed if I can spot the difference in games. only diff I could see was the 3d wank marks were heaps better.
All up cost about $1000 to do the upgrade and the only thing I have to show for it is a bigger e-penis.

Depening on what vid card u have I would look at that.

The leap into PCI-e and s939 is a big bucket of spoof, the kind of upgrade you will need to do in 1 big hit down the track.

1. PCI-X is not the same as PCI Express.
2. Last I checked, DDR (not DDR2) is used for 939 boards.
3. SATA doesn't have anything to do with Socket 939

in a years time you will have to upgrade again

How about he never upgrade since there will always be something faster around the corner? Mmm ?

I wrote that quite badly, what i meant to say was:

The point of my post was simply the fact that a heap of new technologies are coming out at the moment, regardless whether its socket 939, socket 940 or socket 69. Very rare to see a stage where new ram, new expansion slots, new cpu socket and new hdd interface coming in all in the same period.

And seeing that he only really wants to upgrade CPU, which at least requires a new motherboard, and seeing the fact that cpu sockets are by far the fastest out of that list to change technology. it would seem silly IMHO to upgrade it and then face the exact same situation next year.

they say PCI-E unless its a very s***ty website made by someone with no clue.

who really gives a crap if they put PCI-E or PCI-X, anyone with a clue can simply use a little brainpower and come to the conclusion which technology they are talking about.

they should have called PCI-X EPCI anyway (ISA/EISA) (IDE/EIDE).

well dodgymon that was a pretty stupid upgrade ... not many games make use of the SLI anyway and dual 6600gt's isnt that smart, and the difference between your cpu's isnt much tahts why you cant tell much of a difference

in addition:

"AMD IS preparing for a shift towards DDR-II memory, while still keeping the production of Socket 939 processors "according to demand". A new Socket has 940 pins, but it isn't compatible with existing Socket 940 solutions - no surprise there.

However, the name of the new socket won't be "Socket 940 Second Coming" or the long-time mentioned "Socket M2", which resided in every roadmap of AMD CPUs for next year. New name is Socket AM2, and we have learned that AMD will introduce not just new models, but will release Socket AM2 versions of existing CPUs as well. We have seen a roadmap which contains products that are part of the AM2 ramp-up."

as i said, if u upgrade, in a years time u'll be in the same boat.

last edited by simul at 20:27:39 28/Dec/05

who really gives a crap if they put PCI-E or PCI-X, anyone with a clue can simply use a little brainpower and come to the conclusion which technology they are talking about

Consistency is important. Why call one technology by another's name when it has a name of its own? It's confusing for everyone, especially hardware newbies.

I do agree with you that it's not worth upgrading at this stage. I'm still on Socket 462 and don't have much of a reason to upgrade at this stage ... unless I decide to go dual-core. Not enough value for money otherwise :/

I only upgrade when my box becomes incapable of running a game that I really want to play. Usually a 3-4 year cycle. I still havnt overclocked my current puter yet. That is my next mini-upgrade.

Yeah, after crunching the numbers today, I've decided an upgrade just isn't worth the $$$ at this point in time. If I really, REALLY stretched my finances and was able to get some money for my current stuff I might be able to afford a cpu/mobo/video card upgrade, but the thing is I wouldn't be able to afford a CPU and/or video card much better than what I have at the moment anyway so it would really just be pissing money away.

I'm thinking now I might just spend some cash on a good cooling solution and see how far I can overclock what I've currently got :P