AMD Denies Phase Out of Opteron Chips for Socket 939

@ 2005/12/14
Advanced Micro Devices denied on Tuesday rumours spread by a web-site regarding cancellation of production of AMD Opteron processors for servers and workstation designed for desktop-oriented 939-pin infrastructure. The company said it would continue to ship the chips for uni-processor (UP) business machines for more than a year from the time speaking.

“Socket 939 AMD Opteron 100 Series processors are in production. AMD will continue to produce Opteron 100 Series processors with ECC unbuffered memory support in 2006, and we will adjust production volumes as needed to supply our server and workstation customers,” said Brett Jacobs, a spokesman for AMD.

A news-story over a web-site claimed that AMD planned to stop manufacturing of AMD Opteron processors in Socket 939 flavour for UP servers and workstations.

AMD Opteron processors for Socket 940 infrastructure require registered memory modules to be installed. While registered memory modules are more reliable in environments where a lot of modules are installed, they also cost more. Given that uni-processor machines are not equipped with a lot of memory typically, increased costs of registered memory were unjustified for a lot of cases. Newer AMD Opteron chips 100-series for uni-processor servers use Socket 939 infrastructure and may use typical unbuffered memory with ECC, which is more affordable compared to registered RAM.

While there were not a lot of mainboards with Socket 939 that actually supported appropriate Opteron processors and, in case of dual-core chips, such support was crucial, a lot of enthusiasts acquired those processors as they were relatively affordable, contained large caches and were suitable for overclocking, a practice to make chips work at higher clock-speed in order to get higher performance while risking with lifetime of the chip.


Comment from Rutar @ 2005/12/14
Well, just because they don't officially support it doesn't mean they don't work =P


they just need t get their asses moving and send the Opteron 170 my way ><