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Advanced Micro Devices is rumoured to prepare affordable processors for its recently unveiled Socket 939 infrastructure. At the same time as the move may have positive impact on AMD’s financial report, mainboard makers may not salute the decision, as mainboards supporting the latest infrastructure have not been tailored for mainstream customers.

Socket 939 – High-End Chips’ Infrastructure

AMD Athlon 64 processors with 939 pins that were released officially on the 1st of June, 2004, integrate 512KB of L2, only a half of the size incorporated into the previous 754-pin chips, but take advantage of the very efficient dual-channel memory controller that is likely to decrease the impact of cut-down cache and even improve performance of 939-pin chips over 754-pin processors with 1MB on-die secondary-level cache, which is why CPUs in different types of packaging does not have similar model numbers at equal clock-speeds. The AMD Athlon 64 FX parts continue to have 1MB of L2 after the transition to Socket 939.

One of the other advantages AMD64 processors in PGA939 packaging provide is faster 1000MHz HyperTransport bus that connects central processing units to other parts of the system. Previous AMD Athlon 64 chips used 800MHz HT bus.

more @ http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/cpu/dis...821122657.html

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