Last Socket-939 Chip released
AMD\ufffd\ufffd\ufffds Socket-939 has been the platform of choice almost immediately after its introduction, so it is fitting that the last Socket-939 processor to be released would be the Athlon 64 FX-60.
The article is a review of the FX-60, which is nifty powerful and will cost on the order of $1000 a unit. But the implication of it being the last Socket-939 product are bigger. AMD has said that the new Socket-AM2 will get equivlents of most of the current AMD product line. That means that AMD is serious about no new 939 products, and probably will lead to a fairly quick phase out of 939 products. Of course quick means several years when your talking about an entire product line, even the low product high-end FX stuff will be produced into 2007, and the low end stuff could still be in product years from now.
After today\ufffd\ufffd\ufffds launch of the FX-60, there will be no faster Socket-939 CPUs produced. Instead, everything else will be Socket-AM2 (the new name for Socket-M2). Next quarter AMD will launch their Socket-AM2 platform along with AM2 versions of the Athlon 64, Athlon 64 X2 and the FX-62. Given that the AM2 platform adds DDR2 support, it is entirely feasible that the Athlon 64 FX-62 won\ufffd\ufffd\ufffdt receive a clock speed bump over the FX-60 and just use the higher bandwidth memory as justification for the higher model number.
It will be interesting to see just how much of a speed improvement AMD will get from moving to DDR2 and just how much that will increase the cost of systems. It wouldn't surprise me if the bottom half of AMDs product line gain no speed advantage but systems end up costing more because of the higher price of DDR2.
On the other hand, those of us looking at buying a mid-range 939 based system could benefit from a drop in both chip and memory prices.
Jay
