AMD Socket AM2 First Look

Flipping through the RSS feeds this morning I came across an article from Tom's Hardware about Socket AM2. This is the first look I've seen where someone is actually running a system built on AM2, and there are some things to walk away from the review with. I'll sum up what I think is important, and you can read the whole 11 pages if you want.

•  AMD's platform launch on June 6th will be called the AM2 socket; it's official. Aparently, the term "Socket M" is already copyrighted, so AMD slapped an "A" in front of it. "Socket M" is used in Appletalk chatter, so it could be Apple's doing that shut them out. I honestly didn't feel like researching it more than that.
• Socket AM2 will be comprised of 940 pins, and will support DDR2 memory, up to DDR2-800 at low latencies. Expect to see some nice modules released about this time aswell, since Intel will be supporting DDR2-800 around the same time.
• One rumor floating around is that AM2 will introduce a faster HT speed, moving the 200mhz LDT to 333mhz. The clock speed on the chips does not reflect that though, as each speed grade increases by 200mhz. We may see an FX-64 or something that runs on the faster bus though, and many chipsets support running around 300mhz now anyways. Really the HT links that are up and running on 939 boards today never get saturated anyways, so it's no big deal.
• Tom's was able to get a hold of an Engineering Sample board and X2 processor, and didn't do a whole heck of a lot with it. The board was very pre-production with no abilities for overclocking or memory adjustments. They were only able to run at DDR2-667 with 4-4-4 latencies. Still, the AM2 processor was quite competative with the very mature 939 X2 that it was put up against. I think with a move to DDR2-800 with a little lower latencies, this platform will stretch it's legs a bit. We've seen that the X2's are not quite suffieciently supplied with memory bandwidth as it stands now.

So what's it all mean? Basically what I've been saying since about 3 months ago. AM2 will not hurt performance, not will it be a huge gain in performance either. Mainly, AMD is jumping on the DDR2 bandwagon, and moving all of their new processor designs to that platform. This means if you want something that can be upgraded in a year or so, wait and get an AM2 board/proc/RAM when they are available in just a few months. One thing that Tom's did say was that the chipsets from nVidia, ATI, ULI, SIS, and basically everyone will be compatable with no changes. That means SLIx16, SLI, X-Fire, et. al. will be ready to go from day one. Usually you see AMD release a chairty chipset to get their newest platforms off the ground, but not this time. Since the Processor still talks over the same HT link, there's no need for a chipset change. All the mobo-makers have to do is reroute the traces from the CPU socket to the DDR2 modules and they're done. This means AM2 should be very stable from day one.

All in all, it's a good showing for a product that is almost 3 months away from production. There's another core revision to be done before then, and we should see some very nice products soon. I'm fairly excited about the low-voltage models that will be coming out. I'm thinking back to the days of the XP-Mobile when I ran a 1.8ghz chip at 2.6ghz. Mmmmmmmmmm.....