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There's no reason to avoid Socket 940 because of a short Athlon FX lifespan. Remember that every Socket 940 board also supports Opteron and Opteron 1xx and the Athlon FX are equally priced.
Furthermore, there's some reason to think that future Athlon 64 CPU's will only have a 512K of cache. The breakdown might look like this:
Opteron (Socket 940) : Dual channel memory, 1 meg L2 cache.
Athlon 64 FX Series (Socket 939): Dual Channel Memory, 1 meg L2 cache, always one speed grade ahead of all other Opteron / Athlon 64 CPU's)
Athlon 64 (Socket 939): Dual Channel Memory, 512K L2 cache.
AthlonXP (Yes--AMD IS retaining the AthlonXP name): Single-channel memory, 512K L2 cache, 32-bit ONLY--but note that this IS a Socket 754 processor.
AMD has NOT committed to doing this, but it is a product distribution pattern they are considering. The reason is obvious--it allows them to protect the "value" of the 64-bit state of the processor and charge a premium for it.
The bulk of CPU's shipped would be Socket 939 Athlon 64 chips. AthlonXP would be an ultra-budget line and these chips would never be referred to as 64-bit capable (to prevent problems).
Perfomance, I'm guessing would look something like this--using Opteron as a base 100%.
Opteron: 100%.
Athlon 64 FX: 105-115%.
Athlon 64: 85-90%.
AthlonXP: 70-80%.
That's my guess on how performance would arc down. Regardless its still too early to tell.
I've wandered a bit from topic. My point is this--buying an FX-51 today is not a problem for future upgraders--as long as they are aware that it'll cost another hefty chunk to upgrade again. AMD has no plans to change or remove Socket 940.
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"A ship in the harbor is safe--but that's not what ships were made for."
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