Here's the thing: I'm thinking of upgrading my mobo to sth like the Asus A8R32 MVP in order to jump on the PCIe bandwagon (I'm still on nForce3 and AGP). Would you consider the purchase of a second 939 mobo merely a month before the release of AM2 a complete waste? Or do you still trust the performance and features of the current platform to such an extent that the prospect of DDR2 offers little to no incentive to wait? I will also be thinking of upgrading my 3500+ soon, but it seems to me that a 939-based 4800+ X2 or even an FX-60 will do just nicely.

To stick with 939 or not? Depends on a few factors, such as:

1) Do you have money to burn?
2) Do you want to have the bragging rights of new technology?
3) Can you accept that there WILL be bugs, glitches and less than stellar improvements?

The benefit of sticking with 939 for the time being will be that the technology is mature, and most of the bugs and glitches will be worked out. The result is that you can stick together a decent platform, safe in the knowledge that it'll work damn well. Another point to factor in is the cost. When AM2 comes out, you can almost gurantee a price drop in the last generation of gear.

Well, you can ALMOST gurantee it... assuming the technology takes off. Current benches and stats of the AM2 platform dont indicate that much of an increase so far, and DDR2 doesnt seem to give it as much of a boost as people would like. Dont get me wrong, this could be an awesome platform, but for the time being, my money would go on 939 kit for the time being.

Besides, unless AMD do something of a Microsoft, everything that works with a 939 mobo, barring the CPU and RAM, should work just as happily in an AM2 platform. Wait until launch, then see what bargains crop up.

And if you DO go AM2, then you've got enough cash to afford to get me an X2 3800+ , 2Gig DDR and the ASUS AN8-SLI Premium as well

If you are not going to do another CPU upgrade after the X2 4800+ for at least another 2 years, then I would stick with S939. The initial release of AM2 will not really provide any boost in performance. That may not happen until DDR2 800 is available, even AMD has admitted this.

If you are considering the upgrade to the FX-60, then I would say wait for AM2. Why? AMD will no longer produce any more models for the S939 family. All new dual cores will be released using AM2. AMD has plans to introduce the 5000+ and 5200+ if I am not mistaken. Sure they will be half locked, but by default they will run at the same speed or faster as the FX-60 and at a cheaper price most likely. In addition, they are refining their 90nm die process which is why new X2 3800+ will be rated at 65W & 35w TDP, the X2 4200+ thru X2 4800+ will drop from a TDP of 110w to 89w. That should mean that the 5000+ and 5200+ should be easier to overclock than the FX-60 in terms of FSB.

I don't have money to burn. I would only seriously contemplate the 4800+ or the FX-60 if the prices are reduced significantly after AM2 comes out. My main concern is that when I decide to upgrade my GPU it will have to be with PCIe. But if I wait for AM2 then I will definitely have to buy a new processor AND new memory all at once, whereas if I only change the mobo now I can upgrade the GPU when the next gen is released and the CPU in about a year from now and still keep my 2 Gigs of RAM. But by that time we will probably be seeing some real benefits/improvements from DDR2 and the FX-60 will be old news and and and... you get the point

I think, either way you go, as long as you leave yourself breathing room for SLI, you will be good for a long time.

I'm running a 4200 X2 2 gigs of pc3200 and a Geforce 7800GT, and I average 45 fps in FEAR (settings maxed, with 1024x764).

If ur AMD all the way, go for the 939 and keep it till 2007.

If ur not, wait a lil longer and go for Conroe.

I'm all for AMD as it goes. Haven't used Intel since Pentium II 400MHz. (That is... until I bought an iMac Core Duo a couple of months ago but that's a different story). As for SLI/Crossfire, I'm still not sold on it but I like to keep my options open, just in case. Thx for the feedback

Get a Asrock 939Dual SATA2 PCI-E x16 + AGP x8 + SATA 2 , Ive got one of these , runs great for using a AGP card until your ready too buy a PCIE one

(I was running a x800 Pro 265mb AGP but now running a 7900GT PCIE)

http://www.aria.co.uk/ProductInfoComm.asp?ID=21883

I'm sticking with it until at least next year. I have a 4400+ and I will probably go FX60 at the end of the year and maybe a 7900GTX. 4GB and an FX60 will be fine for more than a year.

I’m in the same boat as you are right now. For me, there is no good answer. I could upgrade my motherboard and video card now. However, I have found that it would also require me to purchase a new power supply to support the new motherboard. Once you add in the cost of the power supply it starts to add up. All for a platform that really has no future.

So I started thinking what if I waited and purchased an AM2 setup instead. It is the future for AMD right now. It would mean I would have to purchase everything new for the most part. Also, it is rumored that the AM2 processors are going to be higher than their 939 counter parts. For me the price/performance ratio for the new platform isn’t going to be where I want it to be right now if all holds true. Of course, no one can say for sure until we see the platform available with pricing and performance numbers.

So what to do?

I finally concluded that I would wait until Conroe is released as well to verify its performance numbers before I make a decision on any platform. However, early pricing puts the cost of the new processors to be very reasonable. If the pricing and performance numbers hold up to rumors I may have found my next platform. For me this could be the price/performance answer I was looking for. Of course, all of this doesn't matter until we see platforms available we can buy.

Here's a solution to ya

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6813157087

this is an AM2/939 board, it will run either one, so you can buy it and after the AM2 launch see what reviews are out to decide on a processor upgrade.

I too thought about going with AM2 platform but I decided to purchase a mature setup such as GigaByte nForce4 SLI motherboard, AMD64 X2 4400+ 1MBx2 cache and ATI X1900XT video card and 2GB Corsair DDR400 memory. Parts should be arriving early next week.

My current setup is the AMD64 3200+ with 1GB DDR400 memory, nForce3 Ultra and ATI Radeon 9800 Pro.

I wanted to upgrade my video card and only way is PCIe which ticked me off but figured that PCIe is the way to go so I decided on platform thats been around for awhile.

Probably early 2008 I'll upgrade to AM2, by then chipsets and memory will be worth spending money on.

Darkk

I recently stepped up from 3200+ to 4200+ dual core and lovin' it.

Only future plans at this time is a PCIe mobo and video card, maybe an Opteron. Definately not until AM2 and Conroe are out.

I still don't believe AMD won't be producing 65nm cpus for S939. If they make them they WILL sell and outperform the current offerings.

Personally, I have no interest in spending money to impress. It's much better spent on my needs .

Otherwise, any overall platform upgrade from socket 939 probably won't be until HT3 (late 2007?)

I would have considered the ASRock mobo if it had been available when I was building my rig but generally I don't like these half-way solutions, I think they are too much of a compromise. Some years ago I made the mistake of buying an Asus board that could run both SDRAM and DDR when the latter was brand new and still very expensive so I could use my old memory for a while longer and I regretted it bitterly. Same goes for the "expandable" socket solutions (AM2/939). Usually the bus bridging one socket to the other creates a huge bottleneck but maybe I'm wrong with this one since it hasn't been properly tested yet. Obviously though the problem is not so much the CPU upgrade options I have since I can get a s939 processor that's a lot better than my current 3500+. The problem lies with the GPU since there is nothing in AGP that would offer any tangible improvement over my X800XT PE. Unless someone proves me wrong...?