As per title, I currently have a sk939 mobo and am thinking of upgrading the processor to an am2. Does it require an new mobo or is it pin compatible and just require a bios update? I cannot seem to find out any info from the mobo manufacturers website (MSI) and there doesnt appear to be any recent bios updates.

 

Most definitely! AM2 and socket 939 are not compatible, i.e., if you want an AM2 cpu, you need a new AM2 mobo.

No matter how hard you stuff that sucker in there!

 

Probably need new memory aswell (not 100% sure tho, some AMD processors do need specific memory)

 

To go from S939 to AM2 you need a new CPU, motherboard and DDR2 memory. All this will get you no noticable gain, not even in the benchmarking tests. Just check out the reviews.
The processors are exactly the same as S939 except they use a little less voltage. Stick with your current platform for now and just swap the cpu if you want more performance.

 

Agreed - i'd hold off until some major AM2 updates come out - there's just no real performance gains.

Go for vid card or cpu or some faster-than-fast SATA drives or increased memory if you want some "observable" performance increases - at least for now.

 

yeah already got an order for 2 7900 gt's to run in sli and just thinking my processor is holding me back a bit as it is only an 3200 so was thinking about a dual core 3800 as I believe they overclock well, however I then noticed that the AM2 had been released.
Cheers for your info guys

 

Hold off for just a little while then as apparently when Intel release Conroe in late July, AMD are going to respond with major price cuts

 

Cool - cheap FX60's hopefully

 

There is a board that can do both, but with an expansion card - the Asrock 939 Dual SATA2 has a 939 socket and is expandable for AM2. It's also handy as it has both AGP and PCI express graphics card slots, but no SLI capability.

 

Anyone remember 754 -> 939 back in '04, same sort of issue, if you were on a reasonable 754 config, there was little or no benefit in upgrading initially.

Hmm... even less so if you consider the X2 5000+ and FX62 will produced for 939 as well as AM2.

 

The AMD pricedrops have already happened. A good 30% was wiped off the Sempron64 and Athlon64 prices last week! Board prices have noticeably fallen too.
You can pick up retail 939 Athlon64's for £70 now

The only reason to go AM2 in the meantime would be if you needed to build a complete new system as although the mobo's are a bit more expensive than 754/939, DDR2 is considerably cheaper than the currently inflated PC3200 so there's a saving to be had.

 

Word on the street is that there are more to come

Link

 

Tomshardware did some tests recently Here