AMD CPU head to head - AM2 vs S939! - AM2vsS939 H2H - Testbed configuration
Author: Grga Curkovic
Date: 22 May 2006

Our AM2 system consisted of the following:
MSI K9N SLI Platinum
OCZ DDR2 PC2-8000 Platinum Enhanced Latency XTC
A pair of NX7900GTX-T2D512E
CoolerMaster 550W PSU
WD Raptor 150GB (WD1500ADFD)

It should be mentioned that we used the memory at DDR2-800 speeds with latencies set to 4-4-4-12.

Our socket 939 system consisted of the following:
MSI K8N SLI Diamond
OCZ DDR PC3200 Platinum revision 2. Enchanted Latency
A pair of NX7900GTX-T2D512E
OCZ PowerStream 600W PSU
WD Raptor 150GB (WD1500ADFD)

The memory latencies on this system were set to 2-2-2-5 at DDR 400.

The memory controller of the new AMD supports DDR2-533, DDR2-667 and DDR2-800, we went for the DDR2-800 since we think that is what most of the users will go for. The new memory controller is just as configurable as the old one so there were no unpleasant suprises. There was nothing more you could ask for when it comes to the configurability of the memory controller in the socket 939 CPUs and the AM2 CPUs are on the same level. With enough time and will you can tweak your memory settings and get a maximum out of it, so just give it a bit more time. We played with the settings for a while and found a semi-tweaked configuration that was stable. The memory we used is capable of 5-5-5-16 at DDR2-1000 but since DDR2-1000 is not supported we downclocked the modules to DDR2-800 but also reduced the latencies to 4-4-4-12. It should be noted that the CPUs that we used were not provided directly by AMD and might not be same revision as the CPUs that will be sold and/or sampled in the next couple of weeks, but we think there won?t be a big difference in the performance between these CPUs and the ones that will be sold in the first months of AM2 lifespan.