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  • thepiratebay - Wednesday, February 25, 2009 - link

    Intel Core i7 920 Nehalem 2.66GHz not 2.8 you put def procer in test and if overclockd you write oc...
    I am sure that intel is better but no so way better
    and in my opinion in the last 2 years you fav intel and nvidia more for what i am sure u have good reasons.Why i think so becas... you point just the bad sides of amd and the good of the other side on price preformance cpu mainbord you name it the diff between amd intel is tiny or amd is better.And another thing i live and work in germany and from 1000 pepole maybe 1 has core i7 pepole dont have money for maybe litle better cpu wich by the way has no software or appp maybe 5 or 10 and you compare that with ddr 2 platform from amd come on now
  • thepiratebay - Wednesday, February 25, 2009 - link

    Do some math with me:

    * 790FX/GX motherboard 125 USD
    * Phenom II X3 720 BE 145 USD
    * 2x2GB DDR2 800 MHz 50 USD
    * Radeon HD 4850 150 USD
    * Power supply 550 Watt 55 USD
    * Chassis 50 USD
    * 500 GB HDD 55 USD

    Grand total: 630,- USD
  • swaaye - Thursday, February 12, 2009 - link

    Phenom II does not fix XP's performance problems with Phenom's CnQ, btw. Huge performance loss. Saw it first hand.
  • goinginstyle - Friday, February 13, 2009 - link

    It is fixed on Vista and Windows 7 though... also, you need to load the new CnQ driver in XP, if you do, it works there also.
  • swaaye - Saturday, February 14, 2009 - link

    The "new" XP driver appears to be from 2007.
  • otheos - Thursday, February 12, 2009 - link

    I use a 690G based gigabyte motherboard. Gigabyte just posted new BIOS to support these AM3 CPUs (along with AM2 and AM2+) and have been wondering what would be the performance hit from using an older motherboard with slower HT speed?

    A nice review would compare the same AM3 (plus some AM2+) Phenoms on AM2, AM2+ and AM3 (wiht DDR3 Ram). This way people who only want to upgrade their CPU would know what to expect.

    After all that's what AMD have in mind for their backward compatibility of these chips.

    Thanks.
  • swaaye - Thursday, February 12, 2009 - link

    HT is what connects the processor to the rest of the system. High HT speed seems to be most important for multiprocessor servers and systems that use an IGP. The RAM is directly connected to the CPU, so no bottleneck there. So I doubt you'll see any tangible performance loss.
  • corsa - Thursday, February 12, 2009 - link

    The clear cut recommendation is Phenom ..becuase its smoother :)
  • Mr Roboto - Wednesday, February 11, 2009 - link

    Unreal. I mean look at where the now ancient Q6600 still ranks compared to AMD's latest and greatest. *sigh*

    I don't want an Intel monopoly. I don't want the only choices to be Intel and Microsoft. That's not a world I wanna live in! *Loads pistol*
  • loimlo - Wednesday, February 11, 2009 - link

    Thanks for such an informative review!

    Though 790FX/790GX is very good, I think 780G with SB700 would be a better combination for X3 720/710 considering its lower price. I've to admit I may take this upgrade path. Anyway, thanks for your hard work.
  • zagortenay - Wednesday, February 11, 2009 - link

    When you click that Intel logo on the left hand side, Anandtech becomes an Intel site. Only a fool beleives Anandtech is promoting Intel for free and I beleive the cunning Intel gets what she pays for.
    Hey Anand this is not acceptable! Hey Anand do you hear me!
  • swaaye - Thursday, February 12, 2009 - link

    I've always thought Anand was more of an AMD guy, going by how he names his AMD and ATI reviews. :)
  • swaaye - Tuesday, February 10, 2009 - link

    Phenom doesn't really need much bandwidth to do its thing for most applications.

    http://ixbtlabs.com/articles3/cpu/amd-phenom-x4-98...">http://ixbtlabs.com/articles3/cpu/amd-phenom-x4-98...
  • starx5 - Tuesday, February 10, 2009 - link

    I can see intel logo on the 1eft of this site.
    You must independent from intel's hand.
    I know Core i7 is totally jerk in gaming.
  • starx5 - Tuesday, February 10, 2009 - link

    I think anandtech is intel's doll.

    refer to this reviews

    http://www.overclockersclub.com/reviews/phenomii_7...">http://www.overclockersclub.com/reviews/phenomii_7...

    http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/socket-am3-phe...">http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/socket-am3-phe...

    http://www.guru3d.com/article/amd-phenom-ii-x4-810...">http://www.guru3d.com/article/amd-phenom-ii-x4-810...

    http://www.guru3d.com/article/amd-phenom-ii-x4-920...">http://www.guru3d.com/article/amd-phenom-ii-x4-920...

    Core i7 is absolutely a gaming failer!!



  • goinginstyle - Friday, February 13, 2009 - link

    I think it is more of a case of those sites listed being an utter failure at proper benchmarking.
  • jchan2 - Tuesday, February 10, 2009 - link

    Interesting.... I wonder whats up with that?
  • 7Enigma - Wednesday, February 11, 2009 - link

    They also kind of contradict their own article later on saying:

    "Benchmark note:

    We moved towards a new 64-bit environment for all our test. This entailed new software updates for our benchmarks plus we replaced a lot of our tests with different software. This means that if you compare the results published in this review with other processor reviews from Guru3D.com, the numbers might not add anymore up due to different software and tests."

    So unless they reran an Intel system using 64-bit software I don't know where the data came from for the i7 and E8400 platforms?
  • 7Enigma - Wednesday, February 11, 2009 - link

    Possibly even more weird in the Guru3D article is the test system only had 2 gigs of ram?!? That just seems crazy even with Vista 32-bit. You can easily get some system oddness. I mean heck, 4gig should be the MINIMUM in a review of new hardware. I can't tell if that would help or hurt, but it should definitely add another layer of complexity to figuring out what means what in this article.
  • 7Enigma - Wednesday, February 11, 2009 - link

    Seems like (in the OC'ers club review) they were GPU limited or at least entering the compression range in the majority of circumstances. They used a GTX 260 (216) which is definitely a bit underpowered for the latest generation of CPU's. Most of their graphics settings are too high once they get above 1024X768 to see a large difference in frame rates. Yes you can say they are still all playable, but it makes seeing the actual power of the CPU less important.

    Guru3d article again is weird. The biggest problem I see here is what the test setup is for the Intel i7 system? I skimmed the article (it's huge), but never could find it. As for the testing again heavily GPU-limited over about 1280X1024 (and in some cases literally right off the bat at 1024X768). Once they hit 1600X1200 with the single 280 the cpu's have just stalled waiting for the GPU. This still doesn't explain the Crysis: Warhead numbers which show the i7 LOWER than the AMD cpu's @ 1600X1200. My guess is the percent error in the testing is large and so pretty much anything within 5% is equal (again denoting the GPU-bottleneck).

    I won't comment on Tom's as that site has lost all respect with me.

    But we've all known that gaming performance with the latest (or even previous generation CPU's) when not also using CF/SLI or stupidly low resolutions DOES NOT make a huge difference with most games (some RTS/FlightSim/FarCry2/etc. excluded). decided to try that way back with Conroe to show how it wasn't so great for gaming (testing everything under completely GPU-limited scenarios).

    This isn't news.
  • Casper42 - Monday, February 9, 2009 - link

    In the Sysmark benchmark results, you have the following comment:

    Against to its Intel competition, the Phenom II X3 720 falls short of the Core 2 Duo E7500 and the E8400. The X4 810 also falls short of one of its intended targets: the Q8200.

    While the X3 720 does fall to the E7500 (didnt bother comparing against E8400), the second line about the X4 810 losing out to the Q8200 is totally unfounded. The Sysmark results have the AMD chip losing in only 1 test set and the AMD wimming in the other 4 or 5.

    I would probably buy the Intel anyway in today's market, but you should at least keep your review as honest and accurate as possible.
  • Lokinhow - Monday, February 9, 2009 - link

    I've seen some scores with the X4 810 at ~3.7GHz, but not with a 2.7GHz NB clock.
    That would be nice to see some benchmarks at this clock speeds to know what is the boost in performance with a so higher nb clock speed.
    Including a simillar clocked Core2Duo would be very nice too.

    ps: yeah, my english is not so great, so sorry if there is some gramatical erros ;D
  • TA152H - Monday, February 9, 2009 - link

    I'm really surprised that no one there put any thought into testing the difference between the memory controller and L3 cache running at 2.0 GHz instead of 1.8 GHz.

    I mean, you have a BE edition, with the 940, so what would have prevented you from running at at, say 2.6 GHz, like the 920, putting them on the same platform, and then benching them so we could see the difference the "uncore" speed makes.

    It's really an important consideration, because obviously AMD will be releasing Phenom II's at 2.8 and 3.0 GHz, with 2.0 GHz uncore speeds, on AM3, and it helps people make a decision whether to wait or not. With AM2+ is shackled with DDR2 (I don't buy that there's no difference between DDR2 and DDR3, especially when other websites have identified them to be roughly 2%), the degenerate speed of the uncore could exacerbate this issue.

    My other question is, does the uncore on the 910, et al, still run at 2.0 GHz when running in the AM2, and AM2+ platforms? I don't see why it would, but anything is possible.

    I think two sets of benchmarks would be interesting. An underclocked 940 (to 2.6 GHz) versus a 910 processor. One on an AM2+ (yes, it's obsolete, but people will still buy it for a while) with the exact same memory. This assumes, of course, the uncore runs at 2 GHz for the 910 on this platform. The other is the 940 in its obsolete platform running at 2.6 GHz, against the 910 running on the modern AM3 platform, with high performance memory. If you really want to be thorough, you can run the 910 on both the AM3 and AM2+, each with the best memory available for it. I think these would all be helpful.
  • jchan2 - Monday, February 9, 2009 - link

    Any word if there will be a Phenom II Black Edition in the near future?
  • WillR - Monday, February 9, 2009 - link

    Do you mean another Phenom II Black Edition? Is the 940 not good enough for you?
  • jchan2 - Monday, February 9, 2009 - link

    Why not? Imagine the ghz you can gain if there was one. AMD did it before, why not now?
  • jchan2 - Monday, February 9, 2009 - link

    Nvm, didn't realize the 940 was already BE

  • WillR - Tuesday, February 10, 2009 - link

    Yep. And it makes sense imo for only the highest clocked quad core and the highest clocked tri core to be Black Editions rather than also having an 8xx BE. I've heard they should have a 990 BE out Q3 or Q4 this year.
  • strikeback03 - Monday, February 9, 2009 - link

    Such as the 720 Black Edition tested here?
  • jchan2 - Monday, February 9, 2009 - link

    Yeah, besides the 720 such as the 800 or 900 series.
  • Denithor - Monday, February 9, 2009 - link

    Such as power consumption/heat charts for the dual core chips.

    (I mean, come on, these chips still hang with the quads in many cases, I want to see how much better they are from a power consumption standpoint - is it worth the upgrade to quad if you've got a speedy dual?).

    To me it looks like the AMD chips give a lot better scaling when increasing the core count (X3 720 -> X4 920) than the Intel chips (e8400 -> Q9650). In most of the multi-threaded apps the AMD processors saw >95% increase (of the theoretical 33.3% possible) versus Intel with about 70-80% (of the theoretical 100%) on average. I wonder if this has to do with the fact the AMD chips are monolithic in design (more efficient interface among cores).
  • waffle911 - Monday, February 9, 2009 - link

    The image of the "socket AM3" is actually of the AM2... it still has 940 pin sockets, not 938.
  • JimmiG - Monday, February 9, 2009 - link

    You need to change the "compatibility matrix" to reflect that an AM3 CPU will "maybe" work with an AM2+ mobo. Second-rate manufacturers like Asus will not release the needed BIOS updates for some of their older boards like the 790FX/SB600-based Asus M3A32-MVP Deluxe. If you have a SB7xx-based board and it's not made by Asus or another second-rate mobo manufacturer, the matrix is probably accurate.
  • fishbits - Monday, February 9, 2009 - link

    "We really have to applaud both companies here. Intel for responding so quickly and effectively; the 40% price drop on the Q9650 just made sense and now you can have a chip with 12MB of L2 cache for under $300 thanks to the Q9550."

    You're applauding Intel over this? To me, looks like they were screwing over customers with a gigantic artificial price premium. If it weren't for stepped-up competition from AMD, the price would have remained in the stratosphere. Intel is entitled to price however it wants, but I'm not going to applaud them for lowering prices only because another company exposed their gargantuan profit margin.

    Juat a tiny taste of what would be to come if only Intel were left standing. If fanbois who wish AMD harm ever got their wish, there'd be no competitive pressure on CPU prices, and we see what Intel does in that position. We really need two healthy CPU makers in business.
  • Finally - Tuesday, February 10, 2009 - link

    You know something's fishy, when a supposed article about a new AMD CPU starts with one full page of how Intel is the greatest evar... (and how much dropped their prices, which shall suggest to your mind that they are more interesting while they in fact go from Gargantuan to "normal" pricing for their products...)
  • Maroon - Monday, February 9, 2009 - link

    ^agree^

    Why in the hell would you "applaud" Intel for price gouging? I know it's partly AMD's fault by not having truly competitive cpus for the last 2 years, but I'm not gonna give Intel props because they had to reduce prices to remain competitive in those price segments.

  • poohbear - Monday, February 9, 2009 - link

    AMD Phenom II X3 710 is gonna be priced at around 125-135 i imagine, maybe even less, and for that price im sorry its a clear pick for those on a budget!! Its got 7.5mb cache, 3 cores, and will overclock to 3.6ghz if the 720 is any indication. Such sweetness. Any eta on em yet?
  • BLaber - Monday, February 9, 2009 - link

    As far as I have read on some other sites AMD sent an email along with the test samples to reviewers to test the cpus on AM2+ mobo for time being bcz AM3 mobo bios are having some performance issues.
  • Nightstalker - Monday, February 9, 2009 - link

    I don't understand the conclusion that there is no benefit to DDR3, when these CPU's were tested with DDR2. How about including results on these CPU's with both types of memory so we can see how they perform?
  • Gary Key - Monday, February 9, 2009 - link

    We will have additional DDR3/DDR2 results this week, we had AM3 BIOS releases coming until Friday night, the last one actually worked although it broke AOD and TurboV compatibility on the ASUS boards. We still cannot get DDR3-1866/2000 working. Of course, DDR3-1333 is the highest official support offered but we figure if it is in the BIOS then it should work.
  • Griswold - Monday, February 9, 2009 - link

    "We're in the midst of a price war folks, and at a time when the global economy is looking a little shaky this actually works very well for us. Let's recap what's happened."

    That works very well for us until AMD, despite having a good product portfolio (this includes video cards), goes belly up thanks to this worldwide recession (a little shaky? Where have you been the last couple of months!?).And then what? Back to moon prices courtesy of Intel?

    I hope not, but fear the worst. :(
  • lplatypus - Monday, February 9, 2009 - link

    Why does the Ph II 940 system use only 4W more than the 810 at load? This is not consistent with TDPs (125W vs 95W). The HEXUS.net review found a 23W difference under load. Is something wrong here?
  • Axloth - Monday, February 9, 2009 - link

    I'd love to see detailed test of impact of cache size per core, because test results in this review are really weird. Something like x4 910 vs x4 810 vs x3 710. Pretty please with sugar on top...
  • ET - Monday, February 9, 2009 - link

    Needs more comprehensive testing, period. The results look really strange sometimes. Not only did the 810 sometimes outperformed the 910 significantly, but the 710 consistently beat the 910 in the gaming tests.

    (So far -- and I haven't read other reviews -- the 710 is looking like a good candidate to replace my aging X2 3800+.)
  • RadnorHarkonnen - Monday, February 9, 2009 - link

    From the rumors ive seen in the web, this will be a pretty cheap cpu.

    Myt little brother is crying for My 4800 X2 (he always get free upgrades) with 4Gb DDR2.

    Just one question, With a Stock VID 1.325 to 1.55 isn't that a little bit aggressive (even with good air cooling), for everyday operation ? I was hoping for a OC up to 3.6Ghz in decent voltage. 3.8Ghz Would be very good, but the voltage seems somewhat too large for day-to-day operation.

    Thanks for reading, and replying if you have the time, of course.
  • Gary Key - Monday, February 9, 2009 - link

    On our samples, starting around 3.5GHz you really had to ramp the Core VID. 3.6 required about 1.45V in the BIOS, with droop it was around 1.4375V real on this board. If the retail chips follow the 940, then I would say around 1.425V should be realistic for 3.6GHz on the right board. 1.55V is not outside of AMD's spec and is the limit they have found for air cooling. It is about the same limit we have noticed also for the most part, but these chips are designed to take a lot voltage if you keep them properly cooled.
  • RadnorHarkonnen - Monday, February 16, 2009 - link

    I'm already checking prices and availability for this hardware. I'll check the speed bump and the temp bump between 3.5 and 3.6. Thanks for the info Gary.
  • duploxxx - Monday, February 9, 2009 - link

    most run 3.4 ghz already on stock vcore

    @review, you state that there is no performance difference between ddr2-ddr3 but you didn't show anything? Anyhow official statement from AMD is that the ddr3 part bios is not fully ready yet, so I hope you will do a full review later.
  • Gary Key - Monday, February 9, 2009 - link

    "@review, you state that there is no performance difference between ddr2-ddr3 but you didn't show anything? Anyhow official statement from AMD is that the ddr3 part bios is not fully ready yet, so I hope you will do a full review later."

    AMD told us a couple of weeks ago to concentrate on performance with the AM2+ boards since the AM3 BIOS releases were immature. I received several BIOS releases last week for our AM3 boards and felt safe enough to display numbers with them in the OC section today.

    We are still testing and will have comparisons up in the near future. That said, we still have a list of requests back to the motherboard companies to fix. For the most part now, the AM3 boards are usable and clock well. I figure another BIOS spin or two and they should be good to go.

    Also, in a best case scenario, AMD had performance improvements of 5% at best in memory bandwidth limited benchmarks with DDR3. Things might change with the 945 hits in a couple of months, but on these processors, there really are not any differences between DDR2 and DDR3 at this point.
  • Kaleid - Monday, February 9, 2009 - link

    Power consumption and framerates at the max stable overclock?
  • 7Enigma - Monday, February 9, 2009 - link

    Ditto the power consumption at OC'd levels. I always get annoyed to see these fantastic OC results but then fail to see whether we've doubled the power consumption. It would certainly allow us to see a potential benefit if one or the other uses significantly less power under OC load conditions.
  • Gary Key - Monday, February 9, 2009 - link

    We will have power consumption and temps up tomorrow for the OC results along with a few benchmarks. It was difficult to get stable (true) volt readings with the X4 810 installed, so I spent my weekend with the DMM on the boards.
  • Kaleid - Monday, February 9, 2009 - link

    Great! Possible to also add difference with non-overclocked and overclocked power consumption at idle?
  • 7Enigma - Monday, February 9, 2009 - link

    At the wall (total system) or just for the CPU? Do you mean the total system power was fluctuating with the 810? That seems really really wierd.
  • Gary Key - Monday, February 9, 2009 - link

    The power was fluctuating on the board at the Core VID side. I should have a BIOS spin tonight to fix it. The 720 was perfect but the 810 had a few problems that have been identified now.
  • 7Enigma - Monday, February 9, 2009 - link

    *weird, please give us an edit function.
  • OCedHrt - Monday, February 9, 2009 - link

    Interestingly, the 810 vs 910, there is no real performance difference outside the margin of error. In some cases, the 810 is faster and in some, the 910 takes the lead. Something I noticed though is that the 810 is faster than the 910 at more times, and faster by a larger amount (~3% when it is faster) as well. Seems like the reduced cache does not actually hamper performance.
  • Moorbo - Friday, April 24, 2009 - link

    For most applications it seems you're correct that the smaller cache makes little difference. However if you look at the gaming performance the 2MB/core L3 cache of the 720 and 710 clearly makes a big difference despite their slower clock and lack of an additional core. What would the numbers look like with only two cores and 3MB/core and a higher clock?
  • johnsonx - Monday, February 9, 2009 - link

    indeed, the 710 is also often faster than the 910, but usually slower than the 810.

    I'm a bit surprised we the readers have to thumb through all the benchmark charts to see the 710/810/910 comparison. 3 Phenom II's at the same speed, one 'standard', one with less cache and one with a missing core; that is something AT should have dedicated a page to.
  • stmok - Monday, February 9, 2009 - link

    Yeah, I noticed that as well. It looks like 4MB L3 cache is sufficient with Phenom II. (Any less, it'll start hurting...Any more, you're just wasting silicon space).
  • hyc - Monday, February 9, 2009 - link

    I was looking for the test that justified the "DDR3 not worth it" conclusion, but didn't see it.

    Where did you show the results of testing the X4 910 against the X4 940, with CPU and NB clocks set identically? If you didn't test this, then how can you make any conclusion about DDR2 vs DDR3 performance on Phenom II? If I missed it, sorry for being blind.
  • 7Enigma - Monday, February 9, 2009 - link

    I'm hoping since this just went up they forgot to include a couple pages. If not, hopefully they are retesting ASAP to include data....
  • jchan2 - Monday, February 9, 2009 - link

    i'm intersted in seeing the benchmarks myself.

    if it's true that DDR2 vs DDR3 doesn't make much difference in performance, then what's the purpose of getting DD3?
  • TheFace - Monday, February 9, 2009 - link

    So that when the prices DO drop later this year, they aren't caught with their pants down playing catch up on the memory compatibility front. Also, when Joe Schmoe runs to Worst Buy to replace the computer that he got 5 years ago, with a new $600 model, he can look on the box and see DDR3 which MUST be faster than DDR2.

    It's a selling point. In retail, ANYTHING is a selling point as long as there is a disparity in knowledge held by the parties involved.
  • Targon - Monday, February 9, 2009 - link

    Compatibility. When Intel made the jump to DDR2, AMD waited until the prices came down on the memory. If there is no performance advantage, then the only reason to change memory types is for price reasons.

    For large OEMs like Dell, HP, and Gateway, it is more cost effective if all systems use the same type of memory. At this point though, since there is a price premium for DDR3 memory, just having DDR3 support on the CPU would not make an OEM add more AMD based machines to their list of systems sold.
  • Gary Key - Monday, February 9, 2009 - link

    We are still working on the comparison, but all of the initial numbers pointed to a tie between DDR3 and DDR2 in our results so far. The BIOS releases for the AM3 boards are just now coming up to speed. I had planned on significantly more information in the overclocking section but we just received a new BIOS for the 790FX boards that allow DDR3 clocking above 1600 or so.

    However, at like core clock speeds, DDR2-1175 C5 is just as fast as DDR3-1600 C7 in most of the benchmarks at this point. We are running tests now at the lower end of the spectrum to show 800/1066 DDR2 vs 1066/1333 DDR3. Those results still show little if any differences.
  • thepiratebay - Wednesday, February 25, 2009 - link

    Intel Core i7 920 Nehalem 2.66GHz
    in ur upper test as u can seee 2.8?????
  • Enoc - Tuesday, February 10, 2009 - link

    DDR3 is not the problem, Deneb is bottlenecked on NB-L3 side... what it needs is NB at 2,800mhz+ with DDR3 1,600mhz+ for a good scaling...
  • Denithor - Monday, February 9, 2009 - link

    "We are still working on the comparison"

    SO - why would you even reference DDR3 as being useless in your title if you aren't going to provide evidence to back up this comment?
  • Gary Key - Monday, February 9, 2009 - link

    We are still working on it but all results so far point to that being the case right now. It is difficult to have meaningful results ready when receiving BIOS releases that actually stabilize a board just a few hours before going to print. ;)
  • just4U - Monday, February 9, 2009 - link

    I think you were a bit optimistic in your prediction that DDR3 will be at price parity with DDR2 by years end but otherwise a good review.

    I do have a question tho as I am not 100% sure on it. The cpu's that were launched in January (920/40). Are they also compatable with DDR3 boards? Or just these new cpu's?
  • faxon - Friday, May 1, 2009 - link

    really? because right now newegg is selling a 2x2GB kit of Gskill cas9 1600 for $59, and the like kit of DDR2 cas5 is only $56. all we need now is for latency on the ram to drop at the same low voltages seen on i7 kits and i would call that price parity, not that you will even really notice the latency difference except in synthetic benchmarks anymore
  • DrMrLordX - Monday, February 9, 2009 - link

    To the best of my knowledge, AM2 and AM2+ Phenom/Phenom IIs will not support DDR3. Their memory controllers just can't hack it.
  • hyc - Monday, February 9, 2009 - link

    How so? Barcelona/Phenom-I already had the dual memory controllers, they were just never enabled on any motherboards.
  • Targon - Monday, February 9, 2009 - link

    For DDR3 support you need a DDR3 supporting CPU. From the sound of it, the processors are the socket AM3 type, meaning they will work in both socket AM2+ and socket AM3 motherboards. If a processor is for socket AM2/AM2+, it will NOT work in a DDR3 motherboard.

    The way it works is simple, the DDR3 versions of the processor have both DDR2 and DDR3 memory controllers, so will work with either type of memory. The DDR2 processors(X4 940 and 920) only have a DDR2 memory controller(it is dual channel, but that isn't the same as supporting both memory types), so will only work in a socket AM2 or AM2+ motherboard.

    The X4 945 and 925(I think) will be the DDR3 supporting versions of the current chips.

    Again, you can NOT put a socket AM2+ chip in a DDR3 board, it won't work(pin is blocked in the socket to avoid frying the chip). Even if you could put the chip in a DDR3 board, without the DDR3 memory controller on the CPU, it just would not work.
  • grb1212 - Tuesday, March 16, 2010 - link

    your not totally right if u have a am2/am2+/am3 compatible board and it uses ddr3 if u use a ddr2 compatible processor ddr3 will work with a ddr2 processor but it will act like ddr2 memory as far ass performance
  • TheFace - Monday, February 9, 2009 - link

    This may help.

    http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/socket-am3-phe...">http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/socket-am3-phe...

    The chips released today seem to be the only ones that work in AM3. But the chips released today will also work in AM2/AM2+. It's just, as has been stated repeatedly, the chips designed for AM2/AM2+ won't work in AM3.

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