When it comes to AMD's transfer from DDR1 to DDR2, we all knew that this logical succession would come sooner or later. Almost two years ago Intel announced its transition to DDR2 and that PC3200 would be the last officially supported DDR1 frequency. AMD, on the contrary, had different plans. They had built and optimized their CPUs for DDR1 and saw no reason to transfer to DDR2 if it, though higher frequencies, would mean slower access times. Not only did AMD keep DDR1 alive, it was encouraging the evolution and density of DDR1. Now, however, the limitations of DDR1 were starting to show, at the same time DDR2 could now be had with fast access times and high frequencies. It was now time for AMD to enter the DDR2 market.
Today, AMD is launching their new Socket AM2 with DDR2 support to match. The reason for the new socket is that the communication from the CPU to the memory is not identical between DDR1 and DDR2. The CPU's built-in memory controller is thus also updated to cope with the new specifications. What these changes mean, technically and physically, and what kind of performance the change to DDR2 will bring is the main point of this review.
We will begin with listing the differences between Socket AM2 and Socket 939.
