I'm in the process of purchasing a new PC, and trying to determine overall which pair of motherboard & CPU is better for my requirements:

AMD 939 3500 CPU and a Gigabyte GA-K8N Pro SLI mainboard (supports DDR RAM)

OR

Intel D805 CPU Socket 754 and a Gigabyte 8I945GMF mainboard (supports DDR2 RAM)

I've read that a 939 is current generation and should be good, but it doesn't support DDR2 RAM, which I have heard is much better RAM. I will be installing 1Gb RAM either way.

Price seems about the same, but i've had mixed views of both setups. Main use will be graphic and video editing (hence why both boards support Firewire 1394b)

Help appreciated, Thanks

Re: AMD 939 or DDR2 RAM Support

It is widely reported that AMD will be switching to its new AM2 socket standard "soon" that supports DDR2. No-one seems to know quite when "soon" is, except that it was supposed to be "early 2006". Intel will also be swiching "soon" to its better dual-processor architecture. "Soon" for its seems slightly further away.

My point is that there will be significant improvements from both CPU companies "soon". Of course that's aways the case. They always have improvements coming. But in this case we know what they are, and that they will be better, and that if you buy now you find the last of the line that can't be upgraded any further.

Re: AMD 939 or DDR2 RAM Support

Hi Phunky,

Currently AMD is not supporting DD2 because the high latency of the memory means its performance is worse than standard DDR, Intel jumped the gun as usual and is stuck with an inferior memory, when DDR2 667 or better becomes cheap and readily available then AMD will release products to suit, but in the mean time AMD kicks Intels butt for performance per dollars spent.

Regards John.

Re: AMD 939 or DDR2 RAM Support

Intel has managed to blame some unspecified fault with DDR2 memory for the lack of speed of its DDR2 systems. Its been able to get away with it because there's been no AMD DDR2 systems to compare to.

Those have now appeared and DDR2 runs a lot faster on AMD systems than on Intel systems. It was Intel that screwed up. And Intel will fix it when they release their new CPUs in a couple of months time that have the memory controller in the CPU like AMD does.