In this earlier thread I asked about CPU preferences… well, with AM2 almost upon us I have another set of questions 
I thought now would be a good time to see what thoughts and feelings are for near future CPUs, particularly in the context of what will be the CPU of choice for primary desktop usage. AMD’s next socket AM2 is due to be available tomorrow, with Conroe expected to be available shortly after in July or maybe earlier.
No doubt all the usual tech sites will be flooded with AM2 benchmarks after release, but there hasn’t been any indication of significant improvement over s939 CPUs. It is a progression of existing CPUs and nothing radical.
There hasn’t been any new Conroe information since the benchmark results published earlier this year.
With the release of the new CPUs, the old ones are expected to be cut in price. This is more so in Intel’s case than AMD as the generation shift is more significant. And there is certainly the possibility of a new price war making the older generation CPUs even better value.
Although I mention desktop use here, I am not limiting this to desktop CPUs. Like the recent Opteron incident, the right “server” chip can turn out better than a desktop marketed one. Imagine dual-dual core or more… And mobile chips have potential for lower power and quieter usage.
I’ll be waiting and seeing if the AM2 will cause the S939 dual core’s to drop then I’d consdier getting one. Still think I’d have to upgrade my mobo 
I’m keeping an eye on Ebuyers bundles, they had a 939 3000 and mobo bundle for £115 that sold out in hours.
If it comes back I might have to do some evaluation
Xbit have some new numbers for AM2… http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/amd-socket-am2_11.html
Pretty much unsurprising results. To match DDR400 CL2 latency performance, you need DDR2-800 CL4. Nothing less, and the extra bandwidth doesn’t seem to help much.
Oh, there is one bit of news I did overlook before. The AM2 CPUs will come in a selection of power ratings at a given speed, no doubt driven by Intel’s claims of power efficiency of Core 2. So you can have extra cool running ones at a moderate cost premium. This makes them a lot more attractive to me and is enough to swing me from “conroe for sure” to “wait and see how they compare”.
However Conroe’s promise of improved SSE performance may still give it an edge in what I crunch over the A64. The P4 and A64 are about the same in SSE type IPC, giving the P4 the advantage purely through higher clock speeds. Conroe wont have those clocks, so to keep up performance intel have tweeked it and have doubled the IPC for some instructions. It’s still unclear if they will be the right ones for crunching, but it would make sense.
You missed out the bag K8L 
I did say near future CPUs 
we’re looking at some time next year before the K8L is around… I’ll save that for a later version of these threads