AMD Launches The Socket AM2 Platform

The New HSF Mounting System

The New Retention Bracket:

AMD has taken the time to improve on the heatsink retention bracket found on their desktop processors with the new socket. All the socket 939 heatsinkes will still mount to the bracket as the top mounts have not changed. AMD’s previous design used two mounting holes to secure the heatsink to the board, but AMD listened to consumers and beefed it up a bit.

Looking at the top and bottom of the bracket we also see some interesting knock outs that we are not exactly sure about. Rumors around the internet say that they are for future water coolers. Speaking of water coolers the Corsair Nautilus 500 socket 939 bracket mounts up just fine on AM2, but many other water coolers that mount through the old two screw style bracket are going to be out of luck on this on.

From 939 to 940 Pins:

AMD has added one pin to their processor, but also redesigned the entire layout of the pins found on the AMD processor series. As you can tell the 939 processor on the left will no way fit in the 940 pin AM2 socket without destroying the processor.

AMD Goes For DDR2 Memory:

The biggest change for AMD is the move to DDR2 memory. AMD?s new socket AM2 processors now have an integrated DDR2 memory controller that supports DDR2 memory up to DDR2-667 and DDR2-800. The memory voltage on many of the reference boards we had voltages that went up to 2.5V, which means running 1066MHz with Corsair’s PC-8500 memory was easy to do. We will go in-depth on AMD’s memory controller in the near future.