Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD)

[Not a Short]

"Why make apologies for this and not the changes made to Intel based systems? Platform changes are required for forward progress, and AMD makes them just like Intel does. And you know darned well that most Athlon users will not be able to upgrade to an Athlon with 400MHz FSB. It's not a big deal, but if you are going to knock Intel, then you ought to admit that AMD does the same thing."

A socket change precludes the upgrade, a voltage change can as well, FSB changes do not preclude an upgrade unless the muliplier is locked.

If I have a MB with a Duron 600 in it the only consideration that might keep me from plugging an Athlon XP in that board is the voltage. Since the default volatge on the Duron 600 is 1.5 volt a $40 Athlon XP 1700+ can be dropped in that MB and run underclocked but still about twice as fast as the Duron it replaced.

In the same time span INTC has socket 370 and 423. That wouldn't be so bad if 423 was the current socket but it isn't.

The range of Socket A is 600-2200 so far**
The range of Socket 370 is 500-1400
The range of Socket 423 is 1300-2000*
The range of Socket 478 is 1700-3000+

* Do you expect anything higher than 2 GHz for socket 423?
** There is likely to be more coming for Socket A
+ Is socket 478 the one that will last a while, where does it end?

The thing about the stable socket is that if you have mulitple pc configurations in your local food chain you can upgrade the top PC and get hand me down processors all the way down the line.

If you only own one pc you can upgrade the processor every year and upgrade the MB every 2-3 years. Keep a spare processor for emergency use or sell it on eBay.

There is much more flexibility in a machine pool with a shared socket.