6400 "Black Edition" the end of the line?

October 23, 2007 3:32 PM

I have a Dell Inspiron 531 desktop that came with an Athlon X2 64 5600+ processor. I have heard that the last in this line of processors (and the last socket AM2) will be the 6400 - did I lock myself into a dead-end CPU upgrade path? Or will I be able to upgrade in the future to AMD's next line of processors, whatever it is?
posted by nervestaple to Computers & Internet (3 answers total)

Well, if you hadn't bought a Dell, you could have just replaced the motherboard with something better; motherboards aren't generally that expensive.

But, with the nonstandard Dell case/motherboard, you're stuck with whatever AMD provides in AM2. It'll last at least a few years, though, before you can't do things you want to with it. When it doesn't work for what you want anymore, time to buy a new one.
posted by Malor at 3:36 PM on October 23, 2007

Response by poster: I believe the 531 has a standard ATX case and PSU unlike most dells, so that's good news at least.
posted by nervestaple at 3:39 PM on October 23, 2007

Best answer: You may not be out of luck. It looks like some of AMD's next generation of chips, the K10, will use Socket AM2+, which will be forwards- and backwards-compatible with AM2. The CPU will probably physically fit into the socket, then, but if your BIOS doesn't support it, you won't be able to use it. You could hope that Dell releases an updated BIOS for that board. This may not be as much of an impossibility as it sounds, as their track record is decent: I've heard of many people upgrading their LGA775 Pentium 4-based Dell machines to Core 2 Duos.
posted by zsazsa at 3:46 PM on October 23, 2007