LGA775
This is Intel’s new socket. Unlike previous designs, the pins are actually on the motherboard and the processor has no pins. Intel probably decided that it would be cheaper to shift the blame of a broken pin to motherboard manufacturers themselves, but would you rather shell out for a replacement motherboard or replacement processor?
When the first reviews came online for this socket, many people said it was flimsy, and easily broken. But, it has actually turned out to be fine, and nowhere near as bad as many predicted. It seems pin breakages are on the same level as the older design, except people would have to replace the motherboard than the processor.
This socket, as mentioned, is Intel’s future on the desktop. If you want to upgrade later on, then this is for you. This socket will support dual cores, and of course any other Pentium 4′s that appear.
One thing though, even though this socket will be used with dual core processors, that doesn’t mean you can use a dual core processor in your LGA 775 motherboard when they turn up. Dual core processors will need a new chipset, although the same socket will be used. But, dual cores are still in development. We will just have to see how it turns out.
As said earlier, LGA 775 processors are cheaper than their socket 478 counterparts, so there really is no need to buy the socket 478 platform anymore.
That is unless you want AGP support. Intel’s chipsets for this socket only support PCI Express graphics cards, not AGP. So if you need AGP, steer clear.
Also, DDR2. DDR2 is a new memory standard, which uses different pin counts and is not compatible with DDR. DDR2 is currently more expensive, and is only just catching up to the performance of DDR at equal clockspeeds. You can avoid having to buy DDR2 by looking for a 915 series chipset (make sure the motherboard has DDR slots, as this chipset can also support DDR2, so the motherboard manufacturer may decide to just include DDR2 slots), but if you get a 1066MHz FSB processor (only Extreme Editions) then you have no choice.
So, that’s what Intel have at the moment. Soon Intel will have dual cores, which will combine two physical processors on one chip. We will have to see how these compare to AMD, who are also preparing their own dual core processors. Then there is the possibility Intel will shift to a mobile processor architecture on the desktop, nobody really knows what goes on behind the closed doors of Intel.
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