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1. I don't believe that AMD has stopped production of socket 940 Opteron's, but socket 940 boards where designed as SERVER boards from the start.
2. AMD just introduced socket 939 Athlon64 chips. Because AMD intended these for SERVER chips they had a much higher level of quality control and production values. People immediately found out that many of these chips OVERCLOCKED to extreme levels with standard air cooling. The 1.8 GHz Opty was routinely being OC'd to 3GHz and above, ergo better performance than the AMD FX chips for a fifth of the cost. Once the word got out demand went through the roof for socket 939 Opterons of all varieties. Retailers like newegg.com monarchcomputer.com and others all jacked the prices up and they still sold out.
3. AMD did not really intend that people buy the socket 939 Opty's for desktop use. AMD felt that it was leaving $$$$ on the table by allowing sales of these chips at such low prices, but at the same time they needed to be price competitive with Intel on server chips. So a rumor comes out that AMD is going to CEASE sales of boxed socket 939 Opterons and only sell them to server manufacturers. Don't know if they are going to do this, but if they do expect to see a thriving grey market in socket 939 Opterons.
As far as buying any AMD chip ALWAYS go with the newest version, this is usually the best advice. I believe that the Venice core is newer than Clawhammer (though Clawhammer is a "cooler" name ;) ).
DFI LanParty nF4 SLI mobo
eVGA 256mb GeForce 7800GT
OCZ PowerStream SLI 520Watts
AMD Athlon 64X2 3800+ 2500MHz (250x10)
1GB Patriot DDR600 (PC4800) mem
Boot Disk WD 74GB Raptor SATA
2 x Hitachi 250mb Deskstars SATA II, Raid 0
NEC ND 3540, BenQ DW1640, LiteOn 16P9S
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