Rev F Opterons shown off in pictures

YESTERDAY WE SHOWED you what a Socket F motherboard looks like, but there were no CPUs in sight.

Today, there were CPUs but no new mobos - almost like someone didn't want us to get benchmarks. Instead of performance estimates, you get pictures. Here is the bottom of the chips, the Socket F is on the left, 940 is on the right.

You will notice that the F part has no pins, just flat LGA pads like the LGA775 P4s. In addition, the pads are much more closely spaced than the pins on the 940. Overall size and shape is about the same, but the newer chip has two indents on the top and bottom of the PCB. That PCB is also and organic substrate rather than the ceramic of the older Opterons.

Moving to the top, there are two things to look at, the size and shape of the heatspreader. On 940 parts, the heatspreader goes right to the edge of the package, there is almost no lip, and the walls are flat sided. The Socket F chips have a much smaller spreader with a visible lip of green around the edge, and while very hard to see, it has a stepped effect at the edge of the heatspreader.

It is time to get more familiar with this package, you will be seeing a lot of it for the next few years, most likely until the Cerebus based parts hit in a few years. µ