How to Upgrade Your CPU

Sockets 754, 939, 940, AM2 and F

AMD processors based on AMD64 architecture use a different approach. As their memory controller is embedded inside the chip (instead of being located on the north bridge chip from the motherboard), they don’t use the FSB concept, making it very easy for you to upgrade your AMD64 CPU. AMD64 CPUs include Sempron (socket 754 and socket AM2 versions), Athlon 64, Athlon 64 X2, Athlon 64 FX and Opteron. As Opteron is a CPU targeted to servers, we won’t be covering this CPU on this tutorial.
Like all other CPUs you can only replace one CPU by another that uses the same socket type used by your motherboard. If you want to replace your CPU by another that uses a different socket, you will need to replace your motherboard as well (and sometimes also other devices, such as the RAM memory).
To make things simpler, we compiled the table below. At one side you have your motherboard socket and on the other which CPUs are supported.
Keep in mind that AMD64 CPUs are not rated with their real clock rate but with a “performance index”. So an Athlon 64 4000+ does not run internally at 4 GHz, this “4000+” is just a “performance index” (in fact this CPU runs at 2.4 GHz).
Since this table presents the current AMD CPUs available on the market, it may not have the latest models released (we will try to keep this table updated as much as we can).

* FX-60 runs at 2.6 GHz and is a dual-core CPU. FX-57 runs at 2.8 GHz but is a single-core CPU.