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Comment by eemil | Hacker News Reader

How about supporting a socket for more than one generation?

My desktop PC from 2018 is still going strong, on account of using the AM4 socket (AMD). That allowed me to upgrade to the 5800X3D a while back, a whole two generations or four years newer than the original CPU.

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This is the reason I chose to go with AMD's 7000 series for my 2022 build.

I wasn't aware of Intel's limitation when I built my first computer in 2016 so when I wanted to upgrade a few years later I wasn't expecting to need a new motherboard since it still had everything I needed - it felt so wasteful!

Instead I just waited for AM5 based on the longevity for AM4.I'm really hoping AMD support AM5 for a few more generations so I can do the same as you in 2026/7

>How about supporting a socket for more than one generation?

Intel typically seems to support sockets on the desktop for 2-3 generations of CPU:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CPU_socket#80x86

This is unfortunately not true and a result of Intel's obfuscatory tactics. The socket has been the same in subsequent generations, but you needed to buy a new motherboard because the chipset supposedly did not support the newer CPUs [0]. An example of this is the socket 1151 generation. This socket was named 1151-1 and 1151-2 in later years due to this tactic. When Intel was on their high horse (2010-2018) they generally supported 1-2 generations per socket.

[0] https://www.pcgamer.com/modders-get-intels-coffee-lake-cpus-....

To add to this: some motherboards could support newer cpus via a patch to the bios or embedded controller firmware... meaning that the incompatibilities were/are completely artificial.

I did the same with Intel 12th gen vs 14th gen.

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