AM2 is a CPU socket designed by AMD for desktop processors. It was released in May 23, 2006. The main advantage of AM2 socket is the support for DDR2 memory (up to 800 MHz) witch are faster and can transfer more data per clock cycle while drawing less power than the older model DDR.
The processors that support socket AM2 are: Orleans - Athlon 64 Manila - Sempron Dual-core Windsor - Athlon 64 X2 and Athlon 64 FX Opteron
Most processors on Socket AM2 include SSE3.
SSE3 -also known by its Intel code name Prescott New Instructions (PNI), is the third iteration of the SSE instruction set for the IA-32 architecture. Intel introduced SSE3 in early 2004 with the Prescott revision of their Pentium 4 CPU. In April 2005, AMD introduced a subset of SSE3 in revision E (Venice and San Diego) of their Athlon 64 CPUs. The earlier SIMD instruction sets on the x86 platform, from oldest to newest, are MMX, 3DNow! (Developed by AMD), SSE and SSE2.
Socket AM2 is a part of AMD's next generation of CPU sockets
There are also Opteron processors available for AM2.
