AnandTech reported that Socket AM2 system performance was only about 7% faster than Socket 939 equivalents, with most applications about 2% faster,[2][3] despite having over 30% greater memory bandwidth due to DDR2 support.

Socket AM2 also supports newer AMD Phenom processors, which were originally built for Socket AM2+ but backward compatible with AM2, however, this depended upon the system/motherboard manufacturer to supply a BIOS firmware update to operate the processor.

[4] While technical documentation was readily available for earlier generations of AMD processor sockets, the AM2 Processor Functional Data Sheet (AMD document number 31117) has not been made publicly available.

AM3 processors have a new memory controller supporting both DDR2 and DDR3 SDRAM, allowing backwards compatibility with AM2 and AM2+ motherboards.

Since AM2 and AM2+ processors lack the new memory controller, they will not work on AM3 motherboards.