175 vs 4400?

[blawblaw]

Hmmm, I cant really see why buying an Opteron would be more beneficial in this case... something im missing?

 

[Raven]

opterons overclock quite well.

 

[FragTek]

Well they originall were much better overclockers but AMD soon realized that the overclocking crowd was bumrushing the Opty's for that ability and then started binning the chips (almost worse than the X2's).

Some are still fab overclockers though, very capable of spanking the pants off of an X2 though there are some darn fine clockin X2's that spank the pants off of Opty's.

Luck of the draw mate! Though your odds of a better clocking chip are definately with the Optys.

 

[WC Annihilus]

If you do go the Opty route, go with a 170 instead. Cheaper and clocks well (most Opty dual core results you see these days are 165's or 170's)

 

[PV5150]

DFI Street and Xtreme Systems have some very comprehensive discussion on the merits of owning both Opty's and X2's. Agreed with Frag here, the better overclocking choice would be the Opty but again it depends on what you get. Llwyd has had some really nice 'clocks' from his X2 3800+, that'll improve with some better cooling. It's important to note too that DFI will not provide support (at present anyway) to Opty owners running the CPU on their motherboards.

 

[FarFarAway]

My 4400+ wasn't stable above 2.7GHz...though I had benched at 2.8GHz once. The opty does 2.8GHz nice and stable (not naked) but needs a few v to get there - not as good a stepping as I've seen. 2.5GHz on 1.325v tho

 

[JN]

Here's one for opty 3.1ghz out of a 146

 

[Hyper]

If you want a dual core cpu then get the X2 3800+, I have been reading around ocuk and it seems all the latest X2 3800+ chips are hitting around 2.6 - 2.8ghz at good volts.

If you want to stay single go for the Opteron 146 early steppings e.g 0540 or the latest steppings as both these clock very well with pretty much stock volts.

I have a Opteron 146 CABYE 0540 FPAW that does 2.9ghz on stock volts :yumyum:

The choice is yours...

Hope this helps, Sam

 

[Ham]

I think llwyds 3800 is at 2.6ghz atm. He had it at 2.7 but it wasn't 100% stable on stock air cooling. He's got an arctic freezer pro with good ol' AS5 on it now though. However his ram is running on some crazy divider. But for the money its done dam well.

 

[|3ourne]

i would put my money on a late edition 4400+ . opterons have golden steppings but everything else is just bad. some ppl havent been able to get 2.6 ghz out of them and some are running them at 3 ghz. Its the same case with 4400+ but I prefer the 4400+ coz they have better memory controllers than the Opterons. Opteron memory controllers are geared for stability while the Toledo's ( basically similar to Sandiegos ) have mem controllers which give u a better performance. But its all about what you want. The difference isnt huge but its there.

 

[FarFarAway]

Hey |3ourne - my Opty shows up as a toledo core in CPU-Z - is that right?

 

[llwyd]

aye, my X2 3800 is pretty nifty, dual core-ness is pretty niffty to.Its at 2.6GHz at the moment at 1.4V exactly, i havent tried taking it up with my new cooling yet, will do soon tho. the 4400 also has the 1MB L2 cache per core as opposed to the 3800's 512KB. Some websites offer a service where you can choose the stepping which you buy (cant for the life of me remember which ones sorry)

 

[Raven]

Opteron memory controllers are geared for stability while the Toledo's ( basically similar to Sandiegos ) have mem controllers which give u a better performance. But its all about what you want. The difference isnt huge but its there.

how big is the difference and where is it measured ?

if its measured in raw bandwidth i doubt it would affect the overall speed.

atlest my 3200+ doesnt even use nearly all the bandwidth my memory can deliver.

 

[WC Annihilus]

I've heard the Opty mem controller has some trouble dealing with dividers. Don't take my word for that though.

 

[Raven]

sounds weird as the memory is always running with a divider nomatter the speed.

EDIT:

did some quick googling found this.

The system boots and is stable at the 2:3 divider and the 3:4 divider. In both instances, the RAM is running below spec. At the 5:6 divider, the system does not get past the CMOS update screen and will not boot. In this case, the RAM is only very slightly overclocked and well within the maximum stable DDR speed of DDR458 tested earlier. Again, the CPU and Motherboard are well within their limits.

http://forums.amd.com/index.php?showtopic=73687&pid=672464&st=0&#entry672464