Opteron : Final check

[dbates]

Please forgive the noobness of the question.

This is a final check - I might be about to invest in a 170. I want a nice dual core Athlon 64 which will overclock on water. Can someone please double confirm for me that I could put this into any 939 motherboard and get good results ?!

Ta !

Dan

 

[FarFarAway]

Two things:

939 motherboard

As long as the board manufactorer has released the correct BIOS update

confirm for me that I could put this into any 939 motherboard and get good results ?!

No: you put it into a crap motherboard and it'll get crap results

But yes - Opterons are very good

 

[dbates]

And do you think it's a reasonable purchase over a 3800+ X2 if I can get the 170 for about £20 more ? I'm not sure I've seen any benchmarks to show that double the cache gives that much benefit, but it should help a little ?

 

[FragTek]

I would say yes. Usually Opteron's are going to be your higher overclocking choice but from what I've heard AMD is binning the Opty's pretty hard these days.

There's definately quite a few X2's out there that smoke in the overclocking department. It's all going to be luck of the draw mate.

My 180 does 3.1ghz windows stable on water but only dual prime stable up to 2.95ghz. Once I get my cascade I suspect I'll be able to run 3.1+ dual prime stable.

 

[cybermaniac]

ive got an opteron 170 atm, running at 2.6ghz on stock.

i can run it at 2.8/2.9ghz stable, but with high temps, so im not going to go there until i get water or a phase change, lets see what the money says.

its a schweet processor.

im also running a DFI LanParty NF4 SLI-DR expert with 2gb of G.skill ram

 

[|3ourne]

get a 3800+ and save urself some money. Tests have already shown that the extra 512 k cache on each proc doesnt do much difference in live gaming performance when compared clock per clock. Not to mention the latest batch of 3800+ are ocing wicked. Check the thread over at XS for more details.

 

[dbates]

Any chance of links, either to the test showing the lack of performance on the cache, or to the appropriate XS thread ?

Also, I will be doing quite a bit of video editing and encoding too, not too much gaming - would that change your opinion on the cache ?

 

[watertown1978]

Any chance of links, either to the test showing the lack of performance on the cache, or to the appropriate XS thread ?

Also, I will be doing quite a bit of video editing and encoding too, not too much gaming - would that change your opinion on the cache ?

I would persoanlly go with the Optie hands down. OCable, with the DC wich will help you while doing multi tasking

 

[Ham]

get a 3800+ and save urself some money. Tests have already shown that the extra 512 k cache on each proc doesnt do much difference in live gaming performance when compared clock per clock. Not to mention the latest batch of 3800+ are ocing wicked. Check the thread over at XS for more details.

Hit the nail on the head full pelt IMHO.

 

[|3ourne]

Any chance of links, either to the test showing the lack of performance on the cache, or to the appropriate XS thread ?

Also, I will be doing quite a bit of video editing and encoding too, not too much gaming - would that change your opinion on the cache ?

I dont have any links right now but It was a thread started by a user named Onepagebook over at XS. People have the wrong idea that the xtra 512k cache per core is equivalent to 200 mhz speed difference. That is not the case. The only thing u will see the difference most apparent in , is SuperPi 1M test. Why ? Becoz instead of refreshing the on-die cache once , the opteron wont need to refresh it at all. But other than that , there isnt that much of a difference which would justify the additional price difference.

1M might make things smooth if u are HEAVILY ( ie. ten firefox windows , autocad , adobe photoshop , Acrobat Professional , winamp , divx open all together ) . But at that level , even 1M cache wont be able to do much and the computer will still be a little slow.

Opterons have a higher heat output than the 3800+ X2s as well. Not to mention they draw more power thus putting a little bit more stress on your mosfets. Factor that in with the 50+ USD price difference ,and you know you wont go wrong with the 3800+ . Most of the 3800+ X2s in the market , made after 0601 are doing great and can easily clock upto 2.7 ghz ( which is 100 mhz faster on each core than the FX60 , albeit at a lesser amount of cache ) . Save that extra money and get more ram for ur encoding. You will be just fine.

 

[Raven]

People have the wrong idea that the xtra 512k cache per core is equivalent to 200 mhz speed difference. That is not the case. The only thing u will see the difference most apparent in , is SuperPi 1M test.

false, a san diego with 1mb cache is slower at running superpi than a venice with 512kb cache atleast with single core.

read 2 different tests about it and both where run with exactly the same hardware fsb multiplier software for both cpu's.

if the rumours i heard that the opteron memory controller is made for stability and not performance then it will be even worse than the 2 cpu's above.

one of the test showed that 1mb cache gave 1.5-5% higher FPS in games

 

[Affro]

You can only run the opteron 170 at speeds of greater than 2.6ghz if your bios allows voltages above 1.5V, I have it set at 1.41 and I'm happy with a 2.6ghz clock speed.

Mobo: Asus A8n-SLI Premium

My mobo is locaed at 1.5V for max voltage.

Affro.

 

[cybermaniac]

You can only run the opteron 170 at speeds of greater than 2.6ghz if your bios allows voltages above 1.5V, I have it set at 1.41 and I'm happy with a 2.6ghz clock speed.

Mobo: Asus A8n-SLI Premium

My mobo is locaed at 1.5V for max voltage.

Affro.

no.

i can run mine at 2.8 with stock voltages

although it does get a bit hot (45C idle) (new stock AMD cooler)

then again ive got a dfi extreme

 

[WC Annihilus]

It's luck of the draw really. Some steppings can do very well, some can't. Looks like you got unlucky Affro And as cyber sort of mentioned, your mobo could be a limiting factor <shrugs>

 

[Affro]

The motherboard is definatly the deciding factor on this, if you have a DFI board they seem to be able to pull x10/x11 multiplyers and voltage over 1.5, I put the same CPU in my mates PC and he popped it to 2.8 almost immediatly

Bah!

Affro.