Opteron Dual Cores VS Athlon X2 ??

[zOaib]

whats the difference if any excluding the price point ? thx !

also a side question ------ if i were to purchase an opteron single core 939 , will it work in any 939 socket mboard , or will i have to updtae bios or something , thx ?

 

[zOaib]

no suggestions or info , i have tried the web searches didnt find a resonable comparision , so i thought guys here who have both cpus can let me know the good n the bad , thx !

 

[bruins004]

All I am aware of is that the Opterons were made for Servers (like Intel's Xeon Processors). But they made the mistake of pricing them competitively with the Athlon's so thats why people started buying them. The reason people like them soo much is that they overclock a lot better than the Athlons. Thats all I can tell you. So if you are a big OC then you should get one since they are more stable at higher clocks.

 

[trog100]

i think the only difference was they (opterons) had a bigger cache.. they also probably have higher speed ratings than desktop ones.. not to go faster just to run more 24/7 reliable.. which is why they overclock well.. for reliability they come slower clocked in the first place.. some of the single core ones have the san diego 1 meg cache core these also overclock well.. an FX57 in a different box in essence..

trog

 

[infrared]

They have better memory controllers as well. This is because they are designed to run in servers, with up to 6 slots of ram i believe. They're overall a much better, more stable design. Some people claim that they are more efficient, but i have my doubts since they use the same architechture, but having not owned one, i can't really comment.

If i were gonna build an amd system, which i will be soon hopefully, the opteron would be the chip to go for.

Also, there were some roumours about AMD changing their pricing, so that us, the end users will buy athlons instead. I'm not sure if they still plan to go along with this, i havn't heard anything recently.

~IR

 

[zOaib]

thx for the input guys ................. i am just soo tempted to get the opteron 165 dual core which is clocked at 1.8ghz and has 1mb+1mb l2 cache , and just like u guys said they overclock very easily and more stable !

 

[infrared]

hehe, time to go wild, and spend some money again!

 

[Aevum]

opterons pass harder quality control tests and usualy overclock or undervolt better,
also in some models more overhead space is left to increse reliability,

the idea is that if a processor is tested in QC, and it gives a max stable speed of 2.6ghz, they will set it to 2.4, give it some headroom so it lasts longer, when its a processor that is ment for real time, high availability purposes, like servers, high end workstations, things that basicly cant fail, that headroom is extended for safety, so an opteron might overclock further or run on less voltage then its Athlon64 counterpart,

 

[trog100]

but since they started bunging em on 939 mobos and since most amd cpus are just cruising (not trying anyways) i recon they dont differ much only in their name.. part of the opteron secret was the server designed mobo they got fitted too..

now i recon they are just 64 chips with a different name..

trog

 

[Aegis]

Opterons are especially good overclockers. The Opteron 165 is guaranteed to hit at least 2.4GHz, effectively an X2 4800+ .