Hey, its the best dual core chip for cheap !??

~El~Jefe~ · Post by **~El~Jefe~** » Wed Nov 09, 2005 9:53 pm

Anyone post or notice the 165 $210 dollar Opteron dual core 1.8ghz for sale this week?

its 939, fully 939 board compatible. It is the cream of the crop opteron deal for dirt price.

anyone else notice how its cheaper than a 3800 by a lot?

this is the silent one. I wonder how much it would undervolt.

But my questions are as follows:

Can opterons be undervolted? Besides perfect hand picked chips, what makes an opteron 100 series not a athlon64?

Some say that this chip is a locked and underclocked fx53 chip or something.

next question: if it is such a prime chip, how is clock for clock opteron for gaming vs regular Venice core?

last question: If i get this chip and OC it to like 2.2 ghz, does that ever effect its lifespan? i mean, a fx53 is more torturous than that in its lifespan. shrugs.

confusion.
theres also other dual opterons at Monarch that have higher clockspeeds. These seem like a sicko option for a perfect computing experience.

PEace out yo'z.

jefe

quikkie · Post by **quikkie** » Thu Nov 10, 2005 5:30 am

the s939 opterons still need ecc memory don't they? vs. the athlon64 non-ecc memory - which would mean it's more expensive (overall).

I'll have to pass on the question of gaming performance although I must confess I thought the opteron had the same chip internals except for an ecc memory controller on die, and 940 pins.

-Quikkie

Mariner · Post by **Mariner** » Thu Nov 10, 2005 5:52 am

I thought that ECC memory was optional with Opterons?

Mats · Post by **Mats** » Thu Nov 10, 2005 6:07 am

quikkie wrote:the s939 opterons still need ecc memory don't they? vs. the athlon64 non-ecc memory - which would mean it's more expensive (overall).

I'll have to pass on the question of gaming performance although I must confess I thought the opteron had the same chip internals except for an ecc memory controller on die, and 940 pins.

-Quikkie

Opteron 939 single core "Venus" and dual core "Denmark" uses plain and simple DDR RAM, the same as all A64 uses.
They all have 1 MB L2 cache for each core so they will always outperform Venice.
My Opteron 146 will arrive tomorrow. The CPU code tells me that it can possibly do 3 GHz with air cooling. A 1 GHz overclock will do me good when gaming, and I'll let CCID slow it down when idle.
One of the differences between Opteron and A64 is that Opteron's seems to have passed some kind of harder test at AMD. They all seem to overclock higher, even the not so fortunate ones. They do at least 2.6 - 2.7 GHz stable which is very good compared to the worst A64 which makes maybe 2.4 GHz. Some Opterons come from the same wafer as FX do, that's why they can handle the high speed. I'd say overclocking to 2.2 GHz won't affect the CPU life time at all. Why? Well honestly I don't know for sure, but while you raise the clock to 2.2 GHz you can also undervolt it which tells me that you're far from the limits.

~El~Jefe~: 165 for $210, where?

~El~Jefe~ · Post by **~El~Jefe~** » Thu Nov 10, 2005 7:42 am

darnit. I only post real numbers and prices normally.

this WAS posted by someone else on anandtech.com. and I do believe there was a legit link to it. sucky sucky.

well it is $290 dollars now. or else it was supposed to be. I did see it for 210 dollars. im a freakin moron for not clicking a buy button.

im considering the the 2.0 ghz chip. I am concerned about gaming benchmarks, I figure this would take me decently far for a while.

mikellpp · Post by **mikellpp** » Thu Nov 10, 2005 9:35 am

For more user experiences with the 939 Opteron see the "Unofficial Opteron 939 Thread" These chips seem to be better o/c but also run hotter due to 1mb X 2 caches.

http://www.dfi-street.com/forum/showthr ... ht=opteron

http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/sho ... hp?t=77857

~El~Jefe~ · Post by **~El~Jefe~** » Thu Nov 10, 2005 7:33 pm

can you use cool n quiet settings on motherboards with an opteron?

i did read the reviews.

i wish sites would just not bother posting info about OC'ing. i mean, it hurts the system and isnt stable no matter what anyone says, eventually it leads to premature failures. I rather know what it can do stock just chillling out.

MikeC or someone on here should get a 165 sample

Bob_the_lost · Post by **Bob_the_lost** » Sun Nov 13, 2005 6:37 am

So by turning up the clock rate or multiplier without altering the voltages you slash a CPU's life expectancy? If you're only using stock voltages then how are you doing any damage to the chip? (Answer: you're not)

Stable? Define stable, personally i class a stable system as one that can operate at 100% (CPU and RAM) load for 24hrs and not fall over. Fact is that it can be done, how do you define stable if no overclocked system is never stable?

Now if you're going to say that you didn't mean that, and you were talking about the lunatics that put 1.9v through thier chips then you'd be right, that will fry your CPU much faster than expected. Not to mention the extra strain being put on all the other parts.

HOWEVER: These (opteron) chips are designed to operate for 7/10 years, they won't be used for more than 3 by most people (less for those that take the time and risk to overclock heavily), so even if upping the voltage to 1.6 cuts the life span to a mere 4/5 years, it'll be replaced by then anyway.

When the sole difference between chips is the clock speed then there is no real reason not to try and increase the clock speed with stock voltages. Upping the core voltage a little won't in 99.9% of cases lead to instant CPU death and if it means that i can get the processing equivalent of a £600 180 for the price of a £220 165 then i damn well know i'll be overclocking.

Cool n quiet works as far as i know.

~El~Jefe~ · Post by **~El~Jefe~** » Tue Nov 15, 2005 2:31 am

well ok if you dont increase voltage then it shouldnt be a problem. still more wattage via amperage is used right? this does heat it up, but of course, heat does nothing to a chip with a water cooling system like i have on it.

hm.

good point about opteron ocing it and not having to mess with voltage. I didnt consider that as an option. One thing though, when you oc thechip, you cant use cool and quiet right? i havent oc'd since pIII and celeron days

mikellpp · Post by **mikellpp** » Tue Nov 15, 2005 5:46 am

I have an AMD64 3800 X2 which runs at 2400 Mhz at default voltage of 1.31v just by raising the FSB. The total system power draw measured with a kill-a-watt meter is 65 watts while surfing, etc. This is just a basic pc configuration without a high end video card.

The Zalman Reserator keeps the CPU temp at 2 C above room temp at idle and low loads. So i dont' use C&Q as it only makes a few watts difference in my situation.

When i load each CPU at 100% the system power draw is 120 watts and the CPU temps stabilize at about 12 C above room temp. This is very cool and quiet in my opinion and the power draw is relatively low for a dual cpu system.

With the Opteron version of this CPU i think you would get at least the same o/c at default volts and maybe 5 watts more power draw due to the 1MB X2 cache.

~El~Jefe~ · Post by **~El~Jefe~** » Tue Nov 15, 2005 9:52 am

would I need special ram? i am using 1 gig chips of centon ram now. I would hate to toss them.

nici · Post by **nici** » Tue Nov 15, 2005 10:09 am

You can use memory dividers to keep the memory at 200MHz when you up the FSB. A64 overclocking with regular ram, up fsb, use memory dividers(like 3/4 of fsb speed), lower the HTT(done automatically on some boards).

If i have understood correctly runnning the fsb and memory at different speeds does not make for poor performace. Its only 19:30 and im dead tired.

mikellpp · Post by **mikellpp** » Tue Nov 15, 2005 10:15 am

Your ram should be fine. If you raise the cpu fsb then you may have to adjust ram timings and/or dividers in the BIOS if you have ram set at 1:1 and tweaked.

If you have good PC3200 ram it will be OK.

~El~Jefe~ · Post by **~El~Jefe~** » Wed Nov 16, 2005 9:06 pm

NICI!

too bad you dont live in ny we would hang

ah thanx i see, hm ram dividers. I guess I could do that on the board im getting, it is liked on the ocworkbench forum by bluetooth (great op)

I could run the ram at worse timings. it is already at 3 3 3 8. it is a 1 gig chip so thats common for decent ram. (especially from a year ago) I run the ram at 1T on a 754 Kv8 pro abit board currently.

hm. I wonder if it is worth it to tweak it vs run the more expensive chip.