A sanity check and advice...

[Exobee]

Hi all,

I'm wandering around in a bit of a no mans land at the moment. Let me give you some background, I'm entertaining a migration from intel to 939 and pci-express. I presently have a PIV-2.4c/Abit ic7-g/1Gb 4200 and los of other bits, raptors, 9800 256mb etc...

Now on one hand this machine does 90% of what I ask it do day in day out. I originally brought it all for a water conversion in the Yeong Yang cube, but priorities change so it never got past pencil cut lines on the case.

So before christmas a friend pipes up about opterons...I start looking and start thinking ok, this could be done quickly and painless...

Could not find stock anywhere, so a little later I begin to discover the other gem in the opteron family, that of the dual's the 165's and alike.

Now I run the pentium in HT mode and I like it, not true dual core, but an idication of the future, burning dvd's browse, video creation, photoshop, pixmantec etc...so the dual is really tempting.

I'm sitting on an order for a 165, supposed to be in on the 19th...but I'm wondering as the duals seem to be capped out at around 2.4G, is the opteron dual core not a slight false economy compared certainly for clock speed alone to the 144/6's but to the X2's.

Not least as it will be clocked, possibly under water; if it goes bang how long would I be waiting for a replacement, more so important if they do end up pulling the retail chains on them (rumours, great marketing)...so is perhaps an x2 clocked up not a better economy?

Now I've asked the fluffy debatable questions...any boards excelling with the dual cores over the asus or dfi offerings widly cited for overclocking and performance?

I'll be hopefully converting the 2. into a media pc for the lounge, maybe a clean windows os will leave it with enough poke to play the 1080 HD videos onthe the 2405.

Thanks for reading, I'd love peoples views, especially on the dual cores, as the 2.8/9/3.0 single ocres are darn tempting, if the 146 ever appears again as I don't believe the 150 to be worth it, cost v gain...

Cheers,

Colin.

[Exobee]

Oh the sanity check is:

Is it worth migrating from the 2.4 Intel to the 165

I'll water the 2.4 and the 4200 memory makes for some good results with the window open for a short period of time...

[Zad]

That presupposes that 165s ever become available again of course... It seems an expensive leap to me for not that much return to be honest. By the time they become available, the new AM2 socket will probably be available anyway and prices will have taken another "bump" downwards. I would wait until then to evaluate things.

Mike

[Exobee]

Thanks Mike,

Am2 is close in relative terms, f course it will have a high intro price, but your right in the 939 taking a dip.

I've since gone back over some of my earlier bookmarks on water for the 2.4c...3.5+ seems plausible and I have the headroom in some geil PC4000 memory to get halfway there on zalaman air without faults.

So I might blow the 165 fund on a water kit, which is transferable if the need arises, might keep the wolf from the door. On another thread I've kind of argued that the 165 is not really an opteron bargin like the 144/6 when compared to the x2 range.