Opteron 165 or Athlon X2 3800?

[koocha]

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Produ...oductID=338466

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Produ...oductID=256882

Is the Opteron worth the extra £20 and buying a hsf?

[Dark Horse]

In terms of overclocking, yes.

Your average opteron will maybe reach 100-200mhz higher than your average Athlon 64. However the Opteron will probably get there without much of a voltage bump until its limit. Opterons seem to just hit a wall when at their limit while Athlon 64s have a much more gradual need to increase voltage to increase the overclock.

The Cache increase is debatable and will not give you much of a noticable real world improvement although it may get you up to 10% in some benchmarks.

The Opteron is probably worth the extra money tbh, its just much more exciting to have an opteron to play with than an Athlon 64!

[dmuz]

The Opteron is described as a "osa165cdbox" so should be a retail box with a HSF. The Opty has a 1Mb/1Mb cache (compared to the X2s 512/512) and overclocks like a *demon* (upto £700 FX60-like performance quite easily depending on the chip stepping and the rest of your system). Seems like an easy choice to me

[Xaar]

I got a 165, a 175 and an X2 3800+, which overclock as follows:

165 does 2.7ghz stable (primed 12hrs+)
175 does 2.8ghz stable (primed 12hrs+)
X2-3800 does 2.85ghz stable (primed 12hrs+)

as you can see, all overclock to higher than an fx-60 (2.6ghz) at stock, so I wouldn't rule out the 3800 as a great overclocker..
personally, I'm keeping the 175 as I believe the extra cache to be of more value than the 50mhz

[NightshadowUK]

I plan on getting a Opteron 170 when I switch to dual, it's nice medium between the 4200+ and the 4400+.

As for Opteron vs X2, it seems they're very similar. What're the voltages and temps on those Xaar?

[koocha]

I'm looking at strapping it into the Asus Crossfire motherboard with a Vapochill micro ultra low noise, and probably an Asus X1600Xt Silent, witht he hope of getting another on in the not too distant future

[s29feb]

Don't use the vapo could not keep my opty 170 cool enough stick an Arctic freezer 64 Pro on it dude

[koocha]

I'll have a look at that one...as long as it's quiet it'll do me!

[s29feb]

It is quiet

Take it from me dude

[koocha]

Had a look at some reviews...it's half the proce of the vapochill and it looks pretty darn good.

I'll have me that one with an opty 165 then, strapped to the Asus crossfire board (the old one) and a 250Gb WD SATA300 HDD (16mb cache version)

That should be me all set with buy now pay in 9 months from scan