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Final 939 upgrade: Opteron 180 or 185?

antikewl

antikewl

antikewl

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Joined
29 May 2005
Posts
70
I'm about to squeeze my 939 setup for the last time by upgrading my 64 4000+ to either an Opteron 180 or 185.

At the moment I'm thinking 180 and overclock it to 2.6Ghz -- or should I get the 185 which is 2.6Ghz at stock and maybe try to OC that?

Cheers

t.
 
It really just depends how much you want to spend, and how long you want your system to last.

Remember So939 is dead technology, so throwing money at it isn't a great idea. On the other hand, if you want the system to last for another year or two, then either of these would be a great choice.

If you want to spend less, I definitely recommend a 3800+ X2. They're cheap and cheerful and clock to around 2.8Ghz at near enough stock volts.

What do you mainly use the system for? Games? Encoding?

Is your 2Gb of RAM 4x512mb or 2x1Gb?

Jon
 
I was thinking the 180 because it's around £50 cheaper. Yes, you're right, the 939 is a dead tech, but I was thinking that I'd be able to make this last another couple of years with a CPU upgrade (Vista doesn't seem to play nice with a single core CPU) and a graphics card later in the year when the nVidia 9xxx and Crysis are out... then do a whole new setup in a couple of years.

I play games like WoW, HL2 and now Bioshock, but I also do a lot of work in Photoshop and Illustrator. I'm also now starting to work with Autodesk Maya.

My RAM is 2x1Gb DDR PC3200.

The reason I don't want to go with a X2 3800+ or 4200+ is that they're slower, clock-wise, than the 64 4000+ I have now, so probably aren't as good for gaming.

t.
 
I was in your situation in November with an overclocked 146 @ 2750 and upgraded to an opteron 170 running this summer at 2830 Mhz (can go higher but gets quite hot :rolleyes:)
 
Go for the cheaper, they are exactly the same except for the clock speed. If youre going to overclock go for the 180.
 
To the OP, i have infact just done the very same upgrade (see my thread a little lower down). My A64 4000+ got to 3Ghz on stock volts, but i found it lacking a bit in Vista Ultimate. I bought an opteron 170 for about £70 and its clocked to 2.8Ghz on stock volts (thats an 800Mhz overclock). I am now going to sell the 4000+ and should get some good money for it too cos it is an excellent chip.

Vista definitely seems quicker now, im just going to wait for crysis to come out and get a new gfx card just as you do to handle it as well as unreal 3 based games. I just hope this overclocked opteron can hack crysis and the like!
 
antikewl said:
The reason I don't want to go with a X2 3800+ or 4200+ is that they're slower, clock-wise, than the 64 4000+ I have now, so probably aren't as good for gaming.
Click to expand...

You're right up to a point. The Manchesters (X2 3800+ and 4200+) are very good overclockers, with the recent 3800+s hitting 2.8Ghz with relative ease.

In a multithreaded game, even a 3800+ at stock speeds would absolutely wipe the floor with your 4000+.

However in single threaded games, the highest clocked CPU will almost always win. Ie. If you can get a 3800+ X2 running at a higher clockspeed than your existing 4000+, you will see an increase in game performance (FPS).

One of the main points to be made about the A64 series is that raw clock speed gives a bigger "real world" performance boost than anything else at all.

Jon
 
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