• Competitor rules

    Please remember that any mention of competitors, hinting at competitors or offering to provide details of competitors will result in an account suspension. The full rules can be found under the 'Terms and Rules' link in the bottom right corner of your screen. Just don't mention competitors in any way, shape or form and you'll be OK.

Opteron UP 144 or Athlon 64 3700+

saguy

saguy

saguy

Associate
Joined
8 Jul 2005
Posts
1,407
I would like to upgrade my CPU as I suspect my Athlon 64 3200 Winchester clocked at 2350 MHz is probably holding back my X1900 XTX. I need some advice on which CPU will be the easiest to overclock to 2600 MHz (ideally 2700 MHz) on air.

My 2 options are the Opteron UP 144 San Diego 1.8GHz and the Athlon 64 3700+ San Diego. I am not sure what the differences are in the architecture as they both have the same amount of cache – it’s all about how far they clock. I would also consider spending more for an Opteron UP 146 San Diego 2.0GHz if was to clock higher than the UP 144.

On price the Opteron looks good at £117.44 considering I can get about £70 for my old CPU.
 
I had to make this choice and went with the 3700 :)

I've not got the best memory in the world, so the 11x multi compared to the 9x multi made a huge impact on my choice. Got to say, i don't regret it either. I've had my 3700 upto 3ghz before whilst benching at 1.6v it's really impressive :D
 
james.miller said:
get the opteron. its cheaper, and not having the best memory doesnt make any difference if your motherboard can do 330fsb+ (which an ultra-d really should). God designed dividers exactly for this purpose ;)
Click to expand...
I wanted to keep it on as small a divider as possible :p

Sat on a 166 divider atm with memory running at 193mhz :D
 
Split decision I see - Opteron might be the one because of price. Since I have a so called overclockers board I might as well put it to good use - sure as hell wasted on my Winchester which does not overclock as well as the newer AMD's. Not too stressed about using a divider for the memory as it's not like the Nforce2 days where it made a difference.

Will an Opteron clocked at 2700 be much of an improvement over what I have got now, considering the graphics card that I am using. I only use my PC for gaming and not for 'playing' benchmarks. Nothing worse than when you upgrade and do not really noticing an improvement.
 
james.miller said:
get the opteron. its cheaper, and not having the best memory doesnt make any difference if your motherboard can do 330fsb+ (which an ultra-d really should). God designed dividers exactly for this purpose ;)
Click to expand...
Do you have any idea what the standard voltage is. I got to keep track of power consumption considering I have a X1900XTX which requires a lot of juice and I am using a 480W PSU.
 
My opty 144 defaults to 1.4 volts in the bios.

I have had mine up to 2900, it won't do 3000 but thats either because I don't know how, or my board sucks :)
 
With regards to your processor upgrade and it being worth it? I'd say so..... run sisoft sandra and I'll tell you what I got in comparison, at I believe - a touch over 2700.

I know you aren't interested in benchmarks but it gives you some indication :)
 
I changed my mind again. I will probably go for 3700 which is only £18 more - will be easier to sell when I next upgrade. (I usually sell my old gear to an electronic computer exchange shop)
 
I have checked some numerous cpu game benchmarks (FEAR, BF2, Oblivion, COD2) and they all have one thing in common - At 1600x1200 the CPU makes absolutely no difference to frame rate. There are a number of in depth CPU game performance benchmarks at Firingsquad - see link for Oblivion benchmark) http://www.firingsquad.com/hardware/oblivion_athlon_64_x2_fx_cpu_performance/

Looks like I will not be upgrading my CPU for a while.
 
saguy said:
Will an Opteron clocked at 2700 be much of an improvement over what I have got now, considering the graphics card that I am using. I only use my PC for gaming and not for 'playing' benchmarks. Nothing worse than when you upgrade and do not really noticing an improvement.
Click to expand...

Same question here whats better for games, movies and music?
Im thinking about the athlon 3700+ or the AMD Opteron UP 146 San Diego 2.0GHz 1MB Cache
 
mtjdavis said:
Same question here whats better for games, movies and music?
Im thinking about the athlon 3700+ or the AMD Opteron UP 146 San Diego 2.0GHz 1MB Cache
Click to expand...
What are you using now.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom