opty 165 or 170?

[eatmuchpie]

hello, i'm in the process of speccing a new computer and I was wondering whether the 170 is worth the extra £80. If needs be, I could pay for the 170, but i'd have less money for the second graphics card (to be bought at a later date).

To my knowledge, the only advantage to the 170 is the 10x multi, but I've read that the asus a8nsli premium can get up to 320htt, so given that the max overclock i've read about is 2.8/2.9ghz, might this not be necessary? (320*9=2880)

My new rig so far is:
asus a8nsli premium
Seasonic S12 600W
GSkill 2GB ZX (to be run at approx 225 in divider with tight timings)
7800 gtx (or might wait for G71/7900 to come out)
Waterchill power kit (to cool cpu aand vga with 2*120mm radiator)
Plus other irrelevant parts

Cheers

 

[eatmuchpie]

thanks for the uber fast replies!

I was planning to only have a small RAM overclock (225 was just a guess, albeit it a strangley precise one) in a divider and keep tight timings. I've been looking at reviews online and people have been getting 2.5-3-2-5 @ 225 with the ZX, which is why I said that frequency (although I know it is just luck with which stick I get). If tight timings are better than high FSB in opty's, then my reckoning was to have a small overclock so I'd have a 'compromise' between timings and FSB, if that makes any sense If I were to buy the HZ and did a small overclock eg. 220, what timings could I expect? EDIT: looking at some more ZX reviews, people have been getting 260mhz with 3-3-2-5, just thought I'd throw that in.

Also, because I need to sell my current PC first, I'll be waiting a bit for that anyway, so I'll see how the 7900 turns out (I'm on linux, and there's better 3d acceleration support on nvidia drivers). I'll just have to wait and see.

The figure of 320htt, I know, will change between boards, but I 've heard that this model is a very good one, so I'd expect it to be around there. Do you really think I could get 3ghz on 170 because of water cooling, or would it be based more on luck of getting the right stepping, because if the processor's going to max out at 2.7/2.8, then that 10x multiplier will be redundant, and so that's £80 down the drain.

So ignoring motherboards for a second, at what sppeds will the average 165 and 170 max out at? Will they max out at different speeds?

EDIT: Frank JH, I have a 19" CRT, I will probably be doing 1280x1024, using mid- AA and the other one (mind like a sponge - it gets mouldy and is thrown away)

Cheers

 

[eatmuchpie]

If my mobo won't be able to go past 290htt stable (for example), then that will only get me to about 2.6Ghz on opty 165, which is a bit silly especially since i'll be spending loads on watercooling, so I'll go for the 170 i think. That way, even if my mobo is dodgy it won't affect the CPU overclock.

I want water cooling for both those reasons, tbh. I'm going to have 2 akasa amber 120mm's on the radiator, as apparantly the standard fans that come with the radiator only loose 2-3 degrees C when going from 12V to 5V, and the ambers move have the volume of air. By my reckoning, there shouldn't be more than 5 degrees penalty from using the ambers, so I'll be having uber temps and uber silence

I think I'll also go for the ZX, as people seem to be getting some good timings at lower overclocks eg. 220, which suits me fine if I use a divider (which, correct me if i'm wrong, has little or no effect on performance)

Let's hope I can get that all-ellusive 3ghz stable clock!

Thanks for the help!

 

[eatmuchpie]

I'll be buying off of overclockers, and I don't think I can find out the stepping. It says E6 stepping, but you're talking about the really long jumble of letters and numbers. I'll be buying the 170 I'd say about march/april time, so I'll just have to see how people on the formus get on with them closer to the time.

 

[eatmuchpie]

well, until i get the money there's not much i can do. Do you think they won't be around in march/april? Surely AMD wouldn't pull such a sucessful chip.

If you are certain that this is going to happen, I might use the money I have at the moment to buy the 170 now, but that would leave me with a very powerful CPU with no means to use it; could drive me insane!

Is there any possibility that its prices will go down?

 

[eatmuchpie]

But is there a possibility that the newer steppings will do better? If so, once I get the money then I can check these and other forums and see whether the steppings are good or not, and then finally click the 'Buy' button. Who knows, perhaps the new timings will be able to do 3ghz stable easily. Alternatively, they might struggle to get 2.6ghz.

How long does it take for a new stepping to come out?

I suppose I'll have to just play my luck!