Fun with S939 Opterons.. :)

[gg1978]

I had heard what nice chips these are, with them running nice and cool and having 1M cache also.. I had no idea they overclocked this well though..

I've got three Opty 144's ($77 at newegg), all of which run quite nicely at 2.70GHz, with a 50mV bump in Vcore from the stock 1.40V needed to hold them stable.. Heh, the microATX Epox board i have one of them in doesn't even need the Vcore bump, as it overvolts the CPU by about 50mV by default.. Only 50 C at 2.7Ghz, stock AMD heatsink, with a full load of Prime95 going on..

If you're just looking for a solid single core CPU, this is it..

[Maxxarcade]

Re: Fun with S939 Opterons..

Will these chips run on most S939 boards that support the other Athlon 64's? I've been so tempted to get one of the Opty's since they are a steal at this price. Right now I've got a San Diego 3700+ with 1MB, but it cost a lot more than the Opty...

I'm kind of dissapointed with the newer Socket AM2 stuff, since all the CPU's in my price range only have small amounts of L2 cache. Maybe they are still fast because of the DDR2 though?

[gg1978]

Re: Fun with S939 Opterons..

AFAIK they'll work on any S939 board that has BIOS support for it, which i'm sure is the vast majority of boards that can support later chips like San Diego core, X2 Manchester and Toledo, etc..

From what i can tell, the Venus core Opteron is much the same as San Diego core.. I think the Venus does something that San Diego doesn't, or the other way around.. In any event, the Opteron cores seem to almost be handpicked or something, as none one of my recent venice cores will run at 2.7Ghz, let alone at only 50mV above stock Vcore..

I'm sure any of these three that i have right now could do 2.40G at stock Vcore, with no impact on stability.. When i got the first one, i had it post at 3.0Ghz by accident, but of course it hung during post.. Not like i would have expected a full POST at that speed, with ANY amd64 chip..

I'm contemplating buying another one already.. Must resist.... LOL

I'm almost tempted to pop my X2 4800+ out of my main system and drop one of these in.. Sure, i'd be losing a core, but gaining 300Mhz as the 4800 doesn't O/C worth shit, and runs a bit toasty in any event..

I was considering undervolting and dropping the multiplier to 4X, but they don't undervolt well.. not like they run hot anyway...


As for AM2, sure you get more memory bandwidth, but with AMD64 you only see a real benefit at DDR667 and above, with higher memory latency to boot.

[Maxxarcade]

Re: Fun with S939 Opterons..

That brings up another question... Are the X2's worth getting if you are only running WinXP Home? Or does it appear as a single fast core to the system? I'm a bit behind on my knowledge of recent CPU technology.

[gg1978]

Re: Fun with S939 Opterons..

As for WinXP home and X2's, i don't think it'll see both cores.. The X2's have two physical CPU's on the die, with each having its own L1, L2, and interface to the HT section of the chip.. so they appear to windows as two actual CPU's, unlike hyperthreading which was technically a single CPU core, that had two "virtual" CPU's that shared resouces like L2 cache, etc..

[Fatal0E]

Re: Fun with S939 Opterons..

Dual cores work with XP Home, it supports 1 socket, but not 2. So 1 socket, dual core works. Dont know about a quad core though.