939/940 Opterons, motherboards and compability. Help out an AMD newbie!

[esaias]

Hi!

I have decided to ditch my plans of buying an Intel system and have started to look for good AMD setup.

I'd like to go dual because my main use for the rig would be music and video production. I won't be needing SLI-capabilities.

I have been thinking of X2 but then again Opterons seem to be surpridingly cheap nowadays so I have taken that under serious consideration. My knowledge about Opterons is quite weak , especially when it comes to sockets.

I would like to have 2 socket motherboard that supports DC-Opterons, I'm thinking of having a Dual DC-Opteron setup. Starting now with 2 single cores (tight budget) and upgrading to DC's later this year.
I understand that diffence between 940 and 939 is that 940 uses ECC-registered memory (and is more expensive). I have read that Opteron come in 939-versions too, but is there a dual CPU motherboard that would have 939-sockecs and support for Opterons? Basically Asus K8N-DL with 939 sockets?

Are 940 and 939 processors/motherboards compatible by any means? Can you put 939 processor to 940 socket or vice versa (pliers needed? )

Tell me about issues about memory. If I was thinking of Intel's stuff, I'd buy a motherborad that supports DDR2-888, but for AMD I really don't know about their memory stuff, what is fast, what is good for future and what is dying technology. If someone could point me out some webpage or write something to these forums about the AMD's memory stuff I'd really appreciate it.

And the final question:

If I go for ASUS-K8N-DL with 2 Opteron 240's (I can get these for cheap, will upgrade to DC later), is it a bad buy? Is the 940 socket dying away and I should be looking for 939-socket mobo?

Thanks,
-Tomi Hyyppä

 

[SynthDude2001]

You seem to know a lot already. Socket 939 and 940 are not compatible, I am not aware of any ways to "force" either CPU in the other socket, nor would I want to. There are also no dual-socket 939 motherboards, so if your goal is eventually a 4-CPU/4-core system, Socket 940 is your only option right now. AMD will undoubtedly be releasing quad-core CPU's at some point in the future, but they will be expensive, and almost certainly wouldn't be for Socket 939 anyway (more likely the new 940-pin Socket M2 or whatever the 1200+ pin new server socket is going to be).

All current AMD CPU's use regular DDR memory, DDR2 is not coming until the socket change later this year. I'm also not sure how soon 940 will be phased out. I'm not particularly familiar with prices on Socket 940 motherboards and CPU's. Depending on how long you wanted to keep a 2-CPU system before moving to 4-CPU, it may make more sense to start off with a cheap 939 board and a dual-core Athlon 64 (X2) or DC Opteron. That would also be faster than two Opteron 240's (which if I remember the naming conventions correctly, are only 1.4GHz each). You would need to sell that for a later 4-core system. If you can get the 240's for a really cheap price and you don't need particularly fast performance from each CPU right now, and the 940 motherboard isn't too expensive, then you might as well go for it.

Hopefully ribbon13 will come along and advise as well...he's actually running a dual DC Opteron system right now, and can probably provide better information than I can

 

[esaias]

Thanks for answer.

I'm probably going for 2x 244 Opt at first, OC them to 2-2,2Ghz and then go for DC's when their price have come down.

How much cooling does the 244 Opteron need when clocked +25% ?

All I need is a decent mobo(OC capability and DC support) for the Opterons, preferably one with firewire and optical audio out and atleast 3 PCI-slots for my old cards. SCISi controller woudl be a nice addition but not neccessary.

-Tomi

Any suggestion

What is the performance diffenrence in DDR and DDR2? and in what kind of applications their differences can be seen?

 

[ribbon13]

Socket 939 CPUs have zero coherent HyperTransport links, and those are required for multi-socket systems. This is also why the pin-outs on the CPUs are very different even though the sockets are very similar, so an adapter is also impossible. Corsair Registered CAS2.5 1GB and 512MB are all you need to know for RAM.

If you're going to go socket 940, the only motherboard I'd point you at is the Thunder K8WE. If you do video production you're going to want more than one x16 and one x1 PCI-e, and two PCI. High-end video editing cards will want thier own x8/x16 PCI-e slot or a PCI-X slot, neither of which you could do without also crippling your dual-DVI possibilities by using a PCI vid card.

Unless you know for a fact you can make use of Quad SMP get a Opteron 175 on a decent socket 939 motherboard like the A8N32-SLI.

 

[esaias]

My music production tool Sonar 5 which can use multiple prcessors. Although I'm not sure if it is worthwhile to get such a heavy system, I just like the idea of having loads of processing power. It could be a better idea to buy a good DSP card instead of many CPU's.

If I'm using A8N32-SLI then I would have chance to use Opterons and X2's?

-Tomi

 

[SynthDude2001]

Originally posted by: esaias
If I'm using A8N32-SLI then I would have chance to use Opterons and X2's?

Yes.

 

[esaias]

How bad choice ASUS K8N-DL is? Exploding capacitors?
What about overclocking features?

is 2x Opteron 244 and Asus K8N-DL for 442usd a good deal? Items are new.
Could I get 2.2Ghz out of these Opties with that forementioned mobo?

DC Opterons are still quite pricey and for price of a one 170, can get a mobo and 2 processors...

Thanks again for your advices/opinions
-Tomi

 

[Screech]

getting one DC opteron, even if it is more expensive, means that when you want to upgrade later, you only need to buy 1 more, rather than getting 2 new DC processors, so you should consider that.....but then, you would also have to consider if the price will drop by the time you want to get a new CPU, and if the mobo will work with 1 DC cpu (i think they can)...

 

[esaias]

Hi!

Could someone explain a little bit of FSB speeds?

I have been looking for Asus K8N-DL because of its tempting price and some nice features, but what about its FSB speed? it is said to 800MHz. Aren't the DC Opteron 1Ghz FSB?

Could someone give a brief information (or point out a webpage) about FSB speeds in AMD systems? I would highly appreciate that.

Thank you,
-Tomi Hyyppä