Athlon 2 x2 that much faster than an Opteron 185?

[night]

I have the opty in a minecraft/media server and can grab an AM3/2.9 x2 combo, but I'm not really sure how much worth it may have.
Besides the obvious more upgradeable chip and ram, talking straight chip power, is the Athlon 2 worth it? Been googling around but there is so little compare and of course nothing to directly compare.

 

[jhu]

Yes. The Opteron 185 is K8 architecture at 90nm. Athlon II is K10 architecture at 45nm, so it will be faster clock for clock and run cooler.

 

[night]

That isnt exactly guaranteed. Like low level vid cards are new process previous generation.
Not to mention Athlon has no cache.

 

[waffleironhead]

Clock per clock, the k10 based cpu is what 10% faster than the K8? So including the clock speed advantage of the newer cpu, you will gain some extra grunt from the newer arch.
It really depends on how much you are going to pay for the upgrade, but i doubt it will be really worth it in the end.

 

[Abwx]

An Athlon II X4 would be more relevant, the L3 cache account for 8% difference with an equally clocked Phenom II X4.

 

[SPBHM]

That isnt exactly guaranteed. Like low level vid cards are new process previous generation.
Not to mention Athlon has no cache.

no cache!? it has 2MB of l2, like the 185.

Athlon II at 2.8GHz is better than k8 at 3.2
http://anandtech.com/bench/product/114?vs=27

 

[night]

Clock per clock, the k10 based cpu is what 10% faster than the K8? So including the clock speed advantage of the newer cpu, you will gain some extra grunt from the newer arch.
It really depends on how much you are going to pay for the upgrade, but i doubt it will be really worth it in the end.

$30 for board and chip. Plus my current ancient 955BE needs more ram so I can hand the 4gig down to this new board. Also I assume the A2 will overclock reasonably well. I can't oc the opty at all with 4 sticks of ram.

 

[nemesismk2]

i have always liked amd x2 cpu Regor and have amd x2 270 which is clocked 3.4Ghz. It can't be overclocked much and only so so for gaming but runs office stuff very quickly.

 

[Lorne]

Love the Regor core A II 250, The A II 245 would be the closer to the Opt 185 but the A II Has better HT speeds and lower TDP, On a AM3 MB a lot more memory options and bios control.
If you wanted L3 cache then the Ph2 550 X2 but that adds 30 more watts (95w)
The A II 640 X4 3Ghz 95w.

 

[night]

Ya, I actually have a 905e in an htpc/steam box but those and the 910 are rare as hell.
And this combo was sold from under me anyway, so back to the searching..