best ? athlon 64 3200+ or two opteron 240's

Realms

Junior Member
Oct 14, 2003
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I just need a few opinions, i've been out of the loop since amd unveiled the new processor line up and i would like to build a new system, i see that the athlon fx 64 uses the same cpu pin setup as the opterons and that the normal athlon 64's dont, would two opteron 240's be a better buy than a single 3200+ 64?
 

Ronin

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Mar 3, 2001
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server.counter-strike.net
That would actually depend on what you plan on doing with your CPU. Generally speaking, I would probably suggest going the single CPU route for normal operation, but if you're using anything that supports hyperthreading, then there's no reason not to go the dual setup. Note that the Dual Opteron setup requires RAM for each CPU, so if you buy say 1GB of RAM, each CPU will use 512MB.
 

chsh1ca

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Feb 17, 2003
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Originally posted by: Realms
I just need a few opinions, i've been out of the loop since amd unveiled the new processor line up and i would like to build a new system, i see that the athlon fx 64 uses the same cpu pin setup as the opterons and that the normal athlon 64's dont, would two opteron 240's be a better buy than a single 3200+ 64?
That depends entirely on what you are trying to do. For a destkop system, I would recommend the single A64 processor. Keep in mind that Opterons are server-class CPUs and as such, I believe they require Registered DDR Ram, which is much more costly than Unregisterd DDR. Note also that it is the Athlon FX-51 that is pin compatible with the opteron, and that is only true until the next revisions of the FX come out (which will be 939-pin processors). The Athlon-64 3200+ that you indicate in your post uses an entirely different socket, and has only one hypertransport link enabled, instead of the three needed by the FX and Opterons that are used for Multiprocessing.

Originally posted by: RoninCS
Note that the Dual Opteron setup requires RAM for each CPU, so if you buy say 1GB of RAM, each CPU will use 512MB.
That is incorrect. While each CPU is responsible for its own bank of RAM thanks to the integrated memory controller, all ram is accessible to all CPUs, which is the reason the HyperTransport links between processors exist.



 

Realms

Junior Member
Oct 14, 2003
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yeah i know that the sockets are different that is why i wanted to ask the question, i was about to just go ahead and buy a single opteron on that new gygabyte board that anandtech reviewed the ahtlon fx-51 on but then i realized that the clock speeds are a bit low, the ahtlon fx-51 is just a beefed up opteron from what i see, but then whats the draw to the normal 64, i just dont want to buy the wrong thing and not be able to oc or get an fx later on when they drop in price.