Hot, Quick and Dirty guide to dual core?

[Savij]

I'm building a new system and trying to figure out what the deal is with the AMD dual core CPUs.

As I understand it, the socket 939 Opteron 160 (and up) are the dual core CPUs that I should be looking at. Can I drop this in any socket 939 Mobo? I did a quick search and it seems like not all the 939 mobos claim to support athlon X2, but my friend keeps telling me that if it's 939 it'll work. A little help or a link to a quick and dirty guide would be most helpful.

 

[TSS]

planning on OCing at all?

actually the opteron 165 till 180 are dual core procs made for socket 939. opterons are server procs, but they can be used for desktops, and generally have higher grade sillicon and bigger caches. but they run 200mhz lower then their X2 lil brothers at the same price. go Opteron if you plan on (serious) overclocking.

X2s are really the consumer procs. just about every 939 socket mobo works with them these days, and if it doesnt off the bat, flashing the BIOS always works. generally the chips to go for when not OCing. there arent really any other difference between the opterons and X2s

youll need the dual core patch for windows too, since windows was never ment for dual cores (it will recognize it and run them, but games might see stuttering and such) it should be around somewhere on the forums.

 

[themusgrat]

Yes. Opterons can usually clock to 2.8 or higher with good colling and voltage. X2s are almost always limited to 2.65-2.7. So I would get the 165, if you can find it in stock at monarch, since they drop the price to 270 when the OEMs are in stock. Plus, the 3 year OEM warranty is only like 15. Mine, w/ warranty, was 300 shipped, and since it can get to 3.0, it is the best deal out there for dual core.