Opteron 144 not so good With a Asus A8N-VM

[Cook1]

Well first of all, you should have known that if you're building an mATX system that your motherboard + PSU options are limited thus OC'ing is extremely difficult. If I were you and had a mATX setup I'd just buy the chip that I could afford that is the fastest at stock speeds.

 

[CU]

Originally posted by: furballi

You would have to push the 144 above 2700MHz before it will outperform the 3700 @ 2500MHz. Personally, I think your chance of running the 144 above 2700MHz is less than 40%.

Why would the 144 need to run 200mhz faster than the 3700+ to have equal peformance?

 

[chris21adan]

I have my Opteron 144 running at 2.85 Ghz with 1.45 volts. I can do 3.02 Ghz but I'd have to hit 1.6 volts and I do not want to do that even though it does not hit 50c at full load. Having a super sweet overclocking motherboard helps out a ton.

 

[markkleb]

Im trying another mobo, we will see the difference then.

My Asus only goes to 240 fsb but I have only got it to start at 220(sometimes)
There is no way to increase voltage.

 

[Cook1]

Originally posted by: markkleb
Im trying another mobo, we will see the difference then.

Don't get your hopes up too much...

if you're building an mATX system that your motherboard + PSU options are limited thus OC'ing is extremely difficult.

I'm allowed to quote myself

 

[markkleb]

Well the Biostar has no 1394 (i never have used it) But it does have 4 fan plugs on the mobo (asus 1) And you can set the voltage as well as the multiplyer.

i am using pretty good memory 2 3 2 5 Lat 2, also 2 hdds on raid 0. I am pissed at how slow it was compared to the 3700 though.

If I had just spent $30 more I could have gotten another 3700. lol (dam cheapskate)

 

[96redformula]

Oh the name is because I USED to have a 1996 red formula "trans am" and I got to run 12's all motor with it at 4000 elevation .

 

[KoolDrew]

You would have to push the 144 above 2700MHz before it will outperform the 3700 @ 2500MHz.

WTF are you talking about? They are architecturally the same. The only difference being the Opterons overclock better.

markkleb, since it is obvious you don't know what you are doing here:
http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview...atid=28&threadid=1497607&enterthread=y

 

[markkleb]

How is it I dont know what im doing? The mobo only lets u change fsb.

My 3700 went to 2553 and my opteron goes to 1900. HOW IS THAT THE SAME??

I apprecieate the link though.

 

[Fallengod]

Well...The opteron ocs more than that, you just either dont know what youre doing or your mobo isnt that great. Its one or the other. No opteron 144 maxes out at 1900mhz...

 

[aggressor]

The Opteron might need more voltage to reach higher clocks, something your motherboard doesn't do

 

[shinzwei]

I did the same thing OP, I sold my 3700+ and gotten a 144 Opteron and now im happy=) I got my Opteron 144 @ 2.7Ghz with 1.4V's 48C with SP2004 Running.

Its OCCT Stable but wanna run SP2004 CPU Test just to make sure=) Running it for 24 Hours means its stable right?

 

[Mogadon]

The op has a crap mobo. Whoever gave the op the advice to upgrade from the 3700+ to the opty 144 either didn't know what mobo the op was running or should be shot.

If you have a DFI Lanparty or other good overclocking board chances are you'll be able to get the opty 144 up higher than the 3700+ and hence it's 'better' and definitely better bang for buck.

Originally posted by: furballiYou would have to push the 144 above 2700MHz before it will outperform the 3700 @ 2500MHz. Personally, I think your chance of running the 144 above 2700MHz is less than 40%.

Can you backup that statement in any kind of a way? I have a feeling you may be under the impression that the 3700+ has 1MB L2 cache whereas the opty 144 has 512K L2 cache hence the need to o/c 200MHz higher. If that is your understanding it's wrong, the opty 144 also has 1MB cache. Other than that I can't see any reason why you'd make that statement.

 

[Mogadon]

Originally posted by: shinzwei
I did the same thing OP, I sold my 3700+ and gotten a 144 Opteron and now im happy=) I got my Opteron 144 @ 2.7Ghz with 1.4V's 48C with SP2004 Running.

Its OCCT Stable but wanna run SP2004 CPU Test just to make sure=) Running it for 24 Hours means its stable right?

Yeh, that's regarded as the norm for testing stability, passing 24hours of SP2004 basically means your chances of your comp crashing due to hardware issues is about 99.9%.

 

[furballi]

Opteron must run at a higher FSB to achieve the same CPU core speed. Therefore, the user must use a lower ram divider. This will cost CPU clock time. It's always best to run at 1:1 to get the most performance out of the CPU.

 

[koolzb]

I always hear good thing about 144, so your "buyer beware" seem invalid.

 

[Zap]

Originally posted by: modempower
If that chip really does a max of 2.0ghz, you may be in possesion of the single worst opty 144 chip ever created on this planet.

I think I have the third worst Opteron 144 that people are willing to admit to around here. Mine does 2250MHz stable on stock vcore and has problems hitting 2340MHz with boosted vcore. Tried on DFI LANPARTY UT Ultra-D and Abit KN8. Lowering multipliers gets me high FSB easy so that's not a problem. Tried all things, lowering HT multiplier, etc. Only thing I haven't tried is raising vcore past about 1.5v. This chip already runs hotter than the other two socket 939 chips in my household, and doesn't clock as high.

For people who think all Opterons should clock high and that people who aren't getting decent overclocks with them is doing something wrong, put your money where your damn keyboard is... I dare you to buy this chip off me! :evil: Any risk takers here? I don't think so. So STFU! Even Opteron overclocking is YMMV and nothing's gonna change that, no matter how many fanbois beat the Opteron drum.

 

[furballi]

Have built three 144 rigs using Value RAM. Best overclock speed is 2.51GHz with 166 memory divider (1.55Vcore). Lowering to 133 RAM speed will raise core speed to 2.63GHz. I personally prefer to overclock Sempron processors with 9 or 10 multiplier. Opteron 144 would be my 2nd choice if you can get it for less than $130.

Once you get the core speed above 2.25GHz, your gaming experience will be limited by the video card. Don't place too much emphasis on the motherboard or PCI vs PCI-E.

 

[Zap]

Yup yup, just built (on Friday, in time for Saturday LAN) a Sempron gaming rig in a mATX case with a Tforce board and X850XT. Budget and fast. Best $80 CPU I've purchased in a while. furballi, you mentioned "best" 144, what about the "worst" one? I'm interested in knowing because seems like everyone just likes to bang the overclock drum with reports of high overclocks which creates the illusion that all such processors can do such a speed when the truth is that there is the chance that such a processor can do such a speed.

 

[WT]

Loving my Opty 144 @ 2.4. This was my first AMD overclock and I couldn't have made it any easier. Stock cooling, stock voltages and if I choose to run a third party BIOS (Asrock 939 SATAII) I could shoot for 2.6+. It idles at 36c and 42c full load. I have not had one single hiccup with that rig. I daresay it is my best CPU purchase in five years.

 

[Avalon]

I 100% guarantee that your chip can overclock past 2ghz. It's your board, which sounds like a piece of junk for overclocking. It probably can't acommodate opteron's in its current state (maybe a BIOS flash?), in which case it's your fault for not researching compatibility. Don't blame the chip.

A Biostar Tforce 6100-939 board is the champion of mATX overclocking, and will allow this chip to stretch its legs.

 

[furballi]

I believe the AVERAGE Opteron will best the AVERAGE A64 by 100MHz core speed. The Sempron CPUs tend to run about 60MHz lower than their A64 cousins (probably due to the lower QC standards).

Wost performance on the 144? 2.42GHz with 166 divider and 2.48GHz with 133 divider. I run 166 divider with this chip because the 60MHz core improvement was largely negated by the lower memory speed.

Most people only post if they have a bad or a great chip.

 

[Avalon]

Originally posted by: furballi
I believe the AVERAGE Opteron will best the AVERAGE A64 by 100MHz core speed. The Sempron CPUs tend to run about 60MHz lower than their A64 cousins (probably due to the lower QC standards).

Maybe only the 144, if you consider A64 overclocks of 2500mhz average, because the 144 will do 2.6 consistently on average. The 146/148 models will typically net you around 2.8, whereas the near dozen I played with all had better results on average than that, so I'm being conservative here. None of my chips topped out below 2.7ghz at all, even though one of them had a hard time getting there (could only superpi).

 

[RobsTV]

With regard to mATX, have 5 Jetway mATX boards (faster onboard video than 6150's, and has HDA). All 5 running Opteron 144's at the max FSB the board supports, 300MHz (which makes all five 144's run at 2.7GHz, using stock HSF, and even with cheap Rosewill memory). All work great running HTPC's 24/7. That is 100% success rate with Opty 144's in mATX, which proves it is no fluke. These CPU's ROCK!

 

[markkleb]

OK HERE IT IS!
FIRST- thanks Furballi, Aggressor and Buzzsaw 13 for the good info.

I took the 144 and put it with a ASUS A8V Deluxe and it OC'ed to 2.5 stable. So I will rephrase one of my origional posts "buyer beware" to " ALL MOBOS DONT OVERCLOCK EQUALLY WELL(even if their Asus)"
My micro Asus only allowed Fsb to be changed. The full size one had many changes including voltage.

I sold the opty to my customer and kept the 3700+ as it was able to oc to 2.53 on the Micro mb.

So all of you that blindly say"opteron rules" be careful cause on some micro mobo's thats not true.