Opteron

[syadnom]

anyone got their hands on an Opteron to overclock?

im interested to see what kind of headroom a 244 has in it. noticing that Opterons @ 1.8Ghz are VERY VERY good gameing chips, I wonder what they would do at 2.2 or so in that ASUS bourd with AGP8x.

also, any news on nforce3 availability? my feeling is that nforce3 willl definitely be the opteron chipset of choice for high end gamers.

also, can anyone validate that VIA is producing an Opteron chipset and only using the Opterons onboard memory controller as a high speed cache and the chipset having its own dual channel ddr333 memory controller? i have feeling that this is just a rumor myself.

 

[mechBgon]

The diagram at AMDboard.com seems pretty clear about the CPU managing the memory itself on the VIA setups. It sounds like nForce3 Professional 150 will be surfacing in about two months, and nForce3 Professional 250 (with integrated gigabit LAN) in the fall.

The Opteron 244 is about $800, so it would be a darned expensive thing to buy in the near future, methinks. But if you have the money, go for it 😀


edit: I just picked up on the fact that nForce3 Pro 250 will also have four SATA ports native to the nForce3 chip, with RAID 0, 1, and 0+1 capability (in addition to THREE ATA133 channels with the same RAID capabilities). More on that here.

 

[syadnom]

i have seen the diagrams from amdboard.com before, but the rumors i hear are for another via chipset for workstations in the future.

also, my sources for pricing say that in about 2 months when the 244's are readily available, they will be ~$450, the 240's $250 ,which will be about $30 cheaper than a 2.8Ghz Xeon, or 2.4 respectively.


The MSI Dual Board is priced @$485
And nforce3 pricing? i had heard months ago that nvidia was working on a multiprocessor opteron system too, but i have not heard any current news on this.

also wondering if 4/8way motherboards are going to be available for purchase by individuals. Currently, their are no 4+way motherboards available for the general public, you must purchase them from a vendor in a complete product.

im going to hold off until someone gets their hands on the asus board with agp8x to see what performance is like with a radeon9700 pro or GeForceFX.

In about 2 months, we should be able to pick up a 244 for $400-$500, and a single processor motherboard for $200, putting it at a %50 price disadvantage to a similarly fast P4/mobo combo. With the general launch of Athlon64 though, prices should be well down, and early adopters of opterons 'may' have the ability to use a athlon64 in and opteron board, maybee requireing an adapter(i understand that opteron socket accepts athlon64, but not the other way around)

I expect the Athlon64 to launch at about 2Ghz, which will most likely be a good match for a 3.06 P4, and considering that historyically the desktop chips are 10-20% faster high clocked for %25 higher price. a $1.8Ghz athlon64 should be about $225

 

[mechBgon]

The consumer market for a 4/8-way Opteron system would surely be too small to justify the development cost, don't you think? Windows users would need to buy Advanced Server (or steal it). Linux probably handles 4+ CPUs just fine, but that's filtering the market down even further.