Opterons...

[trigun500]

I am a newb to these processors. I hear some of my firends say that these are horrible procoessors and you can't game with them. I hardly believe him But it did make me wonder. Are Opterons good processors out of the box or is the only way they are good is when you OC them? Can I just plot it in a 939 mobo and just treat it like my 3500+? Or are there certain settings I have to set the mobo at? Iguess what I am asking is, "What makes them so different?"

Thanks a lot for any input.

 

[SlowSpyder]

They are good processors. You can game with them with no problem. Most S939 Opterons overclock pretty well too. Until the Core2 came out an overclocked S939 Opteron was about as good of a gaming processor as you could get. Even out of the box they are very capable processors, it's just that Intel has better offerings now. I'll be upgrading my socket 939 system to a dual core Opteron eventually.

 

[tallman45]

Ypur friends are misinformed.
Opterons are indeed fine processors, and overclock very well.

They drop right into a 939 system, a 2 minute (tops) swap

 

[SparkyJJO]

Your friend doesn't know what he is talking about. I'm running an opteron right now, and it games fine.

An opteron really is just an Athlon 64 that was binned higher and has 1MB cache instead of the typical 512K. A side effect of being binned higher tends to be they tend to have more overclocking potential my opteron 165 for example is 1.8GHz dual core, I have it at 2.81GHz at the moment on stock voltage

a socket 939 opteron just drop right into any socket 939 board, nothing special you have to do to make it work.

 

[Pens1566]

Yep, your friend is misinformed. My 2.2GHz opty 148 hits 2.86 on stock voltage. If there was a better value for single core cpus, I haven't seen it.

 

[Maximilian]

Theyre awsome cpu's theres better things out now, but no cpu will stay at the top forever. I have an opteron 170 (dual core 2.0ghz 1mb cache) it games great at stock, great overclocked too, mines not particularly good as it can only reach 2.5ghz, which is better than some i suppose but not exactly awsome.

Yes you can just plop it into the 939 mobo. Theyre basically athlon 64's renamed. The only differences between opterons and a64's are the harsher tests they must withstand and the extra ht lanes in certain models 2xx and up for multi- processor systems.

 

[bchivers]

I sold my FX-55 for an Opteron 165, it's much better for the game I play.