Questions about Opteron 165, Athlon 3800 X2

[quickk]

Hi everyone,

My DFI lanparty UT nf3 (socket 754) board just fried, and it's past the 1 year warranty. So I'm looking at either purchasing a new 754 board, or going the 939 route. I'm thinking of the ASROCK dual agp/pcie board because then I could keep my agp card. My current setup is real silent (actually now it's totally silent ), and I want to keep it that way. With this in mind, and that I'd ideally like to overclock my new opteron or athlon chip a little (say in the range of 2.4GHz), which chip should I get.

Specifically, I was wondering which one between the opteron and the X2 would

1) run coolest
2) use less power
3) Is my 400W seasonic power supply sufficient? Is it true that these dual core processors use less power than the old clawhammer cpus? I currently have a clawhammer 3000.

Also, does anyone know how quiet that retail HSF on the opteron is? Could I use my Zalman CNPS7000B-ALCU cooler with these new chips?

Thanks for all the help!

 

[Vegitto]

Originally posted by: quickk
Hi everyone,

My DFI lanparty UT nf3 (socket 754) board just fried, and it's past the 1 year warranty. So I'm looking at either purchasing a new 754 board, or going the 939 route. I'm thinking of the ASROCK dual agp/pcie board because then I could keep my agp card. My current setup is real silent (actually now it's totally silent ), and I want to keep it that way. With this in mind, and that I'd ideally like to overclock my new opteron or athlon chip a little (say in the range of 2.4GHz), which chip should I get.

Specifically, I was wondering which one between the opteron and the X2 would

1) run coolest
2) use less power
3) Is my 400W seasonic power supply sufficient? Is it true that these dual core processors use less power than the old clawhammer cpus? I currently have a clawhammer 3000.

Also, does anyone know how quiet that retail HSF on the opteron is? Could I use my Zalman CNPS7000B-ALCU cooler with these new chips?

Thanks for all the help!

As a proud future owner of an Opteron 165 (I ordered one), and having personally experienced the sound of the new stock cooler, I can say that it is STILL loud as hell. A silent cooling solution such as the ThermalTake Big Typhoon, any Zalman or watercooling would be nice if you don't want to go deaf .

 

[quickk]

Thanks for the reply. Hopefully my Zalman cooler is good enough for these two cpu's. On a related note, can anyone tell me if these dual core processor generate more or less heat than a single core clawhammer 3000+ processor? Thanks again for all the help. I'm going to go purchase this thing in a few hours so that I can play with it over the weekend...

 

[kyparrish]

Hi quickk...

I started with an X2 3800+ I had overclocked to 2.4ghz on a DFI ultra-d nf4 board. I then got an Opteron 165 that was a "dud" at overclocking. At 2.6 ghz, it needed 1.5v to run Superpi 32m stable, and failed prime. At the end of the Superpi run, the cpu was up to 48C and the PWM IC was up to 61C and the chipset temp was at 55C.

The 165 put out MUCH more heat than the X2 did. Obviously, part of it was the higher voltage (1.5v to overclock compared to 1.4v on the X2). But, even when I slowed the Opteron down and dropped voltage, it was putting out more heat, which I assume was taking more power to produce. This was all on an Antec Truepower 2.0 430watt.

I sold the Opteron, and am very happy sticking with the X2 and the mild overclock, and the lower heat ouput it is producing. I'm idling ~22-24C, and full load is about ~36-38C depending on room temps.

edit: temps were with an XP-90 with a 92mm Panaflo fan

 

[quickk]

thanks kyparrish,

That makes sense--the Opteron has way more transistors than the X2 (for the extra cache), so I guess that it has to run hotter for the same amount of voltage. I was being put off by people saying that the Opteron was way better at overclocking. I'm not looking for incredible overlocks--I'll be happy with 2.4GHz. Since I'm looking for the coolest processor at those speeds, based on what you told me, it would probably be the X2. Plus it's $40 (cnd) cheaper for me. Thanks!

 

[kyparrish]

Originally posted by: quickk
thanks kyparrish,

That makes sense--the Opteron has way more transistors than the X2 (for the extra cache), so I guess that it has to run hotter for the same amount of voltage. I was being put off by people saying that the Opteron was way better at overclocking. I'm not looking for incredible overlocks--I'll be happy with 2.4GHz. Since I'm looking for the coolest processor at those speeds, based on what you told me, it would probably be the X2. Plus it's $40 (cnd) cheaper for me. Thanks!

Yup, I ended up paying $295 US for the X2, then paid $303 a week later for the Opteron (had a coupon). Sold the Opteron for the same price that I paid, and I'm totally happy with the X2 @ 2.4ghz. It's still plenty quick. The extra cache did probably help the Opteron work quicker, and sure some of them go much higher than X2 overclocks. This X2 will actually go higher with more voltage, but I've found it's prime stable @ 1.375v (in bios) at 2.4ghz.

2.4 is my sweet spot for speed and heat output. Sure I could run 2.5 or higher at 1.5v, but the heat isn't worth it to me right now on air-cooling.

If you were totally balls-to-the-wall with cooling and you didn't care about fan noise or you could afford water cooling, I'd get the Opty.

 

[quickk]

Ok, so I went with the ASROCK + the X2 because I think that it runs a bit cooler, and it was around $50 cheaper. I tested the cpu and the board outside of the case, and it worked fine. I put everything inside my case, hooked everything up, pressed power, and then nothing happens. The fans turn but that's it. At this point I was quite confused 'cause I just tried the combo outside of the case and it worked fine! Anyway, I then tried unplugging the dvd drive, and then lo and behold, it boots fine.

What gives? I thought that the seasonic 400W power supply would be plenty for a x2 3800, a geforce 6800, 1 seagate 120Gb drive, 1 sounblaster audigy, and 1 dvd drive!

Just in case this was a faulty powersupply, I also tried with the antec 380W powersupply that came with my sonata case, and I get the same behaviour.

I also retested by old board that I thought had fried, but it still is dead. The northbridge (or southbridge, I don't know which is which) gets burning hot after the MB is turned on for 10 seconds...

I'm allready out $500 because of this stupid DFI board that fried, and now I have to get a new powersupply? Does a dvd drive really use that much juice?

 

[kyparrish]

Is your motherboard shorting out to any mobo standoffs inside of your case?

On my very first build I had a standoff not properly lined up, and it fried the board.

Anyway, this sounds like a case where everything should work. Make sure everything's plugged in correctly, make sure the front case headers are plugged into the bottom of the mobo correctly, etc.

Make sure the correct power plugs are all plugged into the mobo from the PSU. I had some trouble with my 939 setup b/c I was working too fast and had something plugged in incorrectly.

Good luck.

 

[quickk]

I figured out what was wrong: I was connecting the optical drives via the ATA133 connector. Once I used the ATA100 instead, everything was good. Took me a while to figure this out though---I didn't know that you couldn't use the ATA133 to connect to the optical drives! Thanks for the help!

 

[quickk]

I don't know what I was talking about... All the connectors on the board are ATA133 (as far as I know of). Upon re-reading the manual, it seems like for some reason it's best to connect the optical drives the IDE2 and not IDE1. That's what I should of said! lol!