SD 3700 or opteron?

[Pens1566]

I was looking at the 3700 SD for a new build, but saw everyone talking about opterons. Which would be better? Not really looking to OC, maybe in a year or so to squeeze some extra life out of it. Will be used mostly for gaming (BF2). Any thoughts? I haven't really looked at the opterons much so any help is appreciated.

 

[ribbon13]

If you want a nice gaming CPU, get a nice dual-core opteron, and get your highest stable overclock. That way the only thing you'll have to worry about upgrading, for quite a while, is the vid card.

 

[Pens1566]

I looked at the opteron 165, but I'm not sure I'd need the dual core. When I'm playing a game I really don't care about burning a dvd, encoding mp3s, etc. in the background.

 

[ribbon13]

New games will take advantage of it more and more, and all current games will give perfectly fine performance on one. If its for gaming, wouldn't make sense to get something so you only have to upgrade video cards for a couple of years?

 

[CP5670]

Will there be any multithreaded games coming out next year? I'm also trying to decide whether to get a dual core or not (will either get a 146 or 165), but I generally upgrade my system every year. The main reason I'm a bit hesitant to get one at this point is that there seem to be some compatibility issues with older games.

 

[SynthDude2001]

Originally posted by: CP5670
Will there be any multithreaded games coming out next year? I'm also trying to decide whether to get a dual core or not (will either get a 146 or 165), but I generally upgrade my system every year. The main reason I'm a bit hesitant to get one at this point is that there seem to be some compatibility issues with older games.

UT2007 (due to be out next summer/fall, last I'd heard) and other Unreal Engine 3 games are supposed to be multithreaded. We don't know to what extent they'll benefit from dual-core/dual-CPU systems, but we'll see when they get closer. If you do upgrade every year, and you don't need a dual core right now, then you may want to save a bit of money and go for the 146 - it'll overclock well and provide you with plenty of performance in any game out right now.

However, I kind of tend to side with ribbon13's advice, as far as what I'm personally doing - if you're willing to spend the money on a dual-core right now (and it's not a whole lot of money anymore with the arrival of the 165), it'll probably last you for a relatively long time. And when multithreaded games start to come out (it's just a question of time, since both AMD and Intel are moving in the dual/multi-core direction), you'll be able to see the advantages without upgrading your processor again. This is just my line of thinking (and his), and is one of the reasons why I bought an Opteron 170 to replace my Athlon XP instead of an A64 3200+ or Opteron 146 or something similar. I'm not sure what compatibility issues you're referring to though.

 

[ribbon13]

Some games have issues in the prescence of 2 cpus. Between AMD's dual-core drivers, a windows hotfix, and runfirst 99% of these issues are dealt with.

 

[Pens1566]

Will the stock 146 or 165 outperform a 3700 SD right now?

 

[SynthDude2001]

Originally posted by: Pens1566
Will the stock 146 or 165 outperform a 3700 SD right now?

Stock with no overclocking? No. The 3700+ SD is a 2.2GHz 1MB chip, the 146 is a 2.0GHz 1MB chip. The 165 is 1.8GHz 1MB (x2 of course), so unless you're running something that benefits from having two CPU's, the 3700+ will be the fastest of the three when you're comparing them all at stock.

The recent interest in the Socket 939 Opterons is mostly because they overclock well, are cheap, and have 1MB L2 cache (an advantage over the lower A64's and the 3800+ X2). If you're not interested in overclocking at all, then of course the higher clocked chip will win out. However, it is worth noting that 2.2GHz and even usually 2.4GHz seem to be basically a given on the Opterons on stock voltage, from the results we've seen so far.

 

[Pens1566]

Originally posted by: SynthDude2001

Originally posted by: Pens1566
Will the stock 146 or 165 outperform a 3700 SD right now?

Stock with no overclocking? No. The 3700+ SD is a 2.2GHz 1MB chip, the 146 is a 2.0GHz 1MB chip. The 165 is 1.8GHz 1MB (x2 of course), so unless you're running something that benefits from having two CPU's, the 3700+ will be the fastest of the three when you're comparing them all at stock.

The recent interest in the Socket 939 Opterons is mostly because they overclock well, are cheap, and have 1MB L2 cache (an advantage over the lower A64's and the 3800+ X2). If you're not interested in overclocking at all, then of course the higher clocked chip will win out. However, it is worth noting that 2.2GHz and even usually 2.4GHz seem to be basically a given on the Opterons on stock voltage, from the results we've seen so far.

Thanks for the reply. I'm not real big on oc'ing this right away. This would be my first amd build and my first attempt at oc. My current system is a 4 year old p4 2.26 w/2GB of pc1066 rdram in a board that doesn't oc. I guess it's worth it for the 165 if prices come down to around ~$220 where the 3700 is.

 

[DrMrLordX]

Pens, one thing to keep in mind is that, so long as your PSU is good, there's virtually no risk to overclocking as long as you leave your vcore alone. Those s939 Opterons go quite a ways on stock vcore, too.

All you have to do is pick the right RAM divider(unless you have good overclocking RAM) and off you go.

 

[Pens1566]

Originally posted by: DrMrLordX
Pens, one thing to keep in mind is that, so long as your PSU is good, there's virtually no risk to overclocking as long as you leave your vcore alone. Those s939 Opterons go quite a ways on stock vcore, too.

All you have to do is pick the right RAM divider(unless you have good overclocking RAM) and off you go.

I was going with this 2x1024 OCZ platinum :
http://www.newegg.com/product/product.asp?item=N82E16820227210
And a DFI UT SLI-DR. I think that will work.

 

[DrMrLordX]

Yeah, I'd say so. It'd be a little silly to pick up hardware like that and NOT overclock. Which PSU are you using?

 

[Zebo]

I think a 3800 or 170 is best candidate for you. It has a better multiplier for type of overclocking you wish to do..

I.e no volts just raise Mhz a bit to say 2400Mhz. with 10x that leaves ram stock with 166mem setting. the 165 presents all sorts of problems with a 2.4 Ghz chip. Needs to run 270 HTT which first off is hard for many boards and second puts ram at ~225 which not all ram can do and most at higher latencies than I'd recommend.

I pick 2.4 because that seems the going rate for these dual core processors on stock voltages...

And yes you should be buying a dual core since you are type if user who keeps comp a couple years. Everything demanding should be multithreaded by next year and that single core pruchase you may regret. both in use and resale.

 

[Pens1566]

Originally posted by: DrMrLordX
Yeah, I'd say so. It'd be a little silly to pick up hardware like that and NOT overclock. Which PSU are you using?

Antec NeoPower HE 550

 

[Pens1566]

170 is too expensive. If the $ is that different, I'd just get the 3700 or maybe the opty 148.

 

[Pens1566]

bump