Opteron Vs. Athlon X2

[Peter Arremann]

On Monday 05 December 2005 16:40, Robert L Cochran wrote:
> I'm Christmas shopping and in need of advice.
>
> I'm currently using a machine that has an Athlon 64 3500+ (single core)
> processor with an MSI K8N Neo2 Platinum motherboard. I'm using 2 Gb of
> Adata memory which is actually running on 2T timings. The motherboard
> was flashed with the v1.9 BIOS which upgrades the board to processor E6
> CPU (I'm not familiar with the "E6" terminology.)
E6 stepping has better memory timing capability (400 with a higher number of 
memory banks) and improved power saving. E3s overclock better though :-D


> Now I'm on the Monarch Computer website looking at Athlon X2 and Opteron
> processors, and I'm wondering which one would be a really good step up
> for me for the next 2 years -- preferably without having to get a new
> motherboard.
The board you've got is a 939 pin socket and will not accept dual core cpus or 
opterons (socket 940). The highest you can get is a FX-57 but that's big 
bucks for not much more performance. 

> Does an Opteron dual-core give me any advantage over the Athlon X2
> besides a bigger L2 cache?
Not really that much. In fact, because of the slower memory timing of socker 
940 opterons (registered memory adds latency) the performance improvements 
from the larger cache are mostly negated according to our tests.

> Can I run Fedora Core 4 (and later on, Fedora Core 5) on the processor?
Yes. No issues. 

> Can I take an Opteron processor and drop it into my existing MSI
> motherboard, or should I expect to buy a new motherboard also? If so,
> what motherboard?
No - Socket 940 (most opterons) and 939 (some 1xx opterons and Athlon64) are 
not compatible. The 939 1xx opterons that are out now are nothing more than a 
relabeled Athlon64 X2 anyway. 

> What would be better for a developer -- the Athlon X2 or the Opteron?
I would recommend the X2 over two 2xx single core opterons. You can reuse your 
memory if you choose to. You will save yourself money on CPU and memory. Your 
motherboard will be cheaper. The opterons will be louder because of the addl. 
fans. 
If you're thinking of a single 1xx 939 opteron you might have a hard time 
finding a board with support for it (two months ago I could barely find any 
boards that were certified for it). It will run anyway just fine on 99% of 
all 939 boards that work with the equivalent X2.  

On the other side, if you go for dual 2xx opterons and you pay extra for a 
good board, you get a huge improvement on IO. Multiple PCI-X busses and the 
like are nice to have on most servers but for a developers workstation it 
doesn't really matter.

Enjoy your chrismas shopping,

Peter.