Opteron Vs. Athlon X2

[Robert L Cochran]

Thanks, Peter. I have a lot of thinking to do about this.

Bob

Peter Arremann wrote:

>On Monday 05 December 2005 16:40, Robert L Cochran wrote:
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>>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
>
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>>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.
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>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. 
>
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>>Does an Opteron dual-core give me any advantage over the Athlon X2
>>besides a bigger L2 cache?
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>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.
>
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>>Can I run Fedora Core 4 (and later on, Fedora Core 5) on the processor?
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>Yes. No issues. 
>
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>>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?
>>    
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>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. 
>
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>>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.
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