Athlon64 v. Opteron

[VinnieVen]

I am going to do a switch from my p4 2.6c to the latest amd stuff. I am looking at an opteron 142 or athlon64 3200+. which should I choose and why?

I do some gaming, and a fair bit of video encoding. The cost isnt the issue as much as performance is.

Thanks.

[Wiggo]

If ya must change (P4's are still the best at media encodin') then I'd say to go with the A64 3200+ due to the better range of mobo's (all with AGP slots where as only few Opteron boards have AGP) and the gamin' will be better as ya not lumbered with higher latency ECC memory. Ya may want to checkout this german review (or just check the result graphs out anyway). Quite frankly though I'd hangout till June b4 makin' a decission.

[Soulburner]

Opteron must use socket 940 motherboard, and ECC memory. This makes it a lot more expensive.

Also these boards are not overclocking friendly in general, however there is the ASUS SK8N and SK8V to remedy this.

I would go with the A64, it will be cheaper, runs at a higher bus speed and doesn't use the ECC memory.

Operon runs 166fsb (DDR333) and A64 runs 200fsb (DDR400).

[Tomi_s]

The Athlon 64 is probably your best option but the upgrading chances are somewhat limited because the Athlon 64 3700+ is the last 64 bit cpu that AMD is going to make to that 754 pin socket. :rolleyes2 You can OC them though. ;)

[Mista K6]

awesome article wiggo, but it raises a question. Since it seems AMD is going to be moving both the AMD 64's and FX's to the Socket-939 platform, and both will use dual channel, are they going to have to keep using ECC RAM or are they finally going to support normal RAM (is unregistered the correct term?)? J/w, thx alot, : peace2: Mista K6

[Wiggo]

ECC memory will only be used by the Opteron line by then.

[Mista K6]

Sweet... (marks off June on calander) :D :thumb: :bounce: :wow: :drool:

[Frost]

If ya must change (P4's are still the best at media encodin') then I'd say to go with the A64 3200+ due to the better range of mobo's (all with AGP slots where as only few Opteron boards have AGP) and the gamin' will be better as ya not lumbered with higher latency ECC memory. Ya may want to checkout this german review (or just check the result graphs out anyway). Quite frankly though I'd hangout till June b4 makin' a decission.

I don't know about the media encoding for sure. I visit the www.doom9.org site infrequently and the concensus there is that for hard and fast encoding the AMDs beat the Intels. Something about they do more instructions per cycle than the Intels.

Just :2cents:

[G13man]

money to burn, fx .. lol
some money to burn , 64 for gaming
and later... june burn some more$
pci expresse=r420 all new, all fast

[aznx]

mm on another note, the 64 and opteron have no "fsbs"............
and no point in getting a 142..why!?!?!?!?!? get the 3200+ and o/c it, the line for that socket is supposed to hit about 3700+ or 4000+ so it should be enough for a while, and plus, 64bit windows 'ill give it a good boost too