Opteron 185 or Athlon64 X2

[Heywould3]

Athlon64 X2 4800+ 2.4 Ghz Socket 939 or AMD Opteron 185 Denmark 2.6GHz Socket 939 ?

Im trying to revive my socket 939. its not very old to me but since i added an HDTV tuner to it its not up to par. currently its got a Athlon 64 3200+ 2.0ghz over clocked to 2.6ghz.

Anyway i know that the opteron has a higer clock but thats it. the cache and power usage is the same. if both had the same clock what are the advantages of one over the other? i understand that the athlon64 is consumer/home user based and the Opteron is more of a server oriented chip, how would this affect me?

Not much of a gamer from time to time i will play FSX and thats a very power hungry program. need a beefy machine to play that. some DVD backups when i get new ones which is one or two a month. i will convert to xvid/divx or portable format from time to time also. i dont run a server i dont really use business apps and rarely i will use Photoshop or the like to edit or manipulate my digital camera pics.

so thats my deal. with that all said how will either chip benefit me if at all?

Thanks

[Grain]

I can't speak to the Opteron, but I went from a 64 3400 to a X2 4800 (both skt 939), and obviously there was a huge improvement, and they can be had cheap now (if you can find them!).

[Heywould3]

the opterons are easy to find.. i cant seem to find the X2 4800 anywhere.. thats where this whole thing started actualy. i woulda just went for the X2 athlon from the get go other wise

[jagabo]

There is a huge shortage of all the higher speed socket 939 parts. AMD doesn't make them anymore. If you find a socket 939 X2 4800+ it will cost you several hundred dollars. AMD is forcing many people who might have upraded to switch to Core 2 Duo!

[Heywould3]

if i upgrade it will most likely be to AM2 platform for the higher speed X2 chips. im not biased towards AMD its just that i like the cost to speed benefit.

I dont want to get a now mother board i just got this one less than a year ago.. i got it becasue it was one of the very few out that had AGP support and PCIe. i didnt want to upgrade my video card at the time.. now i wish i had becasue youll see in my other posts that my AIW sux for what i am using my computer for now. HDTV stufff. i got a HVR 1600 HDcard but all the HD stuff studders too much for me.

I found an X2 4300 for 200ish but i also found an opteron 185 for same price. 4300 = 2.0Ghz 2x 512 L2 while 185 = 2.6 with 2x1gb L2

SO as you might guess im prolyl gonna get the 185 but i was looking for someone to give me pros and cons of the opteron over X2

[TBoneit]

You can't really compare the Ghz to Ghz.
the AMD 64 X2 4800+ shows a benchmark of 1,027

and a Opteron 242 is 684 and a Opteron 244 is 750.
I'm guessing that the Opteron 185 is slower still.

http://www.cpubenchmark.net/high_end_cpus.html

FWIW if the opteron is single core forget it.

[Heywould3]

You can't really compare the Ghz to Ghz.
the AMD 64 X2 4800+ shows a benchmark of 1,027

and a Opteron 242 is 684 and a Opteron 244 is 750.
I'm guessing that the Opteron 185 is slower still.

http://www.cpubenchmark.net/high_end_cpus.html

FWIW if the opteron is single core forget it.

Thanks for that, it gave me other things to look for.. FWIW the 185 opteron is a dual core. and googleing on the net show people with passmark scores of 1185. stock so thats another tick for the opteron direction. the 185 is a higher end cpu than those other two you pointed out.

thanks again

[MJA]

the opterons are easy to find.. i cant seem to find the X2 4800 anywhere.. thats where this whole thing started actualy. i woulda just went for the X2 athlon from the get go other wise

thank Dell for the shortage

[jagabo]

if i upgrade it will most likely be to AM2 platform for the higher speed X2 chips. im not biased towards AMD its just that i like the cost to speed benefit.

There is no cost benefit to AMD anymore. Currently they cost less because they perform less. Where the prices overlap performance is about the same. There's still a price premium on Intel chipsets though. So motherboards based on those chipsets are a little more expensive.

[TBoneit]

Which would you rather have on your Mobo?
Intel chipset
Via
SiS
Nvidia

Myself I always liked Intel for Intel CPUs
Nvidia for AMDs
Unless someone wants SLI on a 775 Intel then Nvidia in a Asus Mobo.

[Heywould3]

I run Nvidia. i had a bout with VIA and always had trouble and in order to get proper performance from the via i had to do so many tweaks. i currently have an nvidia tforce4 u ultra. i love it. to bad its obsolete

[jagabo]

Myself I always liked Intel for Intel CPUs
Nvidia for AMDs
Unless someone wants SLI on a 775 Intel then Nvidia in a Asus Mobo.

I'd agree with that.

[redwudz]

I have a 4800+ AM2 X2 on my newest computer, but I also have a OC'd 3200+ 939 single core Athlon on one of my computers I've had for a while. For it the Opteron 185 would be the way to go. Just the dual core would be a big plus. It has a good MB, so worth the upgrade. As mentioned, the 4800+ Athlon X2s are difficult to find and I would be a little nervous about spending that kind of money for something they have to dig out a forgotten storeroom.

I also use Nvidia with AMD after some bad experiencies with VIA.

[rallynavvie]

Which HD tuner did you pick up? If it's the new Hauppauge then join the thread in the HTPC forum once you've had time to play with it.

The Opty is a solid performer and will last longer than its consumer counterpart. The architecture difference is only slight but the build quality on server chips is vastly different. A consumer chip is built to run with occasional workloads whereas a server chip assumes workloads nearing 100%. Optys are still one of the best database chips. As for media work have you checked which instruction sets are used on each of those CPUs? That would be the only thing that would draw me toward the X2 over the Opty is if the X2 had the greater list of instruction sets but it looks like they're the same (at least compared to the AM2 version).

I'd say just get the Opty. There are a lot of consumers using them now and I've only heard great things about their operation in a single-CPU setting.