Dual core Opteron or Athlon64x2 for gaming??

PEETIE · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 28 Mar 2004 Posts: 144

I'm trying to decide on hardware for a new gaming rig and newegg.com has the athlonx642 4200+ for $400 or the new socket 939 dual core opteron 170 Denmark core for $445. The Denmark L2 cache is 2mb compared to the Athlonx2's 2x512mb and it supports the MMX, SSE, SSE2, SSE3, 3DNOW! Professional just like the athlon64x2.

I've hear over and over that opteron isn't optimized for gaming, its for servers, but is there something in the opteron design that would hinder performance in gaming? Does it hurt to go with an opteron? Since they are so close in price now why not get the opteron.

Opteron http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16819103586

Athlon64x2 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16819103547

Can anyone lay out the major differences between the two(four) processors and give a good reason why to go with one over the other?

Hagar · Guru Joined: 11 Feb 2003 Posts: 445

No it doesn't hurt if you'd go for opteron.
The opterons on socket 939 are pretty much the same as the X2's
The X2 is the opterons little brother so that's no suprise.

The only thing you shouldn't get is a opteron for socket 940, these require ECC RAM which is more expensive and slower.

infernoman · n00b Joined: 23 Jun 2005 Posts: 18

Actually you shouldn't spent your many for expesive dual core processors if you intend gaming only. The reason that most actions in games cannot be split in different threads well. Othre reason is that modern games are very graphics-intensive. They don't need a lot of CPU, but they are GPU-angry. So for gaming you don't need dual core processor -- you need something like GeForce 7800.

Monkeh · Veteran Joined: 06 Aug 2005 Posts: 1656 Location: England

A dual core is a waste for gaming. I don't know the exact speed, but if an X2 4800+ is just two Athlon 64's, then it's two 2400+'s. A game will only use one. You'll save a lot of money just getting a 3700+ (3700 and above is San Diego, they have more cache, which is nice).

mimfgg · n00b Joined: 23 Nov 2005 Posts: 1

As most of the lastest game like Quake4, doom3 and others are multithreaded ... is not really a waste of money

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/28cpu-games_6.html

Monkeh · Veteran Joined: 06 Aug 2005 Posts: 1656 Location: England

Quake 4 may be. Other Linux native games may be. Most games (read: 97% of popular games to date) will perform worse on an X2 4800+ than a 64 3700+.

Eidi · Posted: Wed Nov 23, 2005 10:36 pm Post subject:

Actually, a X2 4800+ will perform better than a 3700+, because the X2 operates at 2.4 GHz per core, and has 1 meg of cache per core. The 3700+ is 2.2 GHz with 1 meg of cache. Even the 4000+ will perform about as good, or slightly worse than a X2 4800+ because one core can be dedicated to gaming, while the other core can handle all background applications. Running background applications on the 4000+ will degrade its performance in the games.

However, the 4200+ runs at 2.2 GHz per core, and has 512K of cache per core. Personally, I'd go with the 4400+, 2.2 GHz per core, and 1 meg of cache per core. Though, like someone else said above, you should get a better video card if you mainly want to game. A 7800 GTX would improve performance more than a dual core would, I'm pretty sure.

Monkeh · Veteran Joined: 06 Aug 2005 Posts: 1656 Location: England

Note my earlier post saying I don't know the actual speeds.

Anyway, a quick comparison in price..

Athlon 64 3700+, £187.94
Athlon X2 4200+, £293.69

The extra core, for a gaming machine, is not worth £105 extra. Not nearly. That pays for a gig of decent RAM, or a 320GB SAT HDD + a proper cable.

PEETIE · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 28 Mar 2004 Posts: 144

I multitask the dual core will be beneficial, not only do i game, but i also run teamspeak, browse the web, chat, and do other things while waiting to respawn. The cost difference between the athlon64x2 and the opteron im looking at is only $40 at newegg and some sites actually have the dual core opteron cheaper than the x2.

Eidi · Posted: Thu Nov 24, 2005 2:25 am Post subject:

Considering the X2 and the Opteron are both for socket 939, I think you'd be fine with either. The X2 runs a bit faster than the Opteron, but the Opteron has more cache... I'm not sure which I'd go for, personally. They'd both be pretty good deals.

Though, I opted for a X2 4400+ when I bought a new 939 board a few months ago. Works pretty well for me. Has the best of both worlds, 1 meg of cache per core, and each core runs at 2.2 GHz. It's 50 bucks more than the Opteron at Newegg though, unfortunately.

PEETIE · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 28 Mar 2004 Posts: 144

the x2 doesnt run faster than the opteron, from my understanding the opteron has more memory bandwidth than the x2. That and they overclock higher than an X2 will.

Eidi · Posted: Sat Nov 26, 2005 4:10 am Post subject:

I meant the clock frequency. The Opteron is at 2 GHz per core, while the X2 is at 2.2 GHz per core.

TheRealElch · Posted: Sat Nov 26, 2005 9:26 am Post subject:

A difference you guys didn't consider before is power managment.
A64 uses cool & quiet an the Opteron uses PowerNow. There may be a problem with the motherboard using the Opteron, don't know...
But if you consider not to run standard and overclock your processor than go for the Opteron it usually clocks higher and is meant to have a better memory controller
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DocterD · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 15 May 2004 Posts: 129

Get the Opteron, if money doesn't matter, because it will scale better when you will Overclock it.

petteyg359 · n00b Joined: 30 Apr 2005 Posts: 61

I'd go for the Opteron. The higher L2 cache amount will make compiles quite a bit faster (you're on Gentoo, after all), and the 200MHz loss will be made up for there, and I very much doubt you'll notice a 200MHz difference in games. And when you're gaming and only using one core, you could run Folding@Home on the other and get rid of my brain tumor

Omega21 · Posted: Sun Nov 27, 2005 8:05 pm Post subject:

Definitely dual athlons.
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col · Posted: Sun Nov 27, 2005 8:41 pm Post subject:

get a single processor & put that money you save into a better video card.

petteyg359 · n00b Joined: 30 Apr 2005 Posts: 61

He is getting a single processor, it happens to have dual cores. With current video cards, you can drop down a lot from the highest-quality (and most expensive) card and still get a card that performs more than well enough for every game that exists at highest settings. Unless your monitor is running at a refresh rate higher than 60Hz, you won't see more than 60FPS anyway, so you might as well not spend $200 extra just to get 300FPS instead of 100FPS.

VStrider · Posted: Sun Nov 27, 2005 10:49 pm Post subject:

Something else that wasn't mentioned is that with the X2 you get 2 cores while with the Opteron 170 he linked to, you only get one and you cann't put this cpu on a dual cpu mobo. Notice the 1 on the 170. If it was 270 then you could use it on a dual cpu setup and if it was 470 on a quad cpu setup. But the 2 and 4 series opterons are waayyy more expensive.

So I'd go with the X2, not only for gaming but for a home server as well.

knightmare · n00b Joined: 30 Jan 2005 Posts: 33

Opteron's all the way. They have become so popular that AMD has shot the AMD64 line of chips in the foot. Double the Cache, might as well be dual FX chips.

petteyg359 · n00b Joined: 30 Apr 2005 Posts: 61

VStrider · Posted: Mon Nov 28, 2005 3:51 pm Post subject:

hmm, petteyg359 are you sure the opteron 170 is dual core? If that's the case, then yeah, opterons all the way.

petteyg359 · n00b Joined: 30 Apr 2005 Posts: 61

x7x & x8x series are all dual-core (I think).

TheRealElch

AMD reference ;-)

PEETIE · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 28 Mar 2004 Posts: 144

I got the opteron 170, and good thing cuz everyone selling out. They going like hotcakes everywhere. And the opteorn is dual core not single as one poster put. The opteron is exactly the same specs as an athlonx2 only has more l2 cache is manufactured with better silicon, and more memory bandwidth. Your getting a better processor for almost the same price. And i didn't need to get a single core for better graphics cards, i already got two 7800gts. Assembling my dual core 170 opteron as we speak.