[Stephen]

Anyone know how the new Opterons fair against the previous 800 series? It seems the virtualization and DDR2 are the only changes, but I'm Hoping there's more to it than that.

I'm looking at the 2212 for instance, but have yet to find any info on the F socket boards or the new line of processors (beyond the DDR2 and Virt).

I know there's some AMD enthusiasts on the forum, so I look forward to your posts.

edit: The F socket boards can take the quad core processors when they come out in 2007.

[Stephen]

I canceled my conroe combo order and changed it to the 2212 opteron combo. A compulsive move i fear, but It appears that I'll get more bang for the buck, especially when the quad cores hit the market next year. It will also ship before they get more 6600's in, which was a plus.

I'm anxious to hear if my decision was a good one or perhaps a poor one.

Original combo was a Asus P5W, 6600 and 2gig of (667) and a new power supply. My order was 2 weeks old and looked to be delayed for at least another 2 weeks (big shortage on those 6600) so I made the change.

The Opteron dual board with 2x Opteron 2212's and 2gig DDR2 with the same power supply was about $500.00 more.

Good move?

[Mihai]

Does the Opteron board require an ecc ram? Are you sure the quadcore Opterons will be compatible with your system? It sounds like a great system, especially if you'll be able to upgrade just the cpu's next year.

[b-kandor]

It's funny, I'm currently using x2 3800's overclocked, and I'm about to buy a new intel system.

I decided to go with the conroe 6400. It's only about 200$ more than a am2 x2 3800 system and both overclock well - but I'm hoping the winchester quad core thingy will go into it shortly.

Kandor

[Stephen]

Does the Opteron board require an ecc ram? Are you sure the quadcore Opterons will be compatible with your system? It sounds like a great system, especially if you'll be able to upgrade just the cpu's next year.

The new F socket boards do require registered DDR2.

The mother board with the F socket will handle the quads as far as I can tell. Everything I've read points out that the F socket pins are for the quads and all future flavors of the opterons. I can't remember the exact count, but the pin total is now over 1000+.

Edit: pin count is 1207.
There's not much information out there, so I hope I'm right about this. My stomach is still uneasy. I really hate throwing money on upgrades.

[rivoli]

as far as I know these opterons shouldn't be that different from the previous ones. as for performance, I remember reading about a 5% gain or something along that line. faster memory is not enough, and these cpus are not amd's answer to 51xx xeons (more like dempesey while waiting for woodcrest), for that I guess we'll have to wait until next year.

[-Adrian]

I agree with rivoli ^

[lllab]

hmmm,
i have a quad opteron 275 and since a week a quad intel woodcrest 5150,
and i can say now that the woodcrest is about 25-30% faster than the opteron.

also i have one coreduo2 at2.3ghz(dual) and this machine is only 30% slower than my 275 quad opteron but 70%cheaper than the opteron.

to be honest i would stick to the intels at the moment, from my tests.

cheers
stefan

[Stephen]

hmmm,
i have a quad opteron 275 and since a week a quad intel woodcrest 5150,
and i can say now that the woodcrest is about 25-30% faster than the opteron.

also i have one coreduo2 at2.3ghz(dual) and this machine is only 30% slower than my 275 quad opteron but 70%cheaper than the opteron.

to be honest i would stick to the intels at the moment, from my tests.

cheers
stefan

lllab, I think this sums up the situation pretty well. Thanks for the info.

Is that Core 2 duo a 6600 running at 2.3ghz?

[yadikrisnadi]

I found this link, AMD Opteron vs Intel Woodcrest :
http://www.techreport.com/etc/2006q2/wo ... dex.x?pg=5

AMD FX vs Intel Conroe:
http://techreport.com/etc/2006q1/conroe/index.x?pg=2

Cheers
Yadi

[lllab]

no its a 6400 10% OCed...

cheers
stefan

[Stephen]

I decided to go with a dual Xeon 5140. I couldn't afford the 5150 right now. Good thing they take so long to ship a order

Can't wait to run the benchmark.

Thanks to all for the help in choosing my next upgrade.