Opteron vs. Athlon in gaming machines

TurtleIsland

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I keep seeing this same question. And it seems most people are getting the wrong idea. You simply can't compare the CPU's dirrectly.

Opteron and Althon ( 64, X2, or FX ) ARE NOTthe same. Yes they are all Based on the same core, have the same socket architecture, and run on the same chip sets. But there is more to any CPU then just the Core. Think of it this way: Put a 455 engine in a corvette and a 1 ton pickup. Same Engine, differnt job and performance. The carborater, transmition, rear-end, etc. (that make up the Whole powertrain) are different. Same with a CPU. Different Instruction Set, differnt, job, differnt performance.

As a side note. The reason for the Opteron naming scheme, 1xx series are for single physical CPU systems ( single or dual core ), 2xx series are 1 or 2 CPU's in a system, 8xx for 1 to 8 CPU's on a single motherboard.

For those asking this question...... If you are willing to take the over all drop of gaming performance, buy the less expensive Opteron (do it soon though, as more people go this route, supply will drop raising the prices). Otherwise, open up that checkbook and pay for what you really want, a Gaming CPU. Opterons are for server enviroments, where its power is designed to deal with multi-client request for centralized information and computation. The Athlon series if designed for single user, high computatioal environments, i.e. Games.

BTW, this is the same as Intel fans asking "P4, Xeon or Itanium for gaming".

The simple answer is, trust the company your buying from, and buy the processor designed for your needs. After all, if you knew what they knew, you would make your own CPU and be a multi-millioneer.
 
"I keep seeing this same question. And it seems most people are getting the wrong idea. You simply can't compare the CPU's dirrectly.
"

When comparing socket 939 Opterons and socket 939 Athlon 64 and x2 variants, they most certainly can be directly compared, and frequently are...

Although Opty's are better validated/tested, there are no car engine parts analogies that are appropriate, save perhaps for a Chevy 350 and a Pontiac 350, where each is using an engine created in the same GM factory...

AN Opteron 180 wil give identical performance to an identically clocked X2-4800...

Period
 

gOJDO

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BTW, this is the same as Intel fans asking "P4, Xeon or Itanium for gaming".
Do you have an idea how much is different Itanium from P4/P4 XE?
BTW there are a lot of topics where the differences and adventages of Opterons over the Athlon64s are discused.
All K8 (Athlon64, Athlon64-X2, Athlon64-FX and Opteron) with the same core running on the same freqfency on same hardware environmet(mainboard, RAM, etc.) ARE PERFORMING SAME!
Same architecture, same instruction sets, same cache, same freqfency, same bus speed, same manifacturing process = SAME PERFORMANCE.
Try benchmarking and you will get to the point.
 

scoobertscoobydoo

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I keep seeing this same question. And it seems most people are getting the wrong idea. You simply can't compare the CPU's dirrectly.

Opteron and Althon ( 64, X2, or FX ) ARE NOTthe same. Yes they are all Based on the same core, have the same socket architecture, and run on the same chip sets. But there is more to any CPU then just the Core. Think of it this way: Put a 455 engine in a corvette and a 1 ton pickup. Same Engine, differnt job and performance. The carborater, transmition, rear-end, etc. (that make up the Whole powertrain) are different. Same with a CPU. Different Instruction Set, differnt, job, differnt performance.

As a side note. The reason for the Opteron naming scheme, 1xx series are for single physical CPU systems ( single or dual core ), 2xx series are 1 or 2 CPU's in a system, 8xx for 1 to 8 CPU's on a single motherboard.

For those asking this question...... If you are willing to take the over all drop of gaming performance, buy the less expensive Opteron (do it soon though, as more people go this route, supply will drop raising the prices). Otherwise, open up that checkbook and pay for what you really want, a Gaming CPU. Opterons are for server enviroments, where its power is designed to deal with multi-client request for centralized information and computation. The Athlon series if designed for single user, high computatioal environments, i.e. Games.

BTW, this is the same as Intel fans asking "P4, Xeon or Itanium for gaming".

The simple answer is, trust the company your buying from, and buy the processor designed for your needs. After all, if you knew what they knew, you would make your own CPU and be a multi-millioneer.


LMAO, you have no idea how a processor works, do you.



BTW the 318CI in my dodge van is just as fast as a 318 in a dodge pickup.
 

Levium

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LMAO, you have no idea how a processor works, do you.



BTW the 318CI in my dodge van is just as fast as a 318 in a dodge pickup.

Wow, way to be helpful, explain why he doesn't know how a processor works. Some of the posts on this forum are just completely stupid. *My .9 liter geo engine works fine in my 1 ton pickup yeehaw!!*. O btw, as to the sarcastic remark about opterons being servers, why is google switching to them. Stupid fanboys...
 

scoobertscoobydoo

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LMAO, you have no idea how a processor works, do you.



BTW the 318CI in my dodge van is just as fast as a 318 in a dodge pickup.

Wow, way to be helpful, explain why he doesn't know how a processor works. Some of the posts on this forum are just completely stupid. *My .9 liter geo engine works fine in my 1 ton pickup yeehaw!!*. O btw, as to the sarcastic remark about opterons being servers, why is google switching to them. Stupid fanboys...

no reason to explain it to him, he allready knopws it all, isent that clear by his first post?
 

Mr_Bill

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Of course, there is a HUGE difference between the s939 A64's and the s939 1xx Opterons.

It's called the CPUID string.

:lol:

BTW: GM produced 455's based on 3 completely different blocks. All 3 required the BOP transmission bell housing which the corvette didn't have.
 

malphadour

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I don't get it. Why the hell would you (turtle) just launch this post? You clearly are not informed on the subject, have made a fatal mistake by comparing it with the p4 vs Xeon question and all for what. Why do people do this. Do you want to be a politician and thought you would warm up by spouting garbage on here?????

Thankyou to those posters who made sense and pointed out that basically the chips are the same (assuming you compare to Sandiego to Venus and Toledo to Denmark) aside from a few server or workstation optimizations in the Opteron chips which have absolutely no detrement to their desktop performance for home use (gaming, downloading porn and all the other things home users do, tho I thinks that all most home users do).

Just to help turtle out, you cannot compare P4 to Xeon or Itanium because P4 chips are designed specifically for home use, ie few tasks, high performance. Xeon and Itanium chips are designed specifically for a many tasks, many clients environment where performance over a single app is not too important compared to the overall system performance for the running of simultaneous tasks in parallel (thats the simple version). Thus the architectures of the chips have a lot of differences whereas Opteron and Athlon64 are 99.999% (ish) the same.
 

the_guru

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I don't get it. Why the hell would you (turtle) just launch this post? You clearly are not informed on the subject, have made a fatal mistake by comparing it with the p4 vs Xeon question and all for what. Why do people do this. Do you want to be a politician and thought you would warm up by spouting garbage on here?????

Thankyou to those posters who made sense and pointed out that basically the chips are the same (assuming you compare to Sandiego to Venus and Toledo to Denmark) aside from a few server or workstation optimizations in the Opteron chips which have absolutely no detrement to their desktop performance for home use (gaming, downloading porn and all the other things home users do, tho I thinks that all most home users do).

Just to help turtle out, you cannot compare P4 to Xeon or Itanium because P4 chips are designed specifically for home use, ie few tasks, high performance. Xeon and Itanium chips are designed specifically for a many tasks, many clients environment where performance over a single app is not too important compared to the overall system performance for the running of simultaneous tasks in parallel (thats the simple version). Thus the architectures of the chips have a lot of differences whereas Opteron and Athlon64 are 99.999% (ish) the same.
What are you talking about? What has this to do with my post? All I said was that opteron 939 was for workstations. It doesn't say anything else...
 

qupada

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Can we compare the effect of drinking 3 Martinis to 3 Vodka Gibsons?
Seems like an equivalent use of effort.

I registered just to say this:
Can someone please give this man a medal? I like the way he thinks.
 

imperfectcircle25

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Athlon64, 64x2, fx, opteron(1xx) are all identical chips, the opterons may be betterstress tested so as to no fail under important situations like a business server or government server....etc Other wise they are all the same. Comparing it to a car engine is obe of the most idiotic comparisons ive ever heard. You take two 350 LT-1 300hp Chevy engines, put one in a truck and one in a vette, they are doing two dierant jobs but are both putting out 300hp. Just like you can put a 2ghz opteron in a server and a 2ghz Athlon64 in a home pc and they are doing two differant jobs but producing the same power or performance. So yes an Opteron is differant then an Athlon64, one starts with an A and the other with an O! Thats about it.
 

Powerdog_69er

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Oh My....

Well, after reading all the ima.... [well I can tell the kids got bored with the "Lightsabers" around here]...that I'll be able to have multiple "Athlons" running on my motherboard.

http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/article/273

Opteron is the AMD processor targeted to the server market.

First, some Opteron models can run in SMP (Symmetric Multiprocessing) mode, i.e. more than one processor installed on the motherboard, while other processors can’t. Opteron models starting with “1” (1xx series) can’t run in SMP mode, while models starting with “2” (2xx series) can run in a two-way SMP mode (i.e. up to two processors on the motherboard) and models starting with “8” (8xx series) can run up to an eight-way SMP mode (i.e. up to eight processors on the motherboard).

The second main difference is in the number of supported HyperTransport busses. All other CPUs using Athlon 64 architecture and Opteron 1xx series support only one HyperTransport bus. Opteron 2xx series supports two HyperTransport busses while Opteron 8xx series supports three HyperTransport busses. Since when in SMP mode the HyperTransport bus is used to connect the CPUs, this increase on the number of busses makes sense.

Almost all Opteron CPUs use socket 940 pinout, which require ECC memory modules. A few Opteron processors from 1xx series use socket 939 pinout and they are just a renamed Athlon 64 or Athlon 64 X2 (if it has dual-core technology) processor. In all Opteron CPUs the memory controller works in dual channel mode, i.e. the memory is accessed using 128 bits, if two memory modules or an even number of memory modules are used.

AMD's own sites here:

http://www.amd.com/us-en/Processors/ProductInformation/0,,30_118_8796_8806~85257,00.html


Q: How will the new AMD Opteron 100 Series processors with ECC unbuffered memory support differ from the AMD Athlon™ 64 and AMD Athlon 64 FX processors?

A: Although the AMD Opteron 100 Series processors with unbuffered memory support will share the same core technology as the AMD Athlon 64 and AMD Athlon 64 FX processors and will be socket and thermally compatible, there are some distinct differences:
AMD Opteron 100 Series processors with ECC unbuffered memory all have 1MB of L2 cache.
AMD Opteron 100 Series processors with ECC unbuffered memory are produced on AMD Opteron processor die material and follow the same AMD Opteron processor manufacturing process as do the 800 Series and 200 Series.
AMD Opteron 100 Series processors with ECC unbuffered memory undergo the same AMD Opteron processor-level testing and validation as do the 800 Series and 200 Series.

And also...if you dig deep into the readings at AMD you'll find things like "RAS Enhancements" coming out for "Opterons" but not "Athlons".

Or maybe this:
http://www.amd.com/us-en/0,,3715_12353,00.html

Sure they are built around the same design... but if you don't think that they are tailored for certain uses...

Oh My....
 

malphadour

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Guru, I was replying to Turtleshell. Your comment is absolutely correct.

I would also like to compliment the gent on the vodka comparison idea. Also whisky vs more whisky would be a good one.