Opteron 170 vs. 4000+

Youre looking at doubling the number of cores at potentially a higher frequency, so yes it would be an upgrade. Plus the 939 dual cores seem to be getting scarce.

Performance increase in video encoding would be noticable, gaming not so much, at least not as yet. And whats $122 dollars these days?....a drop in the bucket.

The Optron 170's are overclocked all day long @ 2.6Ghz and a few push them higher (2.95Ghz).

I still have no need for more than one core and my Optron 146's have no problem running @ 3Ghz (50% OC) with everything at stock volts.

Alot depends on your MB and RAM as well as how "clean" your PSU is.

I use:
DFI Expert
G.Skill 4000HZ Ram
PC Power & Cooling PSU

With CoolerMaster TO-1 case,Thermalright SI-120 cooler and Silverstone FM-121 fan for the case (fan guard on case removed for full airflow) my CPU runs only 2C above room temps.

Everest shows my RAM just kicking DDR2-800's butt for Read/Write/Copy/Latency and at 1:1 it is more than the CPU's clock speed that will make things fly like a rocket.

I saw some good OEM's (A64 939's) for as low as $32 USD on Newegg the other day.

An Optron 150 with DDR1-500 RAM @ 1:1 does 3Ghz without even bothering to OC the RAM.

The highest stable OC with an Optron I saw was 3.8Ghz....but not on air.

Thanks for the replies.

My parts are:

Asus A8N SLI Premium
2 GB OCZ Platinum DDR 400
Antec NeoPower 480

Would I need to get better memory to get a good overclock?

If I have to spend very much on this I'll probably save up for a whole new
rig.

"Good" is in the eye of the OC'er!
I used the G.Skill for my last round of builds (7 computers in this house) becuase DDR-500 gives an instant 25% even befor OC'ing the RAM.

Well, I don't know a lot about opterons, but I'm assuming they don't have unlocked multipliers, so I'm thinking that I won't be able to overclock very high without putting to much stress on the motherboard and memory.

I would have to go over 2.4 GHz to see any increase at all in single threaded
games, and would like to go 2.6-2.8, but I don't think my parts cand handle it.

Newegg also has the toledo 4400 dual core for $140, but it may not overclock as well as an opteron.

Just use a memory divider, say 166-5/6. With a 10x multiplier you'll have 200mhz on the memory and 240mhz on the core. You can go up from there if you wish but at that speed it does put you on the same playing field as your 4000.

I have read several overclocking guides, but I still don't know much about memory dividers, but I will do more research on it.

I may also lower the multiplier on my current cpu and do some testing to see how well my other parts will overclock.

Right now I am working really long hours, so I may not be able to work on this for a while.  

Update:

I got the Opteron 170 for 114$. I currently have it running at 2.4GHz (same as the 4000+) on stock voltage. My ram is is overclocking very well. The FSB is at 240, and I have not needed to use a memory divider yet.

At stock settings it idles at 38C and goes to 52C under full load. These temps seem high to me, but they didn't change at all after overclocking.

No buyers remorse yet, and I'll like this proc even better after I get it running faster. I'll continue working on it and see how high it can go.

Opty 170 ftw.

Mine runs at 3 Gigz on stock voltages. I just need to get a better cooler for it now, even though it comes with a nice heat pipe stock cooler.

Opty 170's are down to $115.00 @ the Egg. I run mine at 2.5ghz with PC4000@250mhz. No problemo and very fast. NOTE: You will see little if any improvement playing games. 8)