Opteron 165 or 175

[Fike]

I am considering making the jump to my terminal 939 upgrade of an opteron 165 or 175. My concern stems from the fact that my current san diego 3700 with a multiplier of 11 has gone to 2.7 GHz. I am afraid that with the lower multiplier on the 165 I won't be able to go as fast given that I have relatively cheap RAM. My FSB is running at 245 or something like that.

Is it worth getting the Opteron 175 to get a higher multiplier which should allow me to keep the FSB speed a bit lower?

The reason that I want to go dual core is that I do lots of Photoshop processing that will benefit by the dual core.

 

[mroverclocker]

i went from amd 3000+ @ 2.7ghz to opteron 165@ 2.5 stock volts. i would say for games i'll keep the 3000+. But the whats the diff in price between a 165 and 175 now? You might want to consider the difference/performance. Dual core isnt really much faster than single core in games. for photoshop i would think the added 1mb cache will help alot. with cheap memory i believe you wont get too high on that 165. i had ocz pc4200 and it could do 280fsb 1:1 which was great. You might want to consider a 175 since you'll be able to get 2.7-3.0 depending on stepping.

 

[tallman45]

Dual core benefits every system, there are many programs that run in the background, the simple Windows screen saver is one such program.

No doubt a 175 would be less stressful OC to get to a desired clock speed. But at $75 over a 165, it is not worth that benefit. A Opteron 165 is a very good overclocker

 

[Fike]

Now I am considering the OEM version of the X2 4400 for $185. That gives me an 11 multiplier and dual core. I understand that the Toledos are exactly the same chip as the Denmark Opterons, just with a different name. they also have the 4600 but that only haws 2X512 KB cache instead of the 2x1 MB cache of the 4400 or Opteron.

I would really like to see 2.7 GHz again, like I have with my San Diego 3700.

 

[tallman45]

They really are not the same, Opterons are designed for 24x7 Enterprise environments.

 

[gOJDO]

Why not 170? It OC same like 175.

 

[gOJDO]

Why not 170? It OC same like 175.

 

[Fike]

Well, I went with the Opteron 175 for two reasons. One, I wanted the 11x multiplier to enable me to get the most out of my max FSB speed which is 245 or so. Two, I wanted to get the new kickin' heatsink pipes that come with the retail opterons. I hope it is the right one. I hear that it works as well as some of the enthusiast stuff.

At the end, I debated getting the opteron 180 to get the 12x multiplier, but in the end, that seemed pretty expensive at $275. As it is, I spent $225 on a processor that is over a year old. That's okay with me. I generally keep a generation or so behind the curve. It keeps costs and frustration down.