Opteron 170 a worthwhile upgrade from a 4000+CH

[falcon1209]

I was wondering if the opteron 170 is a worthwhile upgrade to a Athlon 4000+ Clawhammer. They seem like they could compete with eachother but I know the Opty is the clear winner. But the question is is it worth it to pay the difference ($100) for that speed increase. (Overclocking anticipated)

Thank you.

 

[RichPLS]

If you are considering buying one or the other, YES, if you want to upgrade from a 4000 to a 170, NO, unless you have a special need for dual core as in Photodraw or something.

 

[dvdpiddy]

Oh yeah the opty is definitly worth it

 

[falcon1209]

I was looking to upgrade my processor but now a 170 doesnt sound so great. I'm going for a majority gaming computer. Any suggestions as to a processor path. Keep/Upgrade? 900 some 3dMark06 marks is really low IMO.

 

[falcon1209]

So what processor would have speeds that would greatly improve my processor enough to buy it?

 

[cisco]

I would wait if you already have the 4000+. If nothing else I would wait for AM2 to come out and either buy the 4800+ at a discount or get the new AM2. You would be probably better off going with the X2 processors since you primarily game. They have better stock speeds. The larger L2 caches of the Opty won't really benefit you as much as the clock speed. Of course you could always go to the FX. But with any of these you probably won't see a major improvement until games and apps take advantage of the dual processors.

 

[Craigmandu]

There's no way I would recommend a processor upgrade from a 4000+ to anything right now. As others have said, wait for the AM2 to debut and see what happens to prices as well as the newer benchmarks.

Wusy has asked the right question, where do you want your speed? Gaming? If that is the case first ensure you have a good setup in other areas such as: PCIe SLI Video card setup? 10K RPM Sata drives in Raid 0? (at least for the O/S and game programs since loading of textures from the hard drives will go faster as will the loading of initial environment details.) Are you running dual channel DDR? Believe it or not some folks have Dual channel boards with single dimms.

I like to break my machines up in sections and look at how I could increase them. Usually like this:

CPU/Mboard - since they go hand in hand.
Ram
Hard Drive
Video system
Audio system

Now if you make a small spreadsheet with what you have in it, and what you CAN do to increase performance in the others it will eventually lead you to a pretty good decision point.

And if you need more information, post your setup, I'd be happy to make recommendations or give opinion on how your current hardware could be enhanced.

 

[falcon1209]

Ok I am still set on getting a Asus board. My friend actually oveclocked his identical processor on his A8N-E after i told him about these posts about Opterons and stuff. He said he got it to 2.7ghz about. He said he could have gone higher but the board limited his voltage. So what board from asus doesnt have this problem. I was looking at the A8N32-SLI But that is a little expensive. Does the A8N-SLI premium have better OCing capabilities than the A8N-E? If not does the A8N32-SLI beat it?

 

[ak47is1337]

170 is powerful but it isnt that big of an increase in games. however, oc it and you will see a massive increase as they should hit 2.8 as my 165 hits 2.7

 

[529th]

170 is powerful but it isnt that big of an increase in games. however, oc it and you will see a massive increase as they should hit 2.8 as my 165 hits 2.7

Ak is right. The Opterons that can make it to 2.6 are the equivalent as the FX60 and the FX60 does pretty good in gaming benchmarks.

 

[ak47is1337]

if youre just gaming, get a 144/146/148/150 and overclock to 3 ghz.

 

[Craigmandu]

According to ASUS for the A8N-SLI Premium it has a precision tweaker that supports:

Dimm voltage 9-step DRAM voltage conrol
Core Voltage Adjustable CPU voltage at .0125 step increments up to 1.650V (opteron starts at 1.3)
PCI Express Frequency adjust at 1mhz increments from 100mhz to 200mhz
Stepless Frequency Selection (SFS) allows 1mhz increment from 200Mhz to 400Mhz.

If the board is stable (which I haven't heard is or isn't), then you could theoretically push your opteron 170 to 4Ghz (maybe in a cryo unit or something of that nature).

The board itself though, looks like it has the capability for you to step it up in small increments with an extremely good range.

I would suggest to ensure you have what it takes to do this that you have a 500w or higher quality PSU, I myself would also buy ddr 500 or higher ram.

I haven't seen any OC benchmarks with this particular board to see if there are any pitfalls, so make sure you do some "Google" searches before you buy.

Good Luck.

 

[ak47is1337]

DFI > any board, when it comes to voltage.
4v of ram voltage tops. 1.9 cpu core voltage, match that.
;D

 

[Craigmandu]

Lol, I happen to agree. And it is pretty well known that DFI boards are the boards of choice for most enthusiasts.

I was just giving him some information that he requested, which was specifically that ASUS board.

 

[ak47is1337]

im considering getting an ocz voltage booster so i get cleaner power to modules.

 

[Zoron]

Raid 0? (at least for the O/S and game programs since loading of textures from the hard drives will go faster as will the loading of initial environment details.)

There are a few benchmarks out there that dispute this fact. RAID 0 does not offer enough of a performance increase in games to justify the extra expense. If you're working with large files (IE video editing), you'll probably see a big increase in performance... but for gaming not much at all.

 

[Craigmandu]

I have to disagree Zoron. The extra expense involved is usually not that high, and continues to diminish every day.

Add to that the sheer amount of storage requirements of todays games on a PC and you won't be able but to gain benefit from it. I have single games that if loaded to the PC completely take up more than 2GB of space. Are you to suggest that I won't see an improvement moving those large texture and map files from the harddrive to RAM while playing by moving to a raid 0 setup?

Please advise.

 

[falcon1209]

Bought an EPoX EP-9NPA+ Ultra yesterday. Appealed to me much more than DFI Lanparty ULtra-D even though it was not as recognized as DFI. I heard many more critical negitive things about the DFI board than the EPoX but they both had the same thing I was looking for, OC Stability.

My friend OCed his 4000+ to 2.93GHz so thats not too shabby for a 2.4gHZ proc. He has an A8N-E and the clawhammer core as well

 

[529th]

well, the hell with it, i went ahead and purchased a 170 the 16th from Monarch. Ill let you's know what code and week they are selling

529th

 

[ak47is1337]

PM me your OC results!

 

[old_times]

PM me your OC results!

me 2! :lol:
,,

 

[529th]

im gonna tell ya now, it won't be for a while. i have a slew of other parts to buy and some of them might not be out until mid March but i can alteast tell you the week they are selling as well as the other codes... if its a TPMV or whatnot.

 

[old_times]

It's ok. Don't fly 2 high though when u have it

 

[529th]

It's ok. Don't fly 2 high though when u have it

i don't know if i will or not, then again what am i trying to prove?

 

[ak47is1337]

It's ok. Don't fly 2 high though when u have it

i don't know if i will or not, then again what am i trying to prove?
?? let me get this straight, you bought a 939 opteron and you aren't going to do extreme overclocking ?? That's a crime in korea!