SmokerMI

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Greetings Folks

I've got a AMD Barton 2800+ and giving it to someone else in the family so will be building another system.

I wanted to upgrade and was looking at the x2 3800 and 4200 (in my extreme price range). Then got my turned towards the Opteron 165 (possibly 170). I hear that the 165 is as good if not better (especially when oc'd) than the x2 3800 and 4200.

When digging into the 165 though I started looking at mb's and haven't come across any with agp. Is agp that dead ?

I've got a ATI 9600 XT, which has been just fine (as far as I can tell) since I'm not a gamer. could someone recommend a replacement vid card that about the same in performance and cost ?
::edit:: Replacement, meaning one that would work with most 939 mb's.

I generally do alot of winrar'ing, video editing and encoding along with just general multitasking.

Smoker
 

SmokerMI

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If you want to keep your 9600,You can go with the Asrock dual939 sata2 .

Good catch with the agp solution

but alas I woke up and realized that I would need to have a card for the current system I'm handing over so I might as well go with a PCIe card.

Those 2 cards

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814102576

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814122237

Both seem to have dual head. Do most PCIe cards have dual head ?

I for some unknown reason like the 1st as it's Radeon as well as a faster GPU.

Smoker
 

SmokerMI

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BTW I notice (even though just a short time since I posted) that nothing being said against my direction towards the Opteron instead of the x2's.

Interesting

Smoker
 

Admiral_Cecil

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Hello,

Get an SLI mobo since the best cards have migrated from AGP to PCI-E.

Yes Opteron single or dual core are server chips that cost more that their regular equivalents, but delievers the best OC, performance, lower temps, and lower wattage. They also cost less than the FX.
 

SmokerMI

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Hello,

Get an SLI mobo since the best cards have migrated from AGP to PCI-E.

Yes Opteron single or dual core are server chips that cost more that their regular equivalents, but delievers the best OC, performance, lower temps, and lower wattage. They also cost less than the FX.

Thanks for responding Cecil

Another forum has suggested these two

DFI Lanparty Ultra-D
Asus A8N-SLI Premium

but I am not getting good research on them... most the huge difference in price and one says 1000 MHz bus and the other 2000 MHz bus.

Smoker
 

Admiral_Cecil

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Hello,

AMD64 has hypertransport which means 1000 up and down (1000 + 1000 = 2000). Don't worry too much about this.

I suggest getting the AMD SLI Deluxe over the premium since the passive heat pipe is prone to cause failure in the chips in some cases.
 

SiLeNtEuPhOrIa

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Go DFI if you are looking to overclock. Plain and simple, DFI kicks ASUS up and down the block when it comes to overclocking performance and stability. Just make sure you get some good ram with the DFI, and not some cheap value ram (incompatibility issues). I suggest either Corsair or OCZ
 

dizman

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From I've learned at these forums that yes the Opteron is better than X2. I myself have just order an Opteron 165, two 1GB OCZ Plat Ram, XFX 7800GT, and going to order shortly a DFI UT NF4 DR SLI Expert as I've been told by some experts that is the best mobo for overclocking an Opteron. People have easily got it from stock 1.8Ghz to 2.9Ghz on air cooling, and that's what I plan to do with a Zalman CNPS9500

Hope this helps
 

SmokerMI

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I myself have just order an Opteron 165, two 1GB OCZ Plat Ram, XFX 7800GT, and going to order shortly a DFI UT NF4 DR SLI Expert

DAYUM someone has a money tree in their yard lol

That mb is about $200... thats an aweful lot of a mb.
 

jokersgrin

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Hey man stay with the opty 165
dual core is the future and it won't be long before all games and Apps are muti-threaded. So you would be future proofing to say. Plus you can truely multi-task, very nice differance in computeing from a single core proc.

I have both opty 165 and 170, got the 170 from a buddy that went overseas to help the military, he saved me a ton of cash, anyway can see no differance between the 2 when overclocked to 2.6 on (165 on air stable). If you run stock the 170 will just a bit faster due to higher clock speed. I'd say get the 165 and save the cash.
Also note this the opty's are made for high end workstations. the chip is cut to say from the best possible part of the waffer when makeing the cpu! Therefore its made for higher stress enviroments!

good luck

My spec's
opty 170 (opty 165 in old lady puter)
DFI NF4 SLI-DR expert
OCZ ddr 500 2 GB ( had G-skill and had problems)none with this ram
4xWD 74GB raptors in raid 0
2x7800gtx
fortron source 600w PSU
custom liquid cooling solution on ( cpu, chipset, ram, HDD, G-cards)
CM stacker 830 case
 

DuxSyagrius

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I would take the 4200. I would take a guaranteed 400mhz premium any day over a 400mhz overclock you may or may not get. I know lots of people told me I would get 700mhz easy on my XP-m 2400. I settled for 300 in the end. There are alot of pretenders out there. Even Tom's will tell you that not all owners of a certain chip will get the same results. I have a friend who does tech reviews from a website and he says all of these dual cores are not as easily overclocked as many think. He has a 4200 and has only pushed it 100mhz due to instability problems on guess what? VIDEO ENCODING!!! he thinks it may be a sync problem between the chips. but who knows? Maybe what they say is true about the 165 being cut from better silicon. newegg has it for $325. If they really do have it in stock at thet price, then why not? Flip a coin then I guess. I deal in guarantees though. BTW, you can get 700 mhz on a XP-m 2400. You had just better have some water cooling action and a mobo that supports voltages better than 1.8V. But with all that money spent on that stuff, wouldnt it just makes sense to buy a faster chip and dispense with the insanity? But thats just me...