Hi
I recently started looking for an upgarde CPU for my aging Barton 2500 OC to 3200 - I was in 2 minds about getting an X2 4200 or just go for the pure brute-force of a 64 4000.
That was until I stumbled across a post regarding Opterons...
It seems that I can get an Opteron 146 for about £150 and overlcock it to at least 2.8Ghz, 800 Mhz over its stock speed! I was ready to buy it when I saw another post on here recommending the Opteron 165 for the same reason, but this time it has two cores! So I have found one of these available for about £220
my question is - which is better?? I mainly play games, but also occasionally do some encoding etc, so dual cores would be nice, but does the performance increase warrant the extra £££?
ALSO, and very importantly, will the Gigabyte GA-K8V Ultra-939 be OK for this type of overclocking? Judging from their CPU compatibility list, both Opterons are supported with a BIOS flash, but I didnt know if they would handle such extreme OC's on this board. I HAVE to have this board as I have only recently upgraded to an AGP x800 Pro (which is OC'd to X800 XT with 16 pipelines) , so I dont really want to shell out extra for a new GPU.
Just for info - my system spec is:
AMD Athlon XP 3200 @ 190FSB
3 x 512MB Crucial DDR
Sapphire X800 XT Toxic Edition
Asus A7N8X-E Deluxe
Elan Vital Greenerger Silent 450W PSU (check quietpc.co.uk for details)
4 x hard drives (2 x 120GB SATA in RAID 0, 1 x 300GB SATA, 1 x 120GB PATA)
2 x 120MM dustproof fans
D-Link 108Mb wireless PCI
Hauppage WinTV Nova-T PCI
SIL 3112 SATA controller PCI
Soundblaster Audigy 2 ZS PCI
I recently started looking for an upgarde CPU for my aging Barton 2500 OC to 3200 - I was in 2 minds about getting an X2 4200 or just go for the pure brute-force of a 64 4000.
That was until I stumbled across a post regarding Opterons...
It seems that I can get an Opteron 146 for about £150 and overlcock it to at least 2.8Ghz, 800 Mhz over its stock speed! I was ready to buy it when I saw another post on here recommending the Opteron 165 for the same reason, but this time it has two cores! So I have found one of these available for about £220
my question is - which is better?? I mainly play games, but also occasionally do some encoding etc, so dual cores would be nice, but does the performance increase warrant the extra £££?
ALSO, and very importantly, will the Gigabyte GA-K8V Ultra-939 be OK for this type of overclocking? Judging from their CPU compatibility list, both Opterons are supported with a BIOS flash, but I didnt know if they would handle such extreme OC's on this board. I HAVE to have this board as I have only recently upgraded to an AGP x800 Pro (which is OC'd to X800 XT with 16 pipelines) , so I dont really want to shell out extra for a new GPU.
Just for info - my system spec is:
AMD Athlon XP 3200 @ 190FSB
3 x 512MB Crucial DDR
Sapphire X800 XT Toxic Edition
Asus A7N8X-E Deluxe
Elan Vital Greenerger Silent 450W PSU (check quietpc.co.uk for details)
4 x hard drives (2 x 120GB SATA in RAID 0, 1 x 300GB SATA, 1 x 120GB PATA)
2 x 120MM dustproof fans
D-Link 108Mb wireless PCI
Hauppage WinTV Nova-T PCI
SIL 3112 SATA controller PCI
Soundblaster Audigy 2 ZS PCI