Opteron cpu

[crampy]

Hello all, I am about to build a new gaming pc but want to do it as cheap as poss. I have been told nowadays it is better spend more on the gfx card than the cpu? I have found an opteron 144 1000mhz bus speed for 84GBP. Or a opteron 146 800 mhz bus speed for 105GBP. Been told both overclock well with good air cooling. The question is.....is the 146 worth the extra 20GBP? And what diff does the extra 200mhz bus speed make (if any?) Also are AMD prices about to plummet with the release of intels new cpu's? Is it worth waiting a couple of months to see?

 

[Rik]

Personally, i recon amd represent the best value. I have a socket 745 amd 64 3000 with an ati 9550 and i have to say it performs well and has not had trouble playing any games so far. It was just over £250 to build ( mobo, processor, and ram were brand new, graphics card and everything else second hand or from my previous system).

 

[vnf4ultra]

I don't believe there is an opteron 146 with a 800mhz hypertransport, I believe they all are 1000mhz, my guess is the 800mhz you see is a typo. I'd get the 146, due to it's higher(10x) multiplier. A higher multiplier means you don't have to run an extremely overclocked hypertransport frequency to get a good overclock. I wish my opteron 165 was a 10x(i.e. a opteron 170), since I have to run my hypertransport speeds very high to get to my overclock level.

Either one will likely get to similar speeds though.

 

[Mirob]

With a good overclocking mobo both the 144 and 146 will probably hit the same clocks. You may be able to save some money with a Athlon 64 Venice like the 3500+ or 3800+ because those are the ones the price cuts have hit. They have 512 Kb L2 cache opposed to the Opteron's(and San Diego) 1024 Kb. The extra cache is like a extra 100 MHz on the clock speed.

 

[crampy]

AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual-Core 3800+ 2.0GHz 1024KB (2x512KB) L2 Cache Socket AM2 Processor (Boxed) 101GBP

AMD Athlon 64 3800+ Venice 2.4GHz 512KB L2 Cache Socket 939 90NM Processor (Boxed) 74GBP


Would one of these be a better purchase? Was thinking opteron because I was told they overclock great but I suppose when you get to these speed cpu's there is probably no need to!! My pc is used mainly for gaming and some video editing (camcorder footage). I am finding it a minefield out there with all the diff cpu's available. Any advice would be great. Thanks