Re: Opteron Vs. Athlon X2

[Maurice Hilarius <maurice@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Robert L Cochran wrote:

> I'm Christmas shopping and in need of advice.
>
> I'm currently using a machine that has an Athlon 64 3500+ (single
> core) processor with an MSI K8N Neo2 Platinum motherboard. I'm using 2
> Gb of Adata memory which is actually running on 2T timings. The
> motherboard was flashed with the v1.9 BIOS which upgrades the board to
> processor E6 CPU (I'm not familiar with the "E6" terminology.)
>
> Now I'm on the Monarch Computer website looking at Athlon X2 and
> Opteron processors, and I'm wondering which one would be a really good
> step up for me for the next 2 years -- preferably without having to
> get a new motherboard.
>
> Does an Opteron dual-core give me any advantage over the Athlon X2
> besides a bigger L2 cache?
>
ECC RAM capability, assuming you have a board and BIOS that also support
that.

> Can I run Fedora Core 4 (and later on, Fedora Core 5) on the processor?
>
I think you can safely assume FC "anything" will run on  AMD CPUs.

> Can I take an Opteron processor and drop it into my existing MSI
> motherboard, or should I expect to buy a new motherboard also? If so,
> what motherboard?
>
Doubtful

> What would be better for a developer -- the Athlon X2 or the Opteron?


Depends on your needs.
Opterons are meant for Workstations/small servers, hence the ECC support.
Athlon64 are meant for commodity desktops
Sempron64 are meant for econo desktops

If you are interested in overclocking word is that the Opteron S939
chips seem more capable for overclocking.


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With our best regards,

Maurice W. Hilarius        Telephone: 01-780-456-9771
Hard Data Ltd.  FAX:       01-780-456-9772
11060 - 166 Avenue         email:maurice@xxxxxxxxxxxx
Edmonton, AB, Canada       http://www.harddata.com/
   T5X 1Y3

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