With the AMD price drops on lower-speed Opterons, more than a few people have been asking about the prospects of overclocking Opterons to FX levels at much less than FX price levels.

About a month ago, we spoke a bit about what what Opteron overclockers needed to look for to give them a fighting chance to do so. If you didn't see the article, or forgot what was in it, here it is again.

Well, we have some good news and some bad news.

The Bad News

The bad news is that it doesn't appear that you can change the multiplier with Opterons the way you can with FXs.

This means that you have to increase the "FSB" on an Opteron motherboard in order to overclock. Since no Opteron motherboard (even in theory) goes over 300MHz, this will limit the speeds you could even theoretically reach with a 1.4GHz or 1.6GHz Opteron (and as you'll see, there's no point in even trying with these processors currently).

This leaves just the 1.8GHz Opteron. While it's hardly cheap, you can get one for $283, which is a lot better than an FX or even Athlon64.

There's also an even better piece of news about the 1.8GHz.

Ed