Dual cores? what to do..

Wish I'de discovered this thread earlier, to offer PCMark scores or whatever.
It's also very interesting. I didn't know how much Intel's dual-core lineup had improved.

Not much maturity though. =/

I finally jumped on the dual-core bandwagon. I went with the Opteron 165 though. I needed to get a PCI-e video card as well, so I got the EVGA SLI motherboard and 7800GT combo for $330 AR at ZZF. I was going to go with the 920, but the motherboards are quite expensive, and it seems as though it's only on par with AMD's dual cores when it gets above 4GHz, and that's just too much uncertainty for me.

My current chip is the P4 2.4C M0 stepping, which often hits 3.4GHz. Mine wasn't stable past 3.1GHz regardless of how much voltage I gave it. I didn't want to go down that path again. The 165 will be an awesome chip even if it only hits 2.2-2.4GHz.

to the Forum!
You should do much better than that on the 165.They have been overclocking like crazy lately. I did not know ZZF was still offering that deal. I will be very interested to here how your board OC's the opteron. Good luck with your new rig.

rseven said:

to the Forum!
You should do much better than that on the 165.They have been overclocking like crazy lately. I did not know ZZF was still offering that deal. I will be very interested to here how your board OC's the opteron. Good luck with your new rig.

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Thanks for the welcome. I've actually been reading here off and on for the past 2 years since I first started overclocking. Lots of good stuff here. What I like best here is the lack of bias compared to other forums. You guys (for the most part) look at real facts. A lot of other forums' posts can be summed up as "AMD is better than Intel; no Intel is SOOO much better than AMD", etc.

Anyways, I hope that my opteron overclocks really well, but I don't want to set myself up for disappointment in case it doesn't. Here's the stepping and such:

OSA165DAA6CD
CCBWE 0546MPMW
136728AL50198

These are hitting 2.7-2.8 GHz on air for a lot of people, but I'm not sure if my board will go that high. If it doesn't, I'll probably sell it and go with a DFI or MSI board. I'm putting a Scythe Ninja on it, so that'll provide all the cooling it needs for a high overclock.

I never let the facts get in the way of my opinions!
If it doesn't OC go for a DFI or an Epox, not an MSI. I can't wait to ditch this MSI for something less quirky.

IWasHungry said:

Wish I'de discovered this thread earlier, to offer PCMark scores or whatever.
It's also very interesting. I didn't know how much Intel's dual-core lineup had improved.

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I am the OP.. obviously.. and I would really like to see a synthetic benchmarking thread with AMD's dual cores and the 9XX intels..

and deception.. your first post on this page... I liked the sum up (a great majority of that is what I had come to understand from reading)

greenmaji said:

I am the OP.. obviously.. and I would really like to see a synthetic benchmarking thread with AMD's dual cores and the 9XX intels..

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If I were you, I'de start a thread in this forum for synthetic benchmarks comparing AMD X2s and DC Opterons versus Intel 9XXs. In it, you would want to outline the tests you want us to do.

If you did take such a course of action, I would ask a moderator if it was alright to post a link to the thread from within both the Intel and AMD sub-forums, so we can get more results.

anyone have suggestions for a list of CPU intensive benchmarks for comparison?

batboy said:

What overclocked to overclocked reviews are you referring to or do you mean the typical biased stock to stock reviews?

Here ya go. While you run that encoding test, why not post Super Pi and PCmark2004 scores too?

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I will give this a shot on our dual opy 246' rig here @ work and our dual Xeon 2.4 rig - the dual opty does havea MYSQL db onit i cant shut off but can try to run this while it is not getting any usage.

ronaldo said:

If you looking at encoding, then read this, and you will see that Cpu will not make much diference (maybe few % in some application), but a GPU will can make a 3-5x much diference in encoding:

http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,1880669,00.asp

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Video encoding, is CPU intensive not GPU intesive - such as conversion from AVI to DVD, or DVD to mpeg et cetera.

Applications that use the Vidoe card are 3d rending applications which use OpenGL....... and that is mainly for the real time rendering, once you make the final product again it comes down to CPU power, hence rendering farms, they are filled with CPU's, not high end GPU.

ATI is working on a GPU solution, but currently and for sometime to come, CPU are still what matter for video encoding / decoding.

greenmaji said:

anyone have suggestions for a list of CPU intensive benchmarks for comparison?

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Any
*@H project
SuperPI
WinRar compression test

rseven said:

There are two reasons why AMD has more expensive DC's than Intel. First, it is a much more sophisticated design that is clearly superior to Intel's, and second, they could not keep up with demand for a cheap dual core as they just don't have the plants to do it. I think that DDR2 will get cheaper as production ramps up and DDR is pulled back. As always there willbe price spikes along the way when there are market shortages. BTW, the Opti 165's are just under $300 these days.

Like most of us, you would probably do well to wait on any upgrade, but waiting is not something most of us do very well.

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My Dad is currently working at Intel, and some fairly new stuff is starting to happen. Not too long ago here in Arizona, Intel bought some more land and is the process of building a multi billion dollar fab. This fab will be on the cutting edge, as it will be producing 45nm core chips for the public. The other thing that is going on at Intel inside their R&D department is that they are realizing higher operating frequencies are starting to be pointless.
For example, if one man can carry one rock from point A to point B in one second, and the other can carry 3 rocks from point A to point B in 2 seconds, who is going to carry 9 rocks to point B faster. Also, some of the processors Intel is making (DC) are more expensive than AMD, but some AMD's are more expensive than Intel. Such as the Pentium Extreme Edition 955 is around $1,055, it is one of the most expensive Desktop processors available, but you may be right about AMD being more expensive, seeing as i get my Intel proccessors anywhere from 60% off to absolutely free. The latest research going on is the Quad-Duo processor, probably going to be used for servers, it will have a 45nm core and have 8, yes 8, cores. And as soon as the Beta testing versions come out, I'll have one and maybe see some results. Like rseven said, in the next six months there will be new stuff coming out, and that it would be good to wait for that gear.
(sorry for going so far back in the convo, just thought id put my 2 cents in )