Dual Opteron Overclocking

Alright, so I'm upgrading my core components again now that i got my new vid card and hard drives. I'm going to go Dual Opterons but I'm unclear on a few things. I'm going to have to use the MSI K8T Master2-FAR (MS-9130), but i'm dreaming for an Abit board with the same chipset. A few questions though...
1. Do you have to use ECC/Registered Dimms?
2. Does each processor have its own memory dimms? I see them all grouped together on the mobo so i'm confused.
3. Do you think its a feasible goal to get the procs running 2ghz - 2.2ghz @ 200+ FSB synced with the memory? I'm not sure what options i have in the bios for voltages and whatnot, but I'm no stranger to my soldering iron so i'm not worried about it. On top of that i have a swiftech watercooling kit coming. As you can probably see, I'm trying to set myself up with dual fx51s.
Any input would be greatly appreciated.

1. yes
2. probably not. that board only has 4 DIMMs and is weak IMO. I'd only get one with 8 DIMMs, but then OC'ing probably would not be an option on a board like that.
3. No idea, probably not.

Overclocking options will probably be quite limited, so don't expect great speeds, if any, over stock.

The way that board works, the second CPU has to go through the first to get to RAM, so you're sharing the RAM between the two. You'll need to sticks for dual channel, though, which is something you'll want to take advantage of.

Water cooling might prove to be a waste, if you're not overclocking, as you can get some really quiet fans on those. Keep in mind, though, that the MSI uses P4 retention mechanisms, so you won't be able to use Opteron specific coolers, at least not unless you remove the mechanism. I'm not exactly sure how it works, but I know it's the mounting scheme from a P4 and I know the board comes bundled with two different coolers.

Z

So the amd chipset is the only one that has individual memory banks for each processor?? that sucks, cause you definately cant overclock the amd chipset one....awww crap. Any chance nvidia will make a dual?

I believe NVIDIA is working on one, but I might be wrong.

The Via chipset might not mandate shared memory, but the MSI implementation of it certainly does.

The AMD chipset probably won't overclock.

I really don't know much about overclocking Opterons, but as I recall, those people overclocking the FX/A64s are using Via chipsets, so it might be possible.

I highly doubt that having one bank per processor is that necessary, unless you do certain things. What is it that you plan to do with this? In games and such, you won't notice the difference, and I doubt that Folding will care, nor will a bunch of other things. The only thing that's going to take a hit are memory intensive applications that store large files in RAM and access them frequently that are ALSO multithreaded. Other than that, it won't matter much

For the advantages of overclocking and the price (The MSI costs a LOT less than other boards), I don't think it's that big of a compromise, though you're also not getting PCI-X. Of course, I don't need that. I would like PCI Express, though, which is one of the reasons I'm waiting.

Z

Yeah it all depends on useage. I would build one for engineering applications where 16GB of ram and a huge swap are a must, not for desktop/gaming.

And if you're dead set on an Opteron for general computing, this board is a much better choice, since it costs so much less. The shared memory isn't that much of a performance hit in general applications. Again, I ask what you intend to do with it.

Z

Gaming primarily, I saw the performance of the fx-51 and was fairly impressed. My logic behind getting dual opterons was that besides being the same core as the fx, i can get 2 of them for the same price if not less than the fx, and hopefully overclock them. I'm pretty sure with the right mobo (i wish i wish i wish there was an abit!), voltage mods and cooling i should be able to get some results. Although im worried that the multi might be locked, and if so it doest seem like a bridge mod would be possible.

Tyberius said:

Gaming primarily, I saw the performance of the fx-51 and was fairly impressed. My logic behind getting dual opterons was that besides being the same core as the fx, i can get 2 of them for the same price if not less than the fx, and hopefully overclock them. I'm pretty sure with the right mobo (i wish i wish i wish there was an abit!), voltage mods and cooling i should be able to get some results. Although im worried that the multi might be locked, and if so it doest seem like a bridge mod would be possible.

Click to expand...

There is an abit board out now....... the ABIT KV8-MAX3: Athlon64

but :

lOl

only for SO-754.........

.............................................

again, i want a DUAL OPTERON abit board, i couldnt care less about the athlon64, my barton is spanking even a fx-51 right now in everything but memory bandwidth, because the fx/opteron have 128bit memory controllers. The a64 doesnt. So id be no better off

According to the MSI K8T Master 2 FAR manual you can set 200 Mhz to 233 Mhz for the host clock. Not sure if that will mean a whole lot but its a start.

If your Barton is beating the FX, save your money. You're not going to get anything out of a dual Opteron unless you're encoding video and things (and a Xeon is better for encoding, anyway). Unless you have specific need for a dual machine, there's no sense in spending that much for something you won't fully utilize. Most games are dependant on the video card right now anyway, so I think you might be better off just saving your money and waiting and watching.

Just a thought, though.

If you must, your only options are going to be FSB, and that, only if you're lucky. I doubt you'll get much of an OC out of an Opteron, but I guess it won't hurt to try. Keep in mind that buying a 1.4 Opteron will probably be a downgrade for you, and if you can't overclock it, you're stuck.

Z

What I will get out of the 940 pin procs are the 128 bit memory busses, I'm tired of being beat by again and again by those infernal dual channel p4s. I'm waiting for the right board. I have absolute faith in abit, i fear no voltage mod nor cooling solution. And I dont really need dual opterons but it would be nice for future games(Doom3 anyone?) that actually do smp, the only one i know of now is quake 3. I know it would be a performance hit unless i couldget the core speed up significantly. I'm thinking the 1.6 or the 1.8s, they have a 10 and 11 multi and if i could get a 200 fsb, i'd be golden. I'll just wait for the right board and for the cost to drop a bit. Cant keep myself from drooling at the idea of dual opterons at 2-2.2ghz with a 800fsb though....

I think your expectations are, unfortunately, too high. As much as other processors do that, I really don't know the ability of the new Opteron to get that high. There are only what, like 2 steppings? It's definitely way too soon to expect such numbers. If they could do it, AMD would be selling them. For the price you'll pay, as much as it might be close to the price of an FX, it's an exorbitant sum to pay for negligable performance differences in games, and no noticable improvement in day to day things.

While it's your money, I think it might be much better spent. Your current hardware is MORE than adequate, and is above top of the line. The highest 3dMark score I've seen is around 7000 more than you have, I think, and that kind of difference is not likely to be noticed at all. Unless you have visual lags in your games, just sit tight.

I know the temptation to upgrade. I want a mobile 2400+. For me, that might be a sensible upgrade, since it would be topping off my system for the next year. Keep in mind that this is totally new hardware, and it's not considered "tiding over". If AMD does a socket change or new Opterons which support DDRII don't work in current boards, you'll likely replace your entire system, for more than what you're about to pay now. This will include your video card and RAM.

Z

Good point, but my reasoning behind my ambitious goal is this...if the opteron and the fx are one and the same, why couldnt an opteron achieve similar clock speeds/ They already have the 246 whick is at 2ghz\666fsb, and the 248 is due out shortly after that. The via chipset supports 800 fsb, and its really only a 34 mhz increas on the bus speed....i dont know maybe its just a dream

I don't know how AMD is doing this, but I really don't imagine that AMD was binning entire batches of Opterons as the extremely high end CPUs. They're coming out in very small quantities. I guess I could be wrong, and I wouldn't take offense to being told I was wrong, but I really doubt that AMD is making all of these chips the same. I don't think the stock 1.6 or 1.8 is going to get that high. I might be wrong, though. As long as the BIOS supports overclocking, it won't hurt to try, but it sure would su** if you bought all of this and then couldn't run it past stock, when your Barton would likely equal its performance in most tasks (obviously not multithreaded tasks). I just saw somebody with basically the same system as you propose and they were using it as a file server for one person. It's just overkill. Bragging rights are fine, but keep in mind that this is like 1000 dollars (AT LEAST) and you're only going to end up with another box that does the same thing as the Barton. If you sell the Barton, that might be incentive to use it, but I'll tell you right now . . . I can't use more than one computer at a time, and I've got 4.

I feel happy for a few weeks when I get something new, but then I realize it was silly.

Z

amd in the past though has used the same wafers to make all the different speeds of palominos, tbred a, tbred b, and bartons, and then tested them at different speeds. meaning there is a palomino wafer, tbred a wafer, tbred b wafer, and barton wafer. if say a 3200+ fails, they test it as a 3000+, and keep going down until they make it stable. this isnt true for all their chips though, otherwise theyd have a huge stock of high end chips. they still take wafers and just say, these are going to be 2500+s and so on....thats why you get certain low end chips that are great clockers and some that seem to hit a wall. if you think about it its more cost efficient for them to make one type of wafer for their entire model line. ive seen it in the past and i was hoping that they would continue that trend...and as far as i can tell, the opterons and the fx51s are from the same wafer. really the only difference is the fsb, they can both atain the same clock speeds, i dont know maybe i shouldnt assume too much...

What I meant, though, is that I don't think they've got great yields on the really high end ones, which means that the ones marked as lower ones were binned that way not to fill a market of lower-end CPUs, but because they physically couldn't run any faster. I know that AMD bins perfectly capable CPUs as 2500+, 1700+ and 2100+ chips, as there's no way that all of those could reach 2500-2700MHz speeds if batches weren't being binned "down". But I don't think AMD is doing that. I think AMD is lucky to find a wafer capable of those speeds, and that majority of them are tested and fail. But I could be wrong. My point, though, is that if I'm right, you're going to pay a lot of money for not very much gain.

Z

and i dont disagree with you, but ive got the chance to play with it before i buy it

I think that's a great idea. I don't remember your configuration, but make sure that you're comparing the processor, not the whole system. A RAID0 array of Raptors is likely to make any system seem snappier if you're not accustomed to using a system with one. You might well have one, I don't recall. But the general computing should not really be significantly different from your current machine, as 2d desktop applications, web browsing and DVD watching and such (the usual stuff; you might well do more. I know nothing of your personal computing habbits) will not be bettered by such a machine. How are you evaluating this machine? Is it pre-built, or do you get to build it, play with it, and send it back if it isn't up to snuff? If you get to configure it, I suggest using most of your current equipment to reduce the number of conflicting variables. The least number of factors to evaluate will result in an easier and much more fair comparison.

Z