Athlon FX different thatn Opteron 1XX

IMPORTANT!!

I just found out that the Athlon FX's ARE NOT OPTERON 1XX'S!!!!!

The difference lies in this: Opterons have 3 HT links enabled. The Athlon 64 FX's only have 1 enabled, the other are disabled from the factory.

What are these extra HT links used for? Other I/O devices such as PCI-X and onboard functions.

Do a lot of boards use these? No, but if you plan on running your Athlon 64 FX in an opteron board that does use these, 3 things may happen

1)the board will not accept the cpu

2)the board will not function as fast as with an Athlon FX as it would with an Opteron 1XX

3)the board will disable the function that use the extra HT links, and you will loose the features that use this.

Has anyone experienced any of these problems?

Of course most likely, the mobo will think it is an Opteron 1XX and work fine, but I imagine there are SOME boards out there that will know the difference and have problems.

This information comes from the latest isuee of Maximum PC
and I quote: "An opteron 144 or 146 has threee fucntional HyperTransport links, while the 64 FX onlye has one. On boards that use the additional links, the Athlon 64 FX would five yo uproblems (the additional links would be used for other high-speed I/O's such as PCI Express or PCI-X.)"

Yes, the Athlon FX is different than the Opteron. That has been the case all along, although it is hard to keep all AMD's chips straight, since they have too many on the market and don't know what they are doing, when it comes to marketing.

I know it has always been that way, but most ppl thought that the Athlon FX was just a remarked Opteron 1XX, but know we know that isnt the case.

So it boils down to... FX chips can not be used in Opteron motherboards, but Opteron chips can be used in FX motherboards. Right?

Skiing Squirrel said:

So it boils down to... FX chips can not be used in Opteron motherboards, but Opteron chips can be used in FX motherboards. Right?

Click to expand...

No, it does not mean that.

It would seemt that opterons would run in FX boards, i see no reason not to beleive that.

But as for FX's in opteron boards, most of the time it will work, and from the storys i have heard it does work, but remember i am talking opteron 1XX boards, single, not dual. Even in single baords, the FX's MIGHT not work, we dont have enough information to find out. If they do, the performance might not be as good.

Well from what I've seen from people with fx's and socket 940 boards they work fine. I believe one of the ht transport links is for smp which is also disabled on the opteron 1xx. The second may very well be for pci-x or something else.

I think that the problem of extra functions getting disabled with a FX in a Opti won't happen. This could only create problems when you have a Southbridge, a PCI-X bridge, a AGP bridge and stuff like that. BUT with the NF3 you only have one chip and it gets only one HT link. And on the chipsets that use multiple chips like AMDs chipsets, they daisy chain the chips (each chip has 2 links) creating a sort of bus. So the problem shouldn't exist, now if we get in dual MBs their might be problems when the chipsets chips don't daisy chain and instead each has a dediated HT link.

Also opteron 1xxs have different overclocking characteristics. (Read this somewhere) Opetrons don't overclock as high as FXs, and FXs respond to phase changing, opterons will get you one FSB notch if you add a phase changer. Opterons seems to hit a ceiling and voltage and/or cooling don't change it whatsoever.

EDIT

I think they are different die. I think AMD is loosing alot of money because they are making 3 different dies at the same time, but Intel has been doing for years (1-2 desktop mainstream cores, 2-4 mobiles, and 3-5 servers at one time). There is the Opteron die (don't know if 2** and 1** are same or different, and don't know about 8**). Athlon 64 die. and Athlon 64 FX die. The mobiles are handpicked (taking away the best OCers ) off the Athlon 64 line so they are the same die.