Dual core opty or X2?

So if I was thinking about getting a dual core processor for overclocking which one would be more cost effective? Opty or X2? Thesonofx-51 had a nice overclock on his dual core but cant find the thread.

With the new prices the X2 chips are a great value. There have been no price cuts on the Opteron chips to my knowledge. As far as OCing I dont know which has better potential. If I had to guess I would say the Opterons, but cant support that guess.

there have been price cuts to single and dual core opties, they just are still more expesnsive than the x2's and a64's

144 is $125 now instead of $175
165 dual core is $250 instead of $325

...there is also the X2 3800+ which has been hitting some pretty good OC's as well - and its 100$ cheaper than the 165: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16819103562

yeah, the x2 3800 is a great deal. it will probably replace my opteron 146 when i feel the need.

basso4735 said:

yeah, the x2 3800 is a great deal. it will probably replace my opteron 146 when i feel the need.

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well dont expect it to oc to 3ghz like your optie

Later steppings of the Opty Dual Core's have been OC'ing like terrible. Im talking 2.3-2.4ghz from the usual 2.8-2.9ghz back in the day

Ya, stick with what you got or go conroe.

Even that 6300E overclocked to 3ghz+ owns anything AMD can muster up even overclock wise.

||Console|| said:

well dont expect it to oc to 3ghz like your optie

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course not. but 2 cores>1

im still running a weak 2.5ghz overclock. (never spent time trying to go higher) and i have one of the older steppings from last december timeframe.

and no, they arent really dropping in price at all. i payed like $350 for this from monarch back then (a price that few seemed to have notice at the time) before it went back up over $400.

This may be a little off topic, but how much performance increase would it be to upgrade to faster processor for gaming? (See sig for specs)

Don't games have to written for multiple cores in order to take advantage of them? At least that's why I've always thought...

Yes your correct.. Games have to be written or updates released to take full advantage of multi threading. Same with some APP's. There are a few games that have released patchs that take advantage of multi threading, but i dont have a list off the top of my head.

If a game still only uses One core, youll be better off for now using your opty clocked at 3ghz than a dual core clocked at 2.6. The only advantage a dual core has with a single threaded game or app is being able to have all of the windows processes running on one core and your game running on the "idle" core.

So, Single core clocked same as a dual core, dual core will win in Multi and Single threaded games/apps
Single core clocked higher than dual core will win in Single threaded games/apps but the dual core will win in multi threaded apps.
And a dual core clocked higher than a single core, will win everything.

To answer your question, If all you play is games right now, no video encoding or multi tasking of the sort, and your games are not multi threaded, you wont see a gain in game performance. But, if you do lots of multi tasking, a dual core is like day and night compared to a single core.