A little help before I order my cpu?

[notquitedead]

Hi,
Tomorrow I will either be ordering an Opteron 165 or an X2 3800+. I'm leaning towards the opteron because of the l2 cache and because I want to get into overclocking. I will be using a dfi lanparty ultra-d, which doesn't officially support the opty but I've heard a lot of people say it works fine.

Is there anything I should know before I decide to buy the opty instead of the 3800+? I've read that the extra l2 cache won't help that much, and that the 3800+ can achieve decent overclocks in addition to having a higher stock speed and a 10x multiplier. I have some more questions...

I can't afford any good memory right now, but later I was thinking about getting the ddr500 G.SKILL Extreme Edition 2gb. That's really expensive, and if I want anything higher than 2.25ghz (which seems low compared to what others are getting, although I would like leave the vcore alone and will be using air cooling) then I will have to overclock it... the only reason I was thinking about ddr500 ram is because I wouldn't have to oc it. Would I be better off with 2gb of good quality ddr400 ram that I can oc to over ddr500, or will I need a divider for anything higher?

Is the RAM I mentioned above just factory overclocked ddr400 ram?

Sorry if this sounds like I'm just rambling. I have a lot of questions/doubts but I don't really know what to ask. I guess I'm just looking for opinions, experiences with either of these cpu's, etc.

 

[Ankun]

I dont see any reason why it would be a bad choice to get a 165 over a 3800+.. other than possibly availability.

On the case of the ram.. I'm not much of an expert but I believe there is really no "factory" setting for the ram so to speak. Of course the chip maker would "guaruntee" an IC could achieve a particular clock speed.. but memory makers bin the chips and sell them accordingly. DDR500 Isnt quite factory overclocked.. but its guarunteed to run at 500 mhz as opposed to DDR400 which may easily overclock to it but no real guaruntees.

 

[notquitedead]

Okay, thanks.

 

[darksparkz]

Definitely go for the 165, mainly advantages. The only disdvantage is the trouble of finding it and the cost it might be. Even if you get a bad CPU that OCs to around 2.5ghz, it's still has the extra cache at least.

 

[notquitedead]

Definitely go for the 165, mainly advantages. The only disdvantage is the trouble of finding it and the cost it might be. Even if you get a bad CPU that OCs to around 2.5ghz, it's still has the extra cache at least.

lol if I could get 2.4ghz on stock voltage and air cooling I'd be extremely happy happy. 2.25ghz was my goal until I started looking into results others got.