Opteron 165 & 180 Review

Omega65

Techreport reviews the S939 Opteron 165 (1.8ghz 2x1MB) & 180 (2.4ghz 2x1MB) DualCore CPUs.

View: AMD's Opteron 165 and 180 processors

The Opteron 165's ace in the hole for PC enthusiasts looking to transgress against product segmentation barriers, however, is its vaunted potential for overclocking. AMD says that Opterons go through more extensive validation than Athlon 64 processors, no doubt because leveraging synergies is not something to be done lightly. Many overclocking types have taken this language to mean that clock frequencies are chosen more conservatively for Opteron 100 chips. I'm not too sure about that, but it does seem that low-end Opteron 100s have shown some uncommon clock speed headroom.

Opterons Rock!

Source: Techreport

primesuspect

so true

lemonlime

Wow, I'm surprised the 180s OC as poorly as they do.. I saw quite a few disappointed individuals on XS with terrible 180s as well. I'd be all over a 165 if it wasn't for the 9x multiplier

TheSmJ

What's wrong with the 9x multiplier?

lemonlime

TheSmJ wrote:

What's wrong with the 9x multiplier?

Its usually not a problem on air, but if you start getting in the ~3GHz territory on phase-change, you need rather high 330+MHz reference clock speeds. Not always terribly 'board stable' in that range, especially if your CPU has a mild case of the 'cold bug'. My opteron for example under phase has difficulty exceeding 300MHz reference clock, regardless of the multiplier I use. The board could do almost 400MHz on air, but things changed considerably at low temps. You get some better flexibility in general with higher multis as well (more combinations to look for a good memory clock speed etc).