Opty170 or AM2 X2 4200+
digitaltree
Suffern, NY
Hey, guys. I've tried to decide and finally decided to default to the infinite knowledge of Short Media experts. I'm getting ready to build a new computer, but am having trouble deciding on which CPU to use. I'm planning a complete water-cooled system and some overclocking, so I was looking at using the Opty170. But since the AM2 line has come out, I am also looking at the X2 4200+. It's faster, but the L2 is only half the size of the Opty. Which one should I use?
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If you are building from scratch, then I would say for you to go with AM2, in a month or so. The reason I say AM2 is that if you are starting from scratch, you might as well go with a platform that has a chance of future upgradability to K8L. The cache difference makes a 3-8% difference in some apps, but the increased clock speed should compensate. Also, I seem to have heard that the AM2 DC procs seem to overclock pretty darn well too.
The reason I say wait a month or so is because Intel will be introducing Conroe late in July. It looks like Conroe will be a sure fire winniner of a design so far too. But even if you don't want to go Intel, there will be a sizable price reduction in both AMD processors and also Intel netburst procs after Conroe comes out, so it would be worth your while to wait.
My only choice now is the new Conroe CPUs. Similarly priced (If not cheaper), 25% faster, and far more future-proof than either of the AMD cores. Plus they overclock like crazy.
/me cringes as he types.
I'm a fairly avid Intel-hater myself. What's AMD supposed to come out with against Conroe, though? If they have something planned, wouldn't it be better to stick with the AM2 platform and hope to upgrade later? I've been in Iraq the past seven months, so I'm a little out of the loop with everything.:confused2
So far there are no leaks as to anything coming from AMD very soon. I'm sure they will have somethng sooner or later but it doesn't look like it will be for a while. Right now the M2 boards are built on Nvidia NF4 and NF5 with some VIA out there as well. The NF4 isn't able to take full advantage of the new platform but just transitioned over to M2 from 939 just to crank out some boards. NF5 isn't reall a good chipset right now. And VIA is just plain bad, period! So to buy an M2 board right now would be tossing money in the can.
The problem with starting out fresh with a 939 system right now is that it uses DDR memory and everything new is on DDR-2. So any DDR memory purchased now would be money wasted unless you were willing to keep the system for a while and be happy with it. But this is where Conroe comes in and spanks 939's butt and wipes it too! So a Conroe system would have the same amount of lose if you were to switch to an M2 system later on.
digitaltree, when you see Thrax posting something like this, you have to know that Conroe will be a kick-ass processor. Thrax is about as big an AMD fan as they come and even he has to admit that Intel is basically whipping AMD's butt with Conroe. And I agree with him 100% about this too. Everything I've seen about Conroe says that it will perform better than AM2 that sotock clocks, have similar or lower power requirements and will overclock like a banshee. I plan to transition to Conroe later this year, along with DDR2 and PCI-e video. I just got a great deal on a case for the build here in the DD&TP to make it a watercooled system with.
EDIT: The only downside I've seen for Conroe so far is that the motherboards that support Conroe that are available right now are kind of pricey. But there should be many more choices out there once Conroe is officially launched on July 23.
I've heard that Intel doesn't want to support SLI with Conroe, but supports Crossfire, instead. Is this true? Is there any reason I should use ATI? In addition to AMD, I'm partial to nVidia, as well.
As for SLI/CF support, that's much, much harder to determine. Consider the nVIDIA GeForce 7950 GX2; it's less than the cost of 2x 7900GT(X) by a huge margin, yet as two cards in a single slot, it's an SLI solution that doesn't care if you've got a CPU company that supports Crossfire or SLI.
Definitely a good time to wait
Seriously, digitaltree. Get a 6600 Conroe when they come out and a DFI board. They are supposed to have 2 versions coming out. A infinity and a lanparty where the Lanparty is the very expensive one. The current best board that works with Conroe is the Intel S775 "Badaxe", but it must be a rev. 304. Be prepared to shell out $200 for a good Conroe board, but i believe that it is well worth it in the end.
As always, they guys in this Forum knows a lot of these things and their advices are always great.
And Mack, I've read of some decent overclocking of Conroe with the Asus P5W HD Dlx board. There's been a few twitches with it so far (biggest I read about was a 450 fsb limit right now with the early bios) but it's bench numbers are looking better than the BadAxe at the same speed.
Just a question, though, does anybody know what socket type AMD's K8L Deerhound is supposed to be using when it's released?
That's what I've gathered too, but who knows whether today's AM2 mobo's will be able to run K8L. I remember back with the transition from Tbird to the AXP Palomino procs where a bunch of Tbird boards couldn't make the transition to AXP due to motherboard design changes needed, even though they were using the exact same chipsets.
I meant intel switches chipsets so often, that you have to make sure you get the right chipset for your processor. intel is ahead of amd with the chipsets being up to date, I can agree with that, but at least I can pick up any 939 mobo, and put any 939 processor in it, not the case for lga775.
thanks to AMD.
Yeah, and I'm glad the competition is finally back so that the procs get this much better.
Has anybody seen the NF590-SLI Intel Edition? It's supposed to support Conroe and SLI. I'm hoping these boards come out with Conroe!
AM2 will out perform the Conroe in the long run
To note the FX 62 wasn't made to be a conroe killer it was made to bring over the FX line to the DDR2 platform. same with the X2 CPU's we see today. they all outperform Intels Pent 4 lines in which they were made for. Intel is showing off some great CPU's and will have the market for a short time, But AMD's first quad cores will hit the market in less than a years time and will slide right into a AM2 socket... I don't think AMD is sitting on the side lines like Intel did over the years.
AM2 is the slated socket! but all things can change
That's good. I was hearing rumors of it going to an AM3 socket, which would be horrible! Hopefully AMD sticks with the AM2 socket for a while and keeps things progressing on that socket.
You do know that Kentsfield, Intel's quad-core Conroe chip is already being sampled, right? AMD lost this round, and 1 year down the line is another round. You're kibitzing.
//Further editing:
LGA775 is to Intel what AM2 is to AMD. The difference being that Intel got to the future-stable socket first, but AMD got to the performance. Now Intel is going to have both, and AMD is going to have to play catch up. This is a position that AMD can't terribly afford any more.