avenging llama

Hey guys, have a quick question for ya. I have a socket 939 mobo but the amd x2 athlon processors are becoming VERY scarce, so I was considering buying an opteron but I am not familiar with the performance of these processors. Would the opteron would still be ok for gaming? Reason I am asking is that recent events may require me to put off building a kick ass gaming rig. I may need to just upgrade what I have for a year or so. Here is what I am lookin at http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16819103582

Any advice on the latest (and probably last) generation of agp cards would also be appreciated (preferably any that best buy carry, the girlfriend is thinking about getting me a vid card for dad's day ).

Also, just to be sure, do you think I would see a real world performance increase over my existing processor?

AMD64 3200+ Winchester (90 nm)
MSI K8Nneo2 Platinum
1GB Kingston Value Ram PC3200 (2x512)
1GB Kingston Hyperx PC3200 (2x512)
2x WD 80 GB 7200 RPM (IDE) (Not raided)
WD 36 GB Raptor 10000 RPM (SATA)
2x Maxtor 320 GB SATA2
Maxtor onetouch2 200GB External HDD
Maxtor 100GB Basic External HDD
eVGA 6800GT Video
Soundblaster Audigy2 ZS Platinum
Samsung DVD burner
OCZ 520 watt Powerstream +3.3v=28a +5v=30a +12v=33a
NZXT Nemesis Case

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|TG-Irr|Avengingllama

Decrapitaition: The act of having ones head so far up their butt that the end result is the head snapping off and staying there.

Yellow-Asterisk

I run an opteron 165 in my desktop. They game just fine, really no difference. Don't be scared of the fact that they call the opteron a server chip. the main difference is the larger L2 Cache on the optys. as far as performence data is concerned, i only know my Opty 165 performs side by side with the X2 3800(the 2GHz model). others i'm not sure about. but i know the opteron 170 and 165 are very popular among the overclocking community. i personally have gained 400 mhz on my 165. (although i did not keep it there because i had no reason to)

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http://lavos.ytmnd.com/

"The electric Yellow's got me by the brain banana!"

Acreo Aeneas

The Opterons were designed for server applications (namely being used in high volume datacenters), so yeah, they are more than suited for gaming applications.

As far as performance over your existing one, it would depend on the cache size and speed of the Opty you choose. And also how much of the CPU is utilized per game.

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Anospa

That link didn't work for me, but I'm guessing its an Opty 165. If so, do it!! I've always ridiculous clocks you can push out of these. They're stock at 1.8, but have regularly read about people pushing up past 2.5 GHz. You may have different results with a different motherboard and RAM, but probably still be able to clock it higher than 1.8 safely. If you want more info, check out www.diy-street.com and look at the overclocking database for 165s, quite a few entries in there.

Or, if you're not a fan of overclocking, search around for a s939 chip, they're still floating out there and generally can be had for quite cheap compared to "newer," CPUs.

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avenging llama

The only 939 chips I can find on newegg are the optys and the 4200 x2 I wanted a bit more speed than that.

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|TG-Irr|Avengingllama

Decrapitaition: The act of having ones head so far up their butt that the end result is the head snapping off and staying there.

Anospa

Well, newegg is always the first place I look, but check out some more sites, and even possibly look at eBay, just be careful on eBay and make sure you're buying from someone trustworthy to not get a bad chip.

Zipzoomfly.com, tigerdirect.com, and many others are good sites to check out. A small site I've heard good stuff about: www.tankguys.com

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