[phatosealpha]

Anybody else bought the bullet and gone dual core?  I just upgraded to an opteron 165, got the sucker OCed to 2.5ghz.

It's not the amazing difference in windows I'd expect - and I noticed the SCP absolutely does not like it if you don't set affinity - but after running DVD shrink once, I ain't going back to the old single core.  Way too much improvement.

Dunno what I'm gonna do with my old A64.  Might be willing to sell it if my GF doesn't find someone in need of a cheap system.  Probably can let it go cheap too.

So, anybody else bought the dual core bullet?  what are your impressions?

[CP5670]

I'm not sure whether to get a 146 or 165. At the moment I am leaning a bit towards the 146, which is $100 cheaper and overclocks significantly better, and I upgrade my stuff pretty much every year anyway so future performance is not a great concern. However, UT2007, a game I am really looking forward to, is coming out next year and is supposed to be significantly multithreaded, which is the main reason I am considering the 165. I would get the 165 in a heartbeat if Mathematica was also multithreaded, but only the latest (Windows) version is and I don't want to spend money upgrading to that. I don't really have any other multithreaded programs that I use frequently.

I mainly want a new video card(s) this time around (for which I need a PCIE board, so I figured I might as well get a better CPU to go with it) and could use the extra cash saved by the 146 towards that. Anyway, I won't be getting either for a month, so I have some time to decide.

Are you running into any compatibility issues with older games? I have seen a fair number of complaints with this around various forums and it would definitely factor into my decision.

I wish there was a local store selling these things; I would be willing to pay a bit extra to get a look at the stepping and week before buying. There is one store but they only have 940 opterons at the moment.

[phatosealpha]

so far, sadly, I haven't had much time to do compatibility testing.  been stuck pet sitting at my g/fs, and finally switched over to the legit copy of winXP I've had.  As I noted, the scp hangs unless I set the core affinity to one core, and I imagine any other app that has troubles can be dealt with the same way.  Kind of annoying, and I really, really wish there was some kind of shortcut setting to make the affinity automatically set, but it seems no dice on that one.  At the very least, FEAR and doom 3 work fine.  Should hopefully get around to more testing before too long.

My 165 only hits 2.5 with 1.42-1.47v vcore.  Not a great overclocker, but hardly worth screaming about.  I'm sure you've seen by now, but the 165 may be about to be discontinued.

So far, it's basically an unnoticable upgrade on games, most of which are GPU limited anyway.   If you do anything whatsoever that's CPU limited and multithreaded (like the aforementioned DVDshrink) it's a wonderful upgrade though.

[CP5670]

Yeah, unfortunately all the CPU limited things I have (Mathematica, Dosbox and a few older games) will not benefit from the second core. A lot depends on UT2007's performance as far I am concerned, but that's still a while off, Q3 next year according to the latest reports.

I didn't know the 165s might go out of production, just that they will be in limited supply for a while. I may need to hurry up with my purchase in that case. My current motherboard can't support these new Opterons correctly and the new one I'm planning to get will require a PCIE card, so I won't be able to use it for a while. I'm waiting for the prices on the video cards to stabilize and don't want to buy one just yet.

What I would really like to see is the release of the 146 HE on 939. That model would probably be an awesome overclocker.

[Setekh]

It's not the amazing difference in windows I'd expect - and I noticed the SCP absolutely does not like it if you don't set affinity - but after running DVD shrink once, I ain't going back to the old single core. Way too much improvement.

Serious? What sort of speed improvement are you experiencing?

[MatthewPapa]

My X2 4400+ runs at 2.72 ghz and can compress a dvd to Xvid in as little as an hour.

[phatosealpha]

More or less twice as fast as my old [email protected].  Things are done in about half the time

[Dark RevenantX]

I will take your old processor+mobo if it is better than an Athlon XP 2400+
My upcoming Sapphire X850XT is great, but my processor isn't too great.
Then I can give my old processor to my friend who currently has the worst processor that can run Windows 98.

[MatthewPapa]

My dual core experience has been good so far. I definetely recommend the dual core AMDs over the dual core Intels because they produce much less heat, draw less of a current to start with and therefore overclock better. If you upgrade to dual core though make sure that you are dual channeling your ram to 128 bits. The reason for this being is that the 2 on-die processors have to share the same FSB therefore halving the normal bandwidth (64 bits) that a single one would get. If you do not dual channel your RAM memory bandwidth is limited to 32 bits per processor and they both perform very poorly under these circumstances. I found this out the hard way. Here are some overall improvements I have noticed when I upgraded to a dual core system:

1. Run double the games at once, or download twice the pr0n at once whatever you choose
2. Virus scan while you play Doom3 or freespace
3. Video encoding speeds are much greater (it reduced mine to 1/3 the time that it originally used to take)
4. Multithreaded apps run so efficiently and fast
5. The additional registers present (SSE2, SSE3)

[CP5670]

It's not like anyone would consider an Intel for gaming at this point anyway.

My X2 4400+ runs at 2.72 ghz and can compress a dvd to Xvid in as little as an hour.

I think you got a particularly good one, as 2.5-2.6 is about the average for the dual cores. The 3700s and 146s average around 2.7 and 2.8 respectively. The awesome CABNE 146s that averaged around 3.1 are no longer available, but the CABYEs apparently get close. Maybe I should just pick up one of those.

[eagleclaw]

 yeah i bite the bullet too an got myself  amd64 x2 4200+/ msi motherboard/512 mb/msi geforce 4 ti 4200 which works great. I'm running win 2000, 98se, and me on it.

[Cobra]

****, man, most of the dual cores cost more than the computer itself, or half the cost of the computer itself.

i envy people with jobs.

[Grey Wolf]

No, they don't. You can pull off dual cores from AMD for less than $300.

[Cobra]

meh, that's my experience with overpriced stores. *shrug*

[CP5670]

Well, I'm just going to nab one of the week 40 CABYE 146s off ebay, before the supply runs out. A new BIOS for my motherboard came out on Friday that supports Opterons. I won't be able to get full mileage out of it just yet since this board tops out around 260mhz HT, but I can stick with that until I get a new one. One good side effect about the high demand for the dual cores is that many of the top notch single cores are going for cheap. The best ones, the week 28 CABNEs, are impossible to find now unfortunately.

Or maybe I could try contacting the guy I got my current one from. I got it from one of my dad's colleagues, whose husband is an AMD scientist. It was a very early engineering sample that has been a dog of an overclocker, but it was free so I didn't care.

[phatosealpha]

Well, I've discovered my first compatibility issue.  Kotor2 runs extremely choppy.  This is with the microsoft hotfix and the AMD drivers.  Setting affinity - the normal, albiet annoying - fix for things that those two don't help doesn't work - the screen goes black if you limit it to one core.

Fixed it though.  Apparently it has issues with the 80 series nvidia drivers.  Reverting to 70 series fixed it.  Probably the game's fault - Kotor wasn't exactly known for it's wonderful error free operation.

[Descenterace]

Old spec:
Athlon 64 3500 (Newcastle)
Abit AV8 Mobo
Radeon X800XT AGP

New spec:
Athlon X2 4200
Abit AN8 Ultra Mobo
XFX GeForce 7800 GTX
and one hugely overpowered hybrid air/water cooling system that demanded a Stacker case.

FEAR on the old system: about 20fps at medium detail.
FEAR on the new system: about 40fps at the absolute maximum detail.

Muhahahahahahaa... the CPU runs at 22°C too. I should get a nice steady 50% overclock out of this machine.

Only problem I've hit so far is that Pariah really doesn't like multiple CPUs. It keeps reporting 'negative delta time', which I guess means that some test or another is being split over the two cores and it wasn't expecting true concurrency. Apparently all games based on the Unreal 2 engine have this problem. Ah well, setting affinity solves it.

There's another minor problem, too. My superfast Corsair XMS which I bought a few months ago has suddenly turned out to be faulty. Time to RMA, I think.

[aldo_14]

Git.

[pyro-manic]

Old spec:
Athlon 64 3500 (Newcastle)
Abit AV8 Mobo
Radeon X800XT AGP

FEAR on the old system: about 20fps at medium detail.

Aw, hell. I can't afford to even think about uprgading for at least 18 months. Maybe I should try and find an X800XT bios now that my warranty is up (I got one of the XT Pro VIVOs that were supposed to be easy to unlock to the full XT spec). Either that or sell a kidney or something...

[ZmaN]

this reminds me of what my friend said to me..  he says that EVERY benchmark for processors are wrong, and thinks that AMD is really SLOWER than Intel.  He says they Downclock the intels and overclock the AMDs for their benchmarks..  I tried to correct him, but he doesnt believe me and now hes building a system with a Pentium XE 840 Dual core FOR GAMING!  lol...

as for my dual core, Im going to be getting one in about 6-8 months (i think).  It'll be an Athlon 64X2 3800+, or if i get the money, the AMD Athlon 6 X2 +4200..

cant wait till that happens!