[geeks] fastest AMD socket 939 and 940 processors

[Joshua Boyd]

On Mar 12, 2009, at 6:20 PM, Shannon Hendrix wrote:

> On Mar 12, 2009, at 09:20 , Lionel Peterson wrote:
>
>>   Mar 11, 2009 08:37:02 PM, geeks at sunhelp.org wrote:
>>> I have been thinking of building a new Wintendo, but there are so
>>> many choices now, all far faster than what I have, I've not really
>>> gotten a handle on it yet.
>>   The Intel choices are so fast & cheap, it's hard to go wrong.  
>> You can
>>   get a very decent Intel Core 2 Duo CPU w/stock cooler for well  
>> under
>>   $100 ($80?), quad Core 2 Duos are well under $200 ($180?), and very
>>   respectable Intel MBs for just under $100 with very, very, capable
>>   integrated video, some with DVI or HDMI outputs.
>
> I have not been impressed with Core 2 as an Opteron upgrade.  I  
> tried a couple of Core 2 systems that on paper should blow my  
> Opteron away, but they didn't.
>
> Since this *IS* a Wintendo, I tested with some games, and was  
> disappointed in the Intel machines.  In some cases, things ran  
> slower.  I was told at the time it was because AMD's central bus  
> was still a lot better, and DDR2 really wasn't much better than the  
> Opteron's memory system.

To be a bit pedantic, DDR2 is neither the Opterons nor the C2Ds  
memory system.  The opteron uses a memory controller built into the  
Opteron, while the C2D uses  a memory controller on the Northbridge  
chip.   Either the opteron or the C2D northbridge can potentially  
talk either DDR, DDR2, or DDR3.  A socket 939 or 940 talks DDR, while  
most C2Ds are DDR2, there are also Opterons that talk DDR2 and I  
believe both Opterons and C2Ds that talk DDR3.

BTW, one of the changes to the Core i7 is to move the memory  
controller onto the chip.  They also switch from an old fashioned  
front side bus to Quickpath, but I don't know if Quickpath really is  
a benefit over a hypothetical FSB for a single socket system.  For  
multi-socket systems Quickpath should be a nice improvement.

> Of course, that was 6 months ago, and I didn't really have time to  
> investigate very much, so I just punted and decided to wait.  I  
> might have chosen a bad system to demo on, I don't really know.   
> The specs looked good at the time.

You don't say enough to comment on.  I've used Opterons that were  
slower than C2Ds and Opterons that were faster.