I currently have a Athlon64 3000+ (stock 1800 MHz, overclocked to 2430 Mhz) and I'm looking for some extra punch. Both my motherboard and my aftermarket cooler state they support the Opterons, so this would seem a likely upgrade for me - I'm not looking to buy a new motherboard, as it would also mean upgrading my X1950 Pro AGP.

I had a hard time finding benchmarks with both these processors and I was hoping someone here could tell me if it would be worth it to upgrade. Most of the time the CPU seems to be the bottleneck in my system.

EDIT: I have an S939 motherboard.

You'd get 2 MB cache (which won't make that difference, but the fact it's a dual core and even the crappiest stepping will do 2.6 GHz plus, and the extra core, means it will be an upgrade.

What mobo do you have? You'll need a decent mobo capable of a fairly high FSB to get the most out of that 10x multiplier.

It's an abit AV8-3RD EYE, currently at 270MHz FSB.

So the 3000+ is now running at 9 x 270 instead of 9 x 200. I haven't even tried to go any higher.

Where do you plan on aquiring one from?

That mobo should be fine for it then - one of the "problems" with the 165 was that you needed a 300+ FSB board (which is nothing amazing, but not every board can) to hit the 3 GHz people were expecting. Your board should be capable of juicing everything out of the CPU.

If you don't mind me asking, how much are you paying? In the UK the 170 is £88, but i could get a Core 2 Duo (albeit an E2160, but good for 3 GHz+), a C2D overclocking mobo (Asus P5K) and 2 GB RAM (Overclocking Ballistix stuff) for roughly £220, and then by selling the old CPU (AMD 3700) Mobo (Asus A8N-SLi, similar value to yours) and RAM (1 GB Overclocking stuff) i'd get about £110, meaning in total i'd end up with a Core 2 Duo system for £110, which to me seems a lot better value than the Opteron.

Of course, you A. Need to have £220 handy to buy the stuff in the first place unless you want your PC down for over a week while the stuff goes on eBay and B. Have to re-install windows.

This thread might be useful fo ... ) and what they will hit.

Quote from Batterypark :

It's an abit AV8-3RD EYE, currently at 270MHz FSB.

So the 3000+ is now running at 9 x 270 instead of 9 x 200. I haven't even tried to go any higher.

I take it that is the Venice core? I got my 3000+ to 2.5ghz (278 * 9) and
ran it there for over a year with no problems That was on a Gigabyte
K8NF-9 motherboard.

Quote from ctkza :

I take it that is the Venice core? I got my 3000+ to 2.5ghz (278 * 9) and
ran it there for over a year with no problems That was on a Gigabyte
K8NF-9 motherboard.

Yeah, Venice indeed, with a AC Freezer64 on top. I've ran this for at least a couple of years at the aforementioned speed. Maybe I should try to squeeze some more out of it...

Provided you dont go crazy with the vCore the worse you'll get is instability which you can detect with Prime95, i've "seen" 2.8 GHz with that chip, but EVERY chip has a different limit. Still worth a try though!