Re: Opteron Vs. Athlon X2

Thanks Peter, Bryan, and Bill for your thoughts.

I would like to keep to a budget of about USD $600-700 for a CPU 
upgrade. I want to both develop and use open source software, which 
means a lot of code-compile-test cycles. I want the compiles to finish 
quickly. For example, PHP 6.0 (from snaps.php.net) takes about 4-5 
minutes to compile on my single core Athlon 64 3500+, and I'd like to 
cut the compile time in half. I also want to do web development with PHP 
and databases. I want to be able to keep up with the current  CPUs and 
get exposure to them.

With these goals in mind what hardware will give me what I want and fit 
inside that $700? What do you think will work for me? I want to make use 
of my existing power supply, memory, and drives as much as possible. If 
I have to replace my motherboard, I'll consider it.

So -- and I say this with humor! -- what can I ask my wife to give me 
for Christmas without generating heavy expense but still be good enough 
for me, a computer programmer who does a lot of development?

Thanks

Bob Cochran


Peter Arremann wrote:

>On Monday 05 December 2005 22:42, Bryan J. Smith wrote:
>  
>
>>FYI, the new dual-core Opteron 165 and 175 are Socket-939.  They use
>>unregistered DDR SDRAM, just like any other Socket-939 processor.
>>    
>>
>Please read the whole email before posting FYIs like that... I'm well aware of 
>the opteron 1xx for the socket 939 as you see below. 
>
>  
>
>>>Not really that much. In fact, because of the slower memory timing of
>>>socker 940 opterons (registered memory adds latency) the performance
>>>improvements from the larger cache are mostly negated according to our
>>>tests.
>>>      
>>>
>>Agreed, but if you're going with a Socket-939 Opteron 1xx, then that's
>>not an issue.
>>
>>    
>>
>>>No - Socket 940 (most opterons) and 939 (some 1xx opterons and Athlon64)
>>>are not compatible. The 939 1xx opterons that are out now are nothing
>>>more than a relabeled Athlon64 X2 anyway.
>>>      
>>>
>>Huh?  Not exactly true, especially since some are E5 and others are E6.
>>And there _are_ the thermal differences.
>>    
>>
>They come off the same production line and the difference is the cpu 
>identifier used when finalizing the packaging after the cpus have been 
>binned. Thermal envelopes are determined by measuring the quality of the die 
>and are therefore easily explained with more stringent requirements when 
>selecting the die used. That is the same concept AMD uses for their HE 
>models. 
> 
>
>  
>
>>>On the other side, if you go for dual 2xx opterons and you pay extra for
>>>a good board, you get a huge improvement on IO. Multiple PCI-X busses and
>>>the like are nice to have on most servers but for a developers
>>>workstation it doesn't really matter.
>>>      
>>>
>>As long as you don't need more than 100MBps in disk and network.
>>Otherwise, PCI-X is still much better because most desktop mainboards
>>only ship with PCIe x1 channels outside of video.
>>    
>>
>Why "in disk and network" ? We're talking workstation here, so its to assume 
>that onboard controllers (pata or sata) are being used. In that case, the 
>choice is pretty much down to Via and NVidia - both of which I thought bypass 
>the pci bottleneck in their chipset designs? 
>
>Peter.
>
>  
>