Cheap S939 upgrade - Manchester or Opty 146/San Diego ?

[RPGWiZaRD]

I've come to a point where I just want to ditch my current old San Diego 3700+ from July 2005. It's one of the worst steppings ever CABHE 0520 VPAW. It does only ~2.4GHz with stock volt, 2.7GHz @ 1.68v 15 - 20 mins prime and maybe needs ~2.6GHz to be somewhat primestable at 1.65v. At 2.7GHz it hits the big wall no matter voltage, and that's the highest I can go for games not to crash (except some rare cases).

Since prices are these low nowadays on S939 cpus I figure I could get by pretty cheap. However what would be a smarter choise in your opinion, buy an used San Diego 3700+/Opty 146 that does ~3GHz stable or wait some days and pick up a X2 3800+ Manchester. I would somewhat benefit by dual core as I often have programs running in background while gaming. Tho I'm unsure how the X2 3800+ compares to a San Diego in games due to the 2x512KB vs 1x1MB cache. I'm planning to upgrade gfx card pretty soon too (probably a DX10 card) and my budget for comp upgrade is very low atm so I don't want to jump on DDR2 bandwagon yet. So which S939 upgrade do you think would benefit me most? I know getting another single core and maybe 300MHz more out of it won't be any dramatic performance increase but it's also important for me to be satisfied with the overclock, just "can't-stand-having-such-a-bad-clocking-sample" when I see some lucky bastards run theirs up to 3.15GHz on air. xD

X2 3800+ 2.7 - 2.9GHz or 3700+/Opty146 @ ~3GHz? What is X2 3800+ @ 2.7GHz equal to compared to single core with 1MB l2 cache?

[sofarfrome]

I would go for the opty. I thought long and hard about dual core before I bought my opty 144 and I kept thinking how p'd I would be if one core was not as strong as the other. Don't know why but that is primarily why I have stayed away for now.

However I will take the chance once once Conroe becomes available.

I hear the stepping of the current optys at Monarch are doing very well on OC.

[Exedy]

i wouldnt be more happy with opt...


I agree with sofarfrome

^^

[GloryField]

get opty, monarch has them cheap I think.

[jkresh]

wait till the end of July for the price drop (and for used x2's that will show up at reasonable prices when people upgrade to conroe/am2).

[simonmaltby]

Opty all the way. Should start to pick them up quite cheaply as Conroe appears :)

[TaPaKaH]

my vote - get Opty165 ...

[RPGWiZaRD]

my vote - get Opty165 ...

Well yea that was what caught my attention for months and then thx to this "ditch 2x1MB l2 cpus" move by AMD ruined my plans. Opteron 165 still costs 299€ and X2 Manchester tray I can get for only 175€ today (and it gets only lower like every day). Opteron 146 I can get for 170€ and Opteron 144 for 130€ and San Diego 3700+ for 125€. To me another San Diego maybe seems most attractive atm unless an X2 3800+ tray in a few weeks prolly costs 130 - 140€. But the performance is questionable...

Why's every1 so positive about Opteron btw, I mean San Diegos today seems to be way better than they were ~1 year ago when the best samples hit 2.9 - 2.95GHz with 1.57 - 1.6v stable on air when they today often seem to hit 3GHz+ even. In fact best San Diego 3700+ I've seen does 3.15GHz 1.57v stable on air... Opterons are quite expensive today imo, not sure if they are worth the cost.

[TaPaKaH]

Opterons are quite expensive today imo, not sure if they are worth the cost.You can always find the good one @ XS for cheap ... just periodically check the ForSale section ;)

[RPGWiZaRD]

You can always find the good one @ XS for cheap ... just periodically check the ForSale section ;)

cheap, dunno about that... :rolleyes:

Some ppl might wanna pay more to be sure they get a good stepping but I'd rather buy from cheap online stores with steppings already tested by users. That way you don't have to pay the premium the sellers on XS.org wants due to the overclockability which often means higher than stock price even, even if they are used.

I just never liked paying more for a chip that has been tested and does well as the seller prolly got it himself for less than it's being sold! :p:

Besides almost all deals there are american, international shipping is usually expensive or cheap but then you have to wait for weeks (Maybe probs with the customs too on top of that). I'd much rather order from within EU.

[Starscream]

i had the same choice.
atm i got a Opty 144 that does 2.7Ghz @ 1.44 volts.
decided to pick up a X2 3800 tomorrow for 169 euro :)

im aware that it will be hard if not impossible to get the X2 running @ 2.7Ghz on air (maybe if i get lucky) but im gonna make that step.

i often have background stuff running when doing SP things and i know id benefit from dual core and alot fo things i do will get speed up (less time) with Dual core.
if the X2 does 2.5Ghz il be a happy man :). Future games will perform better on a Dual Core running at 2.4Ghz then on an Opty doing 2.7Ghz.

and someone posted a link to a short comparison on the influence of cache on games with AMD and the influence was small (in quake 4 the difrence between 1Mb and 512KB cache was like 85fps vs 80fps).
so the influence @ gaming is to small to influence my decision.

[RPGWiZaRD]

i had the same choice.
atm i got a Opty 144 that does 2.7Ghz @ 1.44 volts.
decided to pick up a X2 3800 tomorrow for 169 euro :)

im aware that it will be hard if not impossible to get the X2 running @ 2.7Ghz on air (maybe if i get lucky) but im gonna make that step.

i often have background stuff running when doing SP things and i know id benefit from dual core and alot fo things i do will get speed up (less time) with Dual core.
if the X2 does 2.5Ghz il be a happy man :). Future games will perform better on a Dual Core running at 2.4Ghz then on an Opty doing 2.7Ghz.

and someone posted a link to a short comparison on the influence of cache on games with AMD and the influence was small (in quake 4 the difrence between 1Mb and 512KB cache was like 85fps vs 80fps).
so the influence @ gaming is to small to influence my decision.

Heh, cool I'm not the only one. It heads towards for a X2 3800+ for me now too. 85 vs 80 fps? the tests I saw were like 0.5 - 3 fps difference, guess it depends on game. Also it seems that the X2 3800+ has slightly better latency so it responds better with low latency ram (which my Gold VX are), so difference should be even lower. Where will u pick up urs from? And btw, I hope u're trying to get a Manchester rather than Toledo, what I've seen Manchesters does anything between 2.6 - 2.9GHz with 1.5 - 1.55v on air. Since my San Diego 3700+ is such a poor clocking sample that I have to run 2695MHz (and still far away from perfectly stable :D) I think the swap to a X2 3800+ could be reasonable even if it has 2x512KB cache. And going from same single to same single core cpu is prolly not as exciting as trying out a dual core for the 1st time. arghh... decisions, decisions... :stick:

Personally I won't order one until I get a tray version for sub 150€. :D

[Starscream]

Heh, cool I'm not the only one. It heads towards for a X2 3800+ for me now too. 85 vs 80 fps? the tests I saw were like 0.5 - 3 fps difference, guess it depends on game. Also it seems that the X2 3800+ has slightly better latency so it responds better with low latency ram (which my Gold VX are), so difference should be even lower. Where will u pick up urs from? And btw, I hope u're trying to get a Manchester rather than Toledo, what I've seen Manchesters does anything between 2.6 - 2.9GHz with 1.5 - 1.55v on air. Since my San Diego 3700+ is such a poor clocking sample that I have to run 2695MHz (and still far away from perfectly stable :D) I think the swap to a X2 3800+ could be reasonable even if it has 2x512KB cache. And going from same single to same single core cpu is prolly not as exciting as trying out a dual core for the 1st time. arghh... decisions, decisions... :stick:

Personally I won't order one until I get a tray version for sub 150€. :D

im going to germany tomorrow to do some things and will get it in between things :).
Down side to going from a Single core ot single core is that u atm got a cpu that almost hits 2.7Ghz could be the Single Core u upgrade to will also be a bad one that wont clock wel.

sub 150 euro will take a while.
when i started seeing the x2 drop (from 240 to 169 in like 2 weeks) i always had the feeling that 160-170 will b the point to were it will drop.
150 will be maybe in a week or 2.

btw got a link for me how to spot a Toledo and manchester?
dunno wich part of the stepping says whats the core.

[RPGWiZaRD]

im going to germany tomorrow to do some things and will get it in between things :).
Down side to going from a Single core ot single core is that you atm got a cpu that almost hits 2.7Ghz could be the Single Core u upgrade to will also be a bad one that wont clock wel.

sub 150 euro will take a while.
when i started seeing the x2 drop (from 240 to 169 in like 2 weeks) i always had the feeling that 160-170 will b the point to were it will drop.
150 will be maybe in a week or 2.

btw got a link for me how to spot a Toledo and manchester?
dunno wich part of the stepping says whats the core.

I live in Finland so I always order online from Germany to save pretty much money and I just search around on this site: http://geizhals.net/eu/a166487.html and it usually says if it's a Manchester or not. But honestly I dunno how well Toledos do nowadays as when Manchester came they were superior as Toledos usually were limited to 2.7 - 2.75GHz or so in best case, only in rare cases went above that.

And you're right, if I go to another single core I'm limited to only try and get some very good samples or it will be useless. With Dual Core I can get huge speed increase in future games and overall slight fps boost due to programs running in background while gaming, I RARELY play with as few things running as when benching u know. :p:

Perhaps it also gives me opportunity to do some more multitasking. :toast:

I don't know how long I will wait, prices are already good in Germany but I wonder how it will be after July 24th, as these sites in Germany love to update (read lower) prices like daily so I don't expect a huge sudden pricedrop. :D

btw, aren't Manchesters going to be more common from now on as isn't the Toledo version basicly a 2x1MB l2 limited to 2x512KB chips. If so the Manchesters should be cheaper to produce now when AMD is going to ditch the 2x1MB l2 cache cpus so Toledos will become obsolete. I hope I'm right... It seems like Manchesters are already more common but they are also expensier so far but in some weeks that shouldn't be a prob. :)

I envy you that live so close to Germany, would be good sometimes to go handpick the hardware, write a huge list of every stepping and results you find on the net and take that with you when you go for some hardware-hunting (of course there's other things you can do cheap in Germany but let's not get into that...) :D