Explain the Opteron?

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Eihli

Gawd
Joined
Nov 20, 2003
Messages
610
I heard that these chips were thought to sell bad by AMD, which in return lowered their price drastically where many OC'ers picked them up for the personal PC's and then overclocked them to drastic levels...
Amd had to raise their prices because they were selling too well or something?

This information is obviously bullshit because i was only able to pick up bits and peices here and there, so can someone fill in the gaps and explain what is with the Opteron? and why so many people have a server chip for their pc?
 
AMD always had the Opteron 1xx series CPUs (for single processor systems) as a Socket 940 solution...

this way, anyone wanting to build a workstation or server with only a single CPU could buy a 940 socket system, and get the benefits of a server motherboard.... ECC and registered ram... generally chipsets that support PCIX and other server interconnects...

Anyway, the single socket 940 motherboards were kind of phased out, because AMD realized that if somebody wanted a server they'd just either build a Dual Socket 940 system and only put a single opteron 2xx series (for dual processor systems) and only put a single processor in it (you can run with 1 OR 2), or just build a 939 system, depending on thier needs.

So AMD figures, well, why not just build Socket 939 Opterons... so they did, but they wanted to keep prices competitive, so they kept them low... only difference between most opteron 1xx series 939 and Athlons is that the Opterons have 1MB cache... anotherwords... at the time the cheapest 1MB cache Athlon you could (can) get is an Athlon 64 3700+, 2.2ghz 1MB... with the release of the 144, you could get 1MB cache with 1.8ghz, so naturally it is going to be cheaper...

anyway, as a side effect of all of them having 1MB of cache, AMD was using up some of its better cores... when they first released the Opteron 1xx series for 939, they were using Athlon FX stepped cores on the cheap 144... 146... over at Xtremesystems they realized this... i got lucky and snagged one right at the beginning, as such i have an Opteron 146 (2ghz, 1MB) that will do FX57 speeds on completely stock voltage...

overclockers realize this, and start buying them by the droves... from there its just supply and demand... retailers realize people want them bad, so they raise prices...

it is basically the same thing that has happened to the dual cores... low clocked... 1MB cache... decent OCers...

current Opteron 1xx 939pin chips are just as much a "server" chip as an Athlon...

what makes a PC a server? technically.... it serves....... thats it.... depends a bit more on the PCs role than anything...

a lot of people like to say a computer with SCSI, ECC, multiple CPUs (with Pentium Pro, Xeon... Athlon MP, or Opteron stamped on them) reduntant power, and a full tower case is a server...
 
Great summary ^^^

the opteron is designed to be underclocked to use less voltage so it runs cooler.... rack mounted servers get really hot and have little air circulation so lower voltage is waay better than 100-300 mhz in processor power.... server need lots of RAM and not a ton for CPU power and so the 939 opterons are/were thr FX series athlons undervolted and underclocked... so its not really overclocking it more like stealing the BMW M3 from the soccer mom and taking it for a 100+ MPH joy ride.... the car (CPU) was ment to go that fast and therefore your not even pushing its limits mearly meeting its demands.... :D


i love my opty :D
 
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