• Some users have recently had their accounts hijacked. It seems that the now defunct EVGA forums might have compromised your password there and seems many are using the same PW here. We would suggest you UPDATE YOUR PASSWORD and TURN ON 2FA for your account here to further secure it. None of the compromised accounts had 2FA turned on.
    Once you have enabled 2FA, your account will be updated soon to show a badge, letting other members know that you use 2FA to protect your account. This should be beneficial for everyone that uses FSFT.

Intel E2160 vs Opteron 175

ShepsCrook

ShepsCrook

[H]F Junkie
2FA
Joined
Feb 16, 2003
Messages
9,541
Basically the deal is, I have an Opteron 175 Dual core in my media center, and I'm working out a deal where I am getting an E2160.

How do they compare? What's better? The board I'll be using for the E2160 will probably be the an EVGA 680i
 
Do you already have that 680i board? If not, I'd suggest avoiding it. If you need SLI, get the 750i SLI FTW would be a MUCH better choice.

At stock speeds, the two CPUs are probably similar (1.8 vs 2.2), but once OC'd, the E2160 would outperform the Opty175.
 
enginurd said:
Do you already have that 680i board? If not, I'd suggest avoiding it. If you need SLI, get the 750i SLI FTW would be a MUCH better choice.

At stock speeds, the two CPUs are probably similar (1.8 vs 2.2), but once OC'd, the E2160 would outperform the Opty175.
Click to expand...

Yep, the E2160 would eat the Opty alive when overclocked.
 
lamboman said:
Yep, the E2160 would eat the Opty alive when overclocked.
Click to expand...

yeap,
Also are you going to use sli? You really should not use sli unless you have a quad core anyway? If you don't already have the board I would just get a cheap p43,p45,or p35 board.
 
Ok, just to let everyone know, Non SLi so the board is fine.

The board is part of a trade with the processor so it being a 680i is fine. It's going to be used for my Media Center PC.
 
i dont think theres much of a difference between the 2 that you will feel a difference stock or both overclocked. the opty should hit 2.6 2.7 fine the intel should do 3ghz ez. but you probably wont feel it. just my opinion thats all.
 
If you're going to be playing HD content, an overclocked E2160 would be much, much faster than the Opteron. For SD content it doesn't really make a difference, but for HD and if you intend to possibly do some video encoding or recording, you'll see a big improvement with the Intel chip.
 
Zero82z said:
If you're going to be playing HD content, an overclocked E2160 would be much, much faster than the Opteron. For SD content it doesn't really make a difference, but for HD and if you intend to possibly do some video encoding or recording, you'll see a big improvement with the Intel chip.
Click to expand...

I don't think so because i just watched a 720p movie on a 1.6ghz sempron with an HD 4850 and it played fine, so idk about that.
 
hstuehmeyer2000 said:
I don't think so because i just watched a 720p movie on a 1.6ghz sempron with an HD 4850 and it played fine, so idk about that.
Click to expand...

Thats because your Sempron did nothing while the HD4850 did all the decoding. Remove the HD4850 and put in an older card without ATI AVIVO and see how that Sempron does. :p
 
hstuehmeyer2000 said:
I don't think so because i just watched a 720p movie on a 1.6ghz sempron with an HD 4850 and it played fine, so idk about that.
Click to expand...

That could be video card acceleration at play. I've seen faster CPUs than that Sempron struggle at playing 720p and 1080p video.

Edit:
enginurd said:
Thats because your Sempron did nothing while the HD4850 did all the decoding. Remove the HD4850 and put in an older card without ATI AVIVO and see how that Sempron does. :p
Click to expand...

Yes, exactly :).
 
Zero82z said:
That could be video card acceleration at play. I've seen faster CPUs than that Sempron struggle at playing 720p and 1080p video.
Click to expand...

Indeed, an E6300 at stock speeds struggles with high bitrate 1080p. I know because I had one for my HTPC, lol.
 
Agreed, take the opportunity to go Intel.
There is no meaningful CPU upgrade path from the Opteron whereas there is a world of powerful, well priced and very overclockable options if you go Intel
 
Yeah, I was aiming for the intel because I believe it runs cooler overall than the opteron. Don't get me wrong, the Opteron 175 is a beast, but I wanted the ability to move to something a bit newer. And the nice thing is, if I go with the 2160 for now, my main machine has an E6300 which if I ever upgrade would go down to the media center and replace the 2160.
 
I have a socket A 3000+ with an old ati aiw 8500 in my media pc and it plays HD content smoothly. The 2400+ struggled with it. so ide say your opty should be fine.
 
I saw a pretty noticable improvement when I went from an Opty 165 @ 2.4 Ghz to a E2180 @ 3.2 Ghz. I had an overclocked 8800 GTS 320MB at the time and swapped the MB/mem and CPU only but everything else was the same and was surprised to see that benchmarks in all games when up 20%-30%. 3dmark06 went from 8000s to 11000s.
 
Hmm... interesting. So I may just overclock the E2160 to bring me up to a nice speed.

Now, should I go with 4GB of ram and do Windows Vista Ultimate 64bit? or just do 3GB of ram and do Windows Vista Ultimate 32bit?

Has anyone tried Media Centers with 64bit?
 
Go for 2x2GB not 2x1GB + 2x512MB.
Populating 4 memory sticks usually comes with a performance penalty (when clocking) and can be unreliable in some motherboards.
Best not take the risk if you dont need to.

Also if you goto Win64 later, you will have 4GB.
 
64-bit Vista is rock solid unlike XP x64, so you won't have any problems running it. You may as well go with it, as it won't cost you anything extra. Also, for a media center PC you should go with Home Premium instead. Premium has all of the media center functionality and costs a lot less, and Ultimate doesn't have any extra features that would help with media.
 
hstuehmeyer2000 said:
I don't think so because i just watched a 720p movie on a 1.6ghz sempron with an HD 4850 and it played fine, so idk about that.
Click to expand...

I agree with what the other ppl say. I had a 3800+ X2 at 2.6GHZ and it struggled with a x1800GTO. When I switched from the X2 to my Core 2 Duo it ripped through them with the same video card.
 
I already have Windows Vista Ultimate. So that's what I'm going to be using.

I have 4x 1GB sticks. So should I go with 64bit?

I'm probably not going to OC all that much since I don't really need to for the media center.
 
Yes, for 4GB of RAM, 64-bit would be best. However, make sure all the other parts in your system have proper drivers beforehand.
 
Yeah, before I install Windows, I download all needed drivers and put them onto a flash drive.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top