Pentium D vs Athlon X2

[Nitestick]

the stepping defines the core revision. in the case of the "manchester" range i.e. 3800, 4200 and 4600+ it actually comes as a toledo and a true manchester core. the toledo version (E6 or CD) are toledo cores (4400+ and 4800+) that were found to have some faulty L2 cache so half the cache is locked effectively making it a standard manchester core. the toledo revision has something like 230 million transistors with roughly a quarter of those being locked and the E4 (true manchester) has roughly 180 million transistors all of which are functional. in my opinion the E6 stepped 3800+'s overclock better because they should have been binned to at least 2.2ghz which is the lowest clocked toledo core but were found to have defective L2 cache and were locked to 2.0ghz. i have an E6 stepping.

edit: i love asus products as well.....except for their s939 boards. most problems i've helped people with come down to BIOS issues or D.O.A boards. apparently there are some serious bugs in the s939 boards but i can't really tell you from an engineering perspective more just observation. the way i see it DFI boards are better anyway . DFI have high quality caps as well as other great power/stability features. although i think the Asus boards actually have a higher range of selectable vcore, using DFI's "above cpu VID" feature you can get almost any voltage. i don't think Asus has as many memory voltage settings as DFI

 

[Tyler1989]

AMD is moving to 65 Intel is moving to 45.

 

[cdkiller]

I wont mind getting the DFI if i get a sweet deal but i they are quite expensive. however i must say that i like their bundled cables. .
i reckon it would be good to wait till amd uses 65nm. imagine what they will accomplish using 65nm!!! Also i think i might as well invest in the DFI board since i would hate to get a DOA Asus, knowing how lame their support is. same thing i had to do with grafix cards recently. the XFX were banging and cheap but so many bad reviews i went with the BFG for their lifetime warranty and excellent support.

one more thing, i am new to the dfi lineup so i need some clarification. i see they have lanparty, lanparty UT, infinity, and general. could somebody give me a brief on the major differences among them. i am checking them out on the website but learning from the experience of others is priceless.

 

[Nitestick]

you'll be waiting a long time for 65nm cores from AMD. they are expected mid to late 2007 i think.

 

[cdkiller]

you are right, mid 2007 is way too long to wait

 

[gaara]

E4 and E6 etc. stepping numbers aren't the real stepping numbers, they're just the complete change of the fabrication to a new production line. For example, you'll see all Venices as E6 now, which is I believe the same production run for Sandiego and specifically FX cores, rather than E4 which I believe was just an upgrade from the Winchester revision, so in general, all E6 cores should be have overclocking abilities in general than E4 as they were binned somewhat higher

The real stepping you wanna look for is something like LBBLE 0514 TPWM or something similar, specifically you wanna pay attention to the 5 digit letter code and the week it was produced in. Obviously stepping is a gambling game depending on when you buy or where you buy from, but the stepping will generally indicate an approximate overclock. For example, all CC1WE dualie Opterons will generally be able to do 3GHz with the right conditions, specifically those produced in week 50 of 2005 (eg CC1BE 0550 is what it would look like)

You will want the DFI Lanparty series, pretty sure they're all UT but that only means they're UV reactive, and you probably only want the nf4 Ultra-D unless you want SLI or you need more SATA ports etc.

Opterons have all instruction sets of the Athlon64 3Dnow, dunno where you heard otherwise but they're pretty much identical so you have no need to worry

 

[cdkiller]

wow this is whole thing about opterons vs x2 is confusing me a bit. Just for clarification, if the opterons are similar to the X2 then what exactly makes the opteron a server processor and the X2 not? also i am wondering about the opterons requiring registered ram, which is slower than unbuffered ram.

also i checked out the DFI's on the site and i was wondering about the infinity series in comparison to the lan party series.

 

[gaara]

http://techist.com/showthread.php?postid=604150#post604150

Infinity is just a watered down version of the Lanparty I would think...similar to how Asrock is a watered down value branch from Asus. I wouldn't go with anything other than the Ultra-D as it is not particularily expensive and it has all BIOS/overclocking settings you need

 

[NosBoost300]

wow this is whole thing about opterons vs x2 is confusing me a bit. Just for clarification, if the opterons are similar to the X2 then what exactly makes the opteron a server processor and the X2 not? also i am wondering about the opterons requiring registered ram, which is slower than unbuffered ram.

also i checked out the DFI's on the site and i was wondering about the infinity series in comparison to the lan party series.

i think only the socket 940's use the registered ram... i know nobody here with an opteron is running registered ram.. i have an opteron 148 and i'm using unbuffered ram... the s939 opterons seem very identicle to the athlon 64's