Dual Opteron vs Athlon 64 3400 or FX-51 1

[dukbtr]

I'm planning on building a new computer in the next few weeks. I've always used AMD but this time I'm not sure which way to go. My time is probably spent like this:
30% Gaming
40% Photoshop/Illustrator
25% Internet
5% Office

I was Leaning towards a dual proc Opteron with MSI MOBO. I just want to make sure that my games will play and play well. I plan on buying an ATI 9800. Do the Opterons communicate well with the AGP slot and would I get the same performance from dual Opterons as one FX-51.

Any Help would be Great.

 

[nlm9802]

asus p4c800-e dlx 175$
p4 3.0e (prescott) 220$
2 512 Corsair XMS pc3200-4000 225$
ATI Radeon 9800 pro 128 or 256 225-325$

the internet and office times are irrelevant, you won't see any difference between an athlon xp 2500 and a p4 3.4 ee

for gaming the processors you are comparing are roughly 2x more expensive than intels p4 3.0e, and the p4e has 1MB onboard l2
and photoshop depends more on the agp card, with a 9800 pro I don't foresee any problems in the near future..

not sure on how well the opterons vs fx51 compare, aside from pricing.. at 720$ for an FX, or 169-989$ for a single opteron I don't see how you wouldnt go intel, unless you have $$ to burn.

 

[dukbtr]

Thank you, but I'm in no way interested in Intel. I have always used AMD and I'm looking forward to 64 Bit Processing. I was looking at Alienware and to build an FX-51 Computer with the works is over $3,000. I'm not that rich.

 

[jsauce]

The difference between the Opteron and Athlon 64 are in what they are meant to be used for. Opterons are meant to be used in servers and workstations where as the Athlon 64s are meant to be used in desktops. The Athlon offers up to one Hyper Transport link of 6.4GB of I/O bandwidth while the Opteron offers up to three. The Opteron is also designed to run a max FSB of 800mhz where as the Athlon 64's run a max of 1600Mhz FSB. Opterons have an L1 cache of 64KB, the Athlons have 128KB of L1 cache. In any case the 2ghz Athlon 64's outperform the Intels at 3ghz easily. You know if you buy the standard Athlon 64 version instead of the FX you can save a lot of money and they only slightly underperform the FX. Right now I cannot see anyone buying the FX because the cost is simply too high but if its worth it to you, then its still the best processor out there.

John D. Saucier
jsauce@magicguild.com
Certified Technician
Network Administrator