my new opteron 165

[simple_inhibition]

well ive told some of you that i got a new opteron 165 on friday. well from what i can say im impressed and at the same time disappointed.

first we'll start with the good:


one would assume that with 2 cpu's on one chip it would run hotter. well to my surprise it runs at roughly the same temps as my 3700 did. it idles around 30c and loads at around 40c and that's overclocked to 2.6ghz. also overclocking was ridiculously easy until the 2.6ghz mark. no vcore adjustments were needed until 2.6ghz and even then it was to 1.43v (motherboard under volts a little bit. actual bios setting is 1.45v, but the bios readout is 1.43) in fact i went all the way to 2.52ghz on stock voltage!

now for the disappointment:

first off. the maximum multiplier is only 9 on the opteron 165 meaning your going to need a motherboard that can handle HTT speeds in excess of 300mhz. i also received a particularly poor stepping for an Opteron. if you check out the XS forums they have an extensive stepping list going on over there. unfortunately i got a CCBWE 0551 WPMW which is considered a poor stepping. and i would have to agree from an opteron standpoint. however for any cpu in general an 800 mhz is a nice increase, but thats rather low for these chips. for me to get to 2.7ghz it requires in the neighborhood of 1.5volts! which is a drastic jump for only 100mhz. and even to hit 2.8ghz it required 1.55v and i would assume it would need around 1.6v for complete stability. to me the increases stress on all the system components isnt worth the measly increases in speed.

all in all however I'm still happy with this chip. i was hoping for one of the 3ghz on stock voltage monsters, but unfortunately i didn't receive it. (i have no luck what so ever :P ) but i said to myself i would be content with 2.6ghz with less than 1.5v and this chip accomplished that. i cant really complain though for FX60 speeds at less than half the cost of FX60 :)

if your in the market for dual core i highly recommend the 939 dual core opteron series if your an overclocker. these things are an overclockers wet dream

[Tyreal]

Nice "Quasi" review Simple! :D
Even though you got a bad stepping, your overclocking is still pretty nice. You gained 1 GHZ! Thats still good in my books.

By the way. Your closing sentence made me wet myself laughing. :D

[Hitman]

All on the stock HSF?

[polobunny]

Originally Posted by Tyreal

By the way. Your closing sentence made me wet myself laughing. :D

Hence the wet dream.
Oh, that's not what he mean... :P

Sorry to hear you got a bad stepping, I never get the good ones either. Next time I try to ask my supplier if he can chech it before sending the goods to me. =D

[Capper]

what do I have to do to get people to quit cursing on the boards?

[Capper]

TankGuys.com is a great place for people that care about steppings, he always lists his stepping and will go out of his way to please.

[fps justin]

why not feed it 1.5v to see how high you can get it?

CCBWE = cold loving cpu..put it under some cold and you have a low voltage 3.2+ghz cpu

Originally Posted by fps justin

why not feed it 1.5v to see how high you can get it?

on the ccbwe chip's you wont see much if any gain from more voltage. just a lot of heat.

[simple_inhibition]

oops, forgot to tell you all that i use a thermalright XP90 with a medium speed panaflow for cooling.

thanks capper for the tankguys site. i will definitely go check it out :)

yeah i put 1.5v into it and the temps jumped up quite considerably and it wasnt even all to stable/ it would pass superpi, but not prime.

so the CCBWE chips like cold? looks like ill have to start saving some money for one of those extreme cooling setups. what would you guys suggest?