AMD Opteron vs AMD Athlon 64

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Thanks to the recent and impending releases of new performance demanding RPG's, I’ve been looking to finally upgrade my decrepit rig. I've decided to go with AMD again but I’m confused as to what the difference is between the Opteron, seen here
and the Athlon 64, seen here
Can anyone tell me the difference between the two cpus? The only difference i've been able to determine is that the Opteron is better from overclocking(which I don't do).
Thanks!

 

IIRC, Opteron has been designed for servers (thus bigger cache) and Athlon64 for desktops. Not sure, but the latter is supposed to be a bit better, but only by a margin. Just don't take my word on it.

 

The Opteron is a server CPU. Therefore it's much more expensive and will perform exactly the same on a desktop (after a certain point, your desktop PC will simply not take advantage of the extra cache at all). So if it's a home PC you're going for, you definitely don't want the Opteon.

Now the question becomes: do you want the Ahtlon 64 or the X2?

 

Or just wait for quads and octagons?

Which is pretty probable, since PS3's cell-processor has some 8 cores, so of course the CPU developers want to follow their lead.

 

You're going to want the X2 if you can afford it. It is by far a better processor.

 

Ah, thanks all for the replies. I was looking into the X2 but, at the moment, its just too blasted rich for my blood. Luckily all the processors use socket 939 so i can buy the athlon 64 now and, maybe in a year or two when the price drops, pick up the X2 without any compatibility problems.
As it stands, I still favor my old socket A!

 

The humanity... they really need to stop doing that to me. Is Intel any better at sticking to the same socket for a decent amount of time?

 

I'll have to disagree with Rastor about the X2 here. While it certainly is a better processor, that doesn't mean (again) that you will be taking advantage of what's better about it. Sure the highest end X2 are faster than the highest end 64, but both are very overpriced anyway, and represent a modest (very modest) speed increase over mid-range CPUs, so there's no reason to be going that high in either case.

Depending on what your "decrepit gig" is, you may wish to wait a bit before buying a new one. In fact if it's an Athlon XP I'd suggest not buying a new system at all, as you'll probably get away with just changing the graphic card if it's quite old. New games are all about graphics now, and the requirement for CPU power really doesn't seem to go up at the same pace.

As for sockets, Intel are indeed even worse than AMD at maintaining the same socket design for a good deal of time. Just compare how many socket designs Intel went through while AMD stuck to socket A.

Even though socket 939 may be obsolete in a couple of years, you should still be able to find some CPUs lying around then (socket A's been obsolete for more than a year and you can still buy both motherboards and CPUs). However, considering the X2 is just not good value for money (definitely not now or in the next few months) you might just want to stick to a good, fast Athlon 64. Unless the price difference with the X2 dropped since last time I checked (which was a while back).

 

Plus, later on you can upgrade to X2 for dirt cheap.

 

I didn't see a direct answer to your question Celesialraven, so here it is.

Both CPUs are clocked at 2.2GHZ and have 1MD Cache. The Athlon 64 3700+ San Deigo CPU has more FSB and the Operton is a 940 socket, and that allow the Operton 148 to be setup with another Operton on a 940 board.

As many other have posted the x2 are your better bet if you have the extra cash or can wait till June.

If you want to wait till June you could purchase the new 940 chipset AMD 64 processor.

I have seen charts comparing the new 940 processors to their 939 counterpart and for the extra $50-100 the gains on the CPU as far as I am concern is not worth the extra cost.

As for the AMD 3700+, buy it. I love it and I run it overclocked at 2.8GHZ and my system runs cooler than my cousin P4 Extreme PC and it also runs most applications as fast as his system and runs games with a mucher higher frame rate. The difference betwen my CPU and his is about $600.