Hi! I'll get some money to spend and i want to build a strong computer. I'm interested on 64 dual core and athlon fx-60. But as fx was originally an opteron, i wonder if it's a good idea to buy some dual core one. That's why i request your knowledge.

The only major difference between the FX and the Opteron processors is the extra pin (939 vs 940)... and that extra pin adds a few things, most notably ECC Ram.

Stability is going to be the name of the game with an Opteron, requiring the ECC RAM, since the Opteron is a Server class Processor. If that is going to be a requirement for your workstation: by all means... head that route. Keep in mind that RAM prices are going to be a little more expensive than non-ECC RAM, so that will need to be a factor in the purchase.

Other than that, the internal core archetecture is the same... an FX chip will perform the same as an equally clocked opteron.

Hope that helps!

Thanks. So opteron only works with ECC ram?

Correct. Obviously, this may sway your decision. ECC Ram is not terribly cheap, but it does what it is supposed to do, and that is to keep a server running.

And about ECC ram: if i remember right this ram got registers and error control, but is it slower than non-ECC? What is exactly the advantage of ECC?

Let me backtrack a little bit....

I've been talking about Opteron on the 940 pin... any socket with 940 pin requires ECC RAM, as we have discussed. ECC Ram does in fact have a *slight* performance hit (note slight is not noticable). ECC Ram has an additional memory chip for redundancy.... similar to RAID 5. In the event of memory corruption, there exists a parity bit across the stick to help recover in the event of something happening.

However, just so we're on the same page..... Opterons also come in the Socket 939 form, and those processors do not in fact require ECC RAM. They can use your standard DDR speeds.

However, your original point of the FX series and the Opteron chips being identical are right... it's a name once you get that high. The real difference comes with the 940 form factor.

Thank you.

The cost of ECC memory is only about 10 US dollars more than non-ECC memory. The 939 socket processors can handle ECC memory, but the BIOS does not have any option to tell the processor to activate ECC in its memory controller. Newer 939 socket motherboards are now including ECC. I recommend buying ECC memory rather buying non-ECC memory because you can enable ECC for work and disable it for games. When using multi-core processors, ECC memory definately need to be used and enabled in the BIOS.

ECC and parity or registered is what servers use. This gives two (or was it four) fold of the possibility of the system to be reliable and stable.

I have ECC RAMBUS memory in my Pentium 4 to make it more reliable. I see no noticable performance penalty when using it over non-ECC memory. I want ECC memory for my Athlon (slot A).

The extra pin on 940 socket is interconnecting other processors together. I think it is the sync pin. It has nothing to do with ECC. If the desktop socket of Athlon64 processors did not have ECC support, it will actually be 924 socket instead of 939. The datasheets shows that the 939 sockets can support ECC memory.