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Re: Opteron or Athlon 64 FX?



On Fri, Sep 01, 2006 at 10:11:52PM -0500, Marc D.M. wrote:
> On Fri, 2006-09-01 at 20:44 -0400, dtutty@porchlight.ca wrote:
> > On Fri, Sep 01, 2006 at 06:58:10PM -0500, Marc D.M. wrote:
> > > On Fri, 2006-09-01 at 18:19 -0400, dtutty@porchlight.ca wrote:
> > > > 	scan, retouch, and store pictures from a digital camera
> > > > 	watch DVDs on my big drafting monitor
> > > > 	transfer my old VHS tapes to DVD and edit out commercials.
> > > > 		(dream-on) filter out the snow since some where recorded
> > > > 		off-air (antenna).
> > > > 
> > > 
> > > I've been using opterons in servers for a little over a year now. (3
> > > servers) running Sarge AMD64. They all use ECC RAM and they run
> > > beautifully. I even have frequency scaling on them to save electricity
> > > when the load is low.
> > > 
> > > I can't comment on the AMD64 FX because I have no experience with it,
> > > but I can tell you that we're running regular AMD64 processors (Athlon
> > > 3200+ and sempron 2600+) with both 32bit Debian and Ubuntu with no
> > > problems.
> > > 
> > > And on my laptop, equipped with an AMD Turion64 MT-30 processor, I
> > > dual-boot between (Ubuntu) Dapper 32bit and Sarge 64bit.
> > 
> > Can you comment on anything you run on both the opterons and the AMD64,
> > how the performance differes in a real-world sense?  If you were
> > building a combined server/workstation or straight workstaiton would you
> > choose the opteron or the AMD64?
> 
> It's difficult to comment on opteron vs athlon64 because we use them for
> very different purposes. 
> 
> I'm about to build a new workstation to do audio and video editing as
> well as some animation. This is production type stuff, so we're talking
> high quality. I plan to use a Tyan or Iwill Motherboard that supports a
> single dual core opteron (AM2 I think). And I'm gonna put a single
> dual-core opteron on it. 
> 
> This I'm planning to do maybe closer to Christmas or after, when the
> prices come down. 
> 
> I'm going with an opteron over athlon64 because the opteron processor
> has more features and runs at a lower temp/power-usage for the same or
> better performance. They really sip the power. It's why they're so
> popular in blades. (Opteron vs Xeon-M and Pentium-M)
> 
> Or what you could do, is get the cheaper one now, and then next year,
> upgrade your worksatation and server by moving over the current board
> and cpu to the server and get yourself an opteron (dual core)
> workstation. 
> 
>
My budget isn't big enough to buy two computers.  In fact, the only
justification for doing the video VHS->DVD transfer is if it cheaper to
get a more power computer to do it (compared to whatever it takes to run
Java and Flash in Mozilla) than to just by a DVD recorder to do the
transfer.  Is this valid, or would the DVD recorder be cheaper?

Would you agree with my thinking that any current processor will allow
me to comfortably browse Java-rich web pages with flash?  I need flash
for mundane things like some product catalogs on certain websites.
Since I can edit photos on my 486 (slowly), I'm also assuming that any
current processor will do that comfortably.

Thanks,

Doug.



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