[Hellgy]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ste It's unlikely to do a great deal. Depends where your bottleneck is, but it may get you a few FPS extra. The extra cache is really of benefit when dealing with large quantities of info like media encoding, photoshop work etc.

The additional cache means great deal in gaming, It is a big advantage in favor of the opteron 144, Which is very likely to hit 2.8 GHz BTW.
The E4 memory controller is older then the E6 therefore it's worse...
I have a friend with an 3200 Venice, and it requires some juice for overclock that the opteron is most likely to achieve on stock voltages(2.4 GHz).
Good luck!.

 

[Hellgy]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ste Okay, here are some gaming results: http://www23.tomshardware.com/cpu.ht...2=241&chart=50 If you compare the 3800+ and the 3700+ (extra 200Mhz vs the extra L2 cache) on every gaming benchmark except Doom3 the extra clock speed gave extra gaming performance. The only reason that Doom3 was equal was because the bottleneck is on the GFX in this game at these resolutions, so the CPU speed doesn't matter a great deal. I do agree that the Opteron is almost certainly the better overclocker, but the 3200+ is the better CPU at stock

3200 Venice is definitely his premier choice if he has no intention to overclock...
It is very cheap and has the E6 memory controller which means a great deal,
supports all the newest instructions, Also overclocks pretty nicely, tho no match for the Opty 144 in this field...
As i wrote previously the 144 can be easily pushed up to 2.4 GHz without
raising the voltages(Unless it's the crappy CABGE)...
The Venice will require 1.5-1.6 volts to run prime stable at those clocks.
They both can hit 3Ghz the only difference is that it's much more easy to achieve with the Opty, and you will most likely won't need to raise the voltage much beyond 1.6V, while the 3200 may require more then 1.7V, which is only possible on water cooling or phase change, without endangering the CPU.