Your CPU speed

[Burnout]

Opterons are socket 940, and yes, you can get them in dual-core variations.

 

[Geeky1]

Athlon X2s are socket 939 and so are Opterons.

Unless you get an Athlon X2, then you'd have 2 cores.

*sigh*

It'd be nice if people understood (or at least read) what I said...


This is what I said, for reference:

They most certainly do still make processors for socket 940.

940 is the only current AMD platform that supports more than one socket per board (the A64s and FXs could be set up to support that as well, but AMD has chosen to disable that feature). If you want more than 2 CPU cores, and you want AMD, your only choice is socket 940.

Fact: Opterons are Socket 940, not 939. (with the exception of a handful of Opteron 1xx chips)
Fact: Athlon 64 x2s are Socket 939.
Fact: That A64 X2s are S939 is TOTALLY IRRELEVANT to what I said. Not only because I myself pointed that out, but also because I'm talking about the number of physical CPU SOCKETS on the board.
Fact: I have no personal interest in the Athlon 64 x2 because its only got 2 cores. If I was going to buy a new computer right now it would be a dual, dual-core opteron (that's 4 cores for those of you who've run out of fingers trying to keep track) with 4GB of ECC/REG (required for Opterons, with the exception of an Abit board which never materialized) DDR400 and 2 7800GTXs in SLI.

 

[donbenni]

What would be the benifit of having four cores for a gaming machine? I thought two cores struggled to make the cost worth while.

 

[Geeky1]

What would be the benifit of having four cores for a gaming machine? I thought two cores struggled to make the cost worth while.

At the moment there is no benefit to having more than one cpu core in a gaming machine; none whatsoever.

To take advantage of multiple CPUs (or multi-core CPUs), both the OS and the program in question have to be SMP capable. As of right now, few if any games (none to my knowledge, the venerable Quake III excepted) are capable of using more than one CPU.

However, with dual core CPUs being introduced by both AMD and Intel and being sold in everything from high end gaming machines to Dells, it is only a matter of time before all software that would benefit from more CPU power (which would be most software...) is SMP capable, games included.

Right now, the advantages of SMP are found in video editing, photo editing, CAD, computer animation and intense multitasking. As SMP becomes more common, this will change.

 

[Blackbird.]

The record is 7ghz on liquid nitrogen cooling

WTF? Liquid Nitrogen would freeze it rather then cool it!

 

[Geeky1]

LN2 will cool the cpu down to around -196*C/-320*F. As long as the CPU works at that speed (it's well below its design specifications and sometimes CPUs don't like that), you will indeed be able to clock it much higher than you could at room temperature.

 

[Blackbird.]

What's freezing point? -20C?

 

[Iceman]

It's metal though, what's it going to freeze?