Athlon64 board with ECC support?

[Freddie Cash]

On June 14, 2005 09:10 am, Oliver Fromme wrote:
> David O'Brien <obrien at freebsd.org> wrote:
>  > There is no difference between Athlon64 and Opteron with respect to
>  > heat, noise and power consumption.  There is yes a price difference.

> That's interesting.  I've seen several Athlon64 and Opteron
> systems, and it was my impression that the latter were all
> noisier and ran "hotter".  But my impression could be wrong.

All Athlon64 systems are single-CPU setups.  They're also usually in large 
tower cases with large (quiet) fans, and tonnes of heatsinks.  Athlon64 
CPUs also support various throttling and power save modes that further 
reduce the noise / heat.

While it is possible to have single-CPU Opteron systems, most are dual-CPU 
or quad-CPU.  Hence, double or quadruple the heat/noise of a single-CPU 
system.  These are also usually server systems with SCSI or SATA drives 
that are a lot louder than the consumer PATA/SATA drives.  Add in that 
most server are in rackmount cases where you can't put large, quiet fans, 
and you get some noisy systems.

The CPUs themselves are virtually identical for heat/power/noise.  It's the 
rest of the system you have to look at.  :)

> It's also interesting to note that there are now plenty of
> Athlon64-based notebooks, but I haven't seen any Opteron
> notebook so far, which lead me to believe that the Athlon64
> has some power-saving features which the Opteron lacks.
> Does the Opteron have "PowerNow" or "Cool'n'Quiet"?

The latest Opterons do, not sure about older Opterons.  But, Opterons are 
designed for multi-CPU setups.  Why would you want to run one in a laptop?

-- 
Freddie Cash
fcash at ocis.net