dual vs single core opteron 100's

[lars.tunkrans at bredband.net]

> 
> From: Daniel Rock <freebsd at deadcafe.de>

> We are talking about Dual-Core Opteron 1xx. Current Opteron 1xx (beginning 
> with E-Stepping) use Socket 939 - just like Athlon64:
> 
> 	http://www.amdcompare.com/us-en/opteron/
> 	http://www.amdcompare.com/us-en/desktop/
> 
> Athlon64 and current Opteron 1xx are the same. They even share the number of 
> HTT links: 1 (non coherent) - only Socket 940 Opterons provide 3 HTT links.
> 
> Because of the integrated memory controller supporting or not supporting ECC 
> isn't a function of the chipset, but of the CPU itself (and the BIOS 
> initializing ECC right). Every Athlon64 (Socket 754, 939, 940) does support 
> ECC. The only difference is, that Socket 940 requires registered DIMMS while 
> the other ones work with unbuffered DIMMs.
> 
> Conclusion: Apart from different CPUID the following CPUs are *exactly the same*:
> 
> Athlon64 FX-55			Opteron 152
> Athlon64 FX-57			Opteron 154
> Athlon64 X2 4400+		Opteron 175
> Athlon64 X2 4800+		Opteron 180

 O.K.  

  Seems to defeat the purpose ,  If you want to build a reliable 
  Server you want Registred ECC RAM. ( socket 940 ) 
  If you want to build a cheap desktop machine  you want un-registred
  non-ECC RAM. ( socket 939 )   

  Only other reason I can think of to have two brand names for the 
  same product is to sell it at different price levels, but 
  AMD generally seems to have the same price for the same 
  clockrate on these chips.  

  Only application I can think of for using non-reliable servers 
  built with socket 939  is  compute clusters where you have several 
  hundred compute servers, and you are not dependent on whether an
  individual server runs all the time.

  //Lars