Opteron 150 for gaming. I think I might do it... Advice?

[mono]

So, I'm thiiis close to buying an Opteron 150/Asus SK8V Socket 940 and 1GB (2x512) of Corsair XMS DDR400 Registered ECC RAM. I've already got Raptor 74GB and a WD 250G SATA drives, an Audigy2, and optical drives, an Antec True 550w PSU, and for the moment, a 5900Ultra.

The Opteron 150 is the FX-53. The drawback of this system compared to Socket 939 is that the RAM will run slower than the unregistered RAM you can run on the Socket 939 boards. However, yesterday's benchies seem to show that while 939 has a slight advantage over socket 940, its marginal compared to how well both chips do against the rest of the pack. The dual unregistered RAM doesn't seem to provide a big performance boost.

The Opteron 150 is also $180 bucks cheaper than an FX-53.

This setup would be a SuSE 9.1 (64 bit) /WinXP Pro dual boot, eventually running a 6800U vid card, as linux loves nvidia and is not happy with ATI 3D performance. Overclocking is also not in the cards.

I think this would be a killer rig for the big releases that hopefully hit the streets this year. Anyone have any shouts of warning before I submit to my plastic creditor overlord?

 

[mono]

OK. It was a valiant effort, but you couldn't stop me. I ordered the new kit. Now that the money has been spent, feel free to criticize my purchasing decisions.

 

[Tahir2]

Seems to me you were careful and knowledgable enough to make your own purchasing decision.

Criticise your setup? OK you have too much money.. gimme some! (So I can get a rig similar to yours). 8)

eventually running a 6800U vid card, as linux loves nvidia and is not happy with ATI 3D performance. Overclocking is also not in the cards.

That is not actually true methinks.. Unless you got some comparisons using the latest NV and Linux drivers which I would love to see. But yea the 6800 is a fine card once you get hold of it.

ATi's 64bit drivers are supposedly more stable than NV's too.

 

[mono]

As recently as 2 months ago, I had a 9800XT in my rig. Figured I'd give them another shot in linux. Not only was 3D performance horrendous (and it was enabled, just poor), but ATI's dualhead support was atrocious as well. I don't have any benchies to supply, but if anyone has an ATI card and they'd like to post GLXgears scores, I'd be happy to do likewise with nvidia.

Believe me, I'm not rooting against ATI, I'd happily pick up an X800 series card this generation, but I really have little faith in ATI's linux drivers based on their track record. I plan to play Doom3 under linux, and I seriously doubt ATI's OpenGL perofrmance in linux will be anywhere near up to snuff compared to their Windows performance.

 

[Tahir2]

In all honesty it looks like it will continue that way.. ATi are not focused on Linux at all at this time and may not be for a long while.
Right now they have priortised Windows drivers and Linux is still a niche market.

At the moment they are willing to lose sales to customers like yourself but if Linux begins to make some dent in the desktop market then you can bet ATi will be all over it.

But truth be told we live in a Windows world (as the consumer).

 

[Nite_Hawk]

If you use linux as your criteria, and had to choose now, the 6800 would be a much better choice. Go over to the rage3d forums for more info. ATI has pretty much marginal linux support at this point. They are continually late with their drivers, We've been waiting about 3 months for a promised interview, and the last post by an ATI employee about the linxu drivers was also months ago. The changelog between the most recent driver and the last driver was two lines.

If you want to be optimistic, at least they did release something I suppose. Otoh, I think you'd probably have much better luck with nVidia's linux drivers at this point. It pains me to say it, because I own a 9700pro, and generally perfer ATI to nVidia.

Nite_Hawk

 

[Nite_Hawk]

Tahir:

The sad thing is that if you assume they make a profit of something like $50 per card sold, they'd only need to sell around 1000 additional cards to pay for a full time linux developer. I don't know, maybe they don't make that much profit, and maybe they don't think there are that many people out there that would buy a competators card due to poor linux support. It just seems silly to me that they don't even have one full time person working on it (It could be argued that MTippet is working full time, but given how little changes after 3 months between driver releases, it seems unlikely).

The thing that *really* irks me is that there have been user supplied patches that people have submitted to ATI which would take 5 seconds to merge in and fix problems that have been around for months, and they arn't being included in new releases! People are fscking doing their work for them and they still don't fix it or even mention it!

Nite_Hawk

 

[mono]

Other than a brief trial of the 9800XT, I've been Nvidia for the last 6 years, mostly due to their stellar linux performance. Sure, I've been in Windows a lot lately with Far Cry and lately Thief, but when D3 hits the streets I can slide back into my more comfortable SuSE environs.

Anoother positive aspect of this setup, is that next year, AMD should be releasing dual core Opteron's (2 CPU's on 1 chip) and I 'll be able to slip one into this Socket 940 Asus board. There are other variables though, including how pervasive, and how much of a performance gain PCI Express provides...

 

[mczak]

As recently as 2 months ago, I had a 9800XT in my rig. Figured I'd give them another shot in linux. Not only was 3D performance horrendous (and it was enabled, just poor), but ATI's dualhead support was atrocious as well. I don't have any benchies to supply, but if anyone has an ATI card and they'd like to post GLXgears scores, I'd be happy to do likewise with nvidia.

ATI linux support was not terribly good one year ago, but quite acceptable for that time (since support for linux was new then). But what's disturbing is that it didn't really get better since then. Some drivers were released, people reported pretty much the same problems with every driver set.
But please please please don't use glxgears as a benchmark. The results are just not indicative of game performance (primitive geometry, NO texturing!). It's really too simple. If you want a simple "standardized" test, use QuakeIII, that's at least a decent textured fillrate test nowadays (and chances are there's no app detection in the linux drivers...).

Believe me, I'm not rooting against ATI, I'd happily pick up an X800 series card this generation, but I really have little faith in ATI's linux drivers based on their track record. I plan to play Doom3 under linux, and I seriously doubt ATI's OpenGL perofrmance in linux will be anywhere near up to snuff compared to their Windows performance.

There is of course still hope (remember the rumoured new OGL part of the windows driver? That could probably help the linux driver too, IF it gets ported), but the signs are indeed not good. Not to mention there is no 64-bit linux driver available, and no support for X800 in the current (released a week ago) driver.

There's of course another drawback of registered ram apart from being slightly slower, it's way more expensive. Though cost doesn't seem to be an issue for you .

 

[mono]

You're right, glxgears isn't the best benchmark. However the fact that a high end Radeon produced pathetic numbers spinning untextured 3D gears was telling.

3D support under linux was new for ATI a year ago, not nvidia. 3 years ago, I was running Quake 3 and 2 years ago, Return to Castle Wolfenstein as fast , or faster, under linux w/ the nvidia binaries than I was under windows. ATI's performance under linux a year ago was far from acceptable by my standards. I do hope they improve though. My allegiance to Nvidia is really out of loyalty to my linux desktop.

As for the money, well, this year will see some big investments for me. Between this setup and a new vid card once I hear an HL2 or D3 "Gone Gold" announcement. But since I prefer not to OC and worry about heat and stability, I spend a bit more and hopefully get longevity out of a system. I hope to hold off on the upgrade impulses for at least 18 months. Yeah, that was however, the most expensive RAM I've ever bought. I usually skimp somewhat on RAM, so hopefully I'll see some good performance this time around.

 

[Nite_Hawk]

Hi Mono,

I think he meant that ATI's linux support was new at that time. I was pretty "ok" with it being slow then as well, given that they were new at it and getting things up and going can take some time. The fact it hasn't changed is pretty bad though. ATI claimed that moving operations back to HQ were going to improve things, but I think most people would take back the gernman FireGL dev team in a heart beat, as they (he?) actually gave roadmaps and planned features. It wasn't great, but atleast it felt like things were (slowly) moving forward. Right now a number of people are still using 8 month old drivers because the new ones are significantly slower, and don't offer terribly significant fixes.

Enough ranting about ATI though. Assuming PCI Express doesn't dramatically effect things, I think you (and for that matter most people interested in linux) would be better off with nVidia this gen. If ATI can get their act together, then I guess it's up in the air.

Nite_Hawk