First Athlon Box

Muggs,

I am also going to build a similar box, but can't decide between the Athlon 64 3400+ ($417) and the Athlon 64 FX-51($733) or Opteron 148 ($733). How did you arrive at your choice?

Sincerely, Jerry Forcier

Muggs wrote:

$$$, and Dale & Eddy's reply to your post in the "Opteron system" Thread.

I don't know Dale, but... "The Athlon64 3400+ is very close in performance to the AthlonFX-51, which corresponds to an Opteron 146. It's cheaper to build, and should give almost identical performance." Seems pretty convincing coming from a guy who's obviously done more homework than I have.

I'm trying not to let this decision paralyze me into not making a move, and continuing to watch assemblies load, and toolpaths churn.

Muggs

Actually, they are all very close in performance. We're talking seconds of separation in standard benchmarks, not minutes. I've seen it before with graphics hardware; at some point, Solidworks can't benefit much more without some software optimizations that it just doesn't contain. The AMD's are sweeping the floor with Intel, with respect to SWX. But between the top AMD chips there doesn't seem to be much difference. In other words, the 2Ghz Athlon64 3200+ and above all seem to run SWX about the same, with obvious but *minute* performance improvements as you go up in price. Based on current information I would simply not spend the money on an Athlon64FX or Opteron 246 (or higher). You'd be better off building a dual using two Opteron 244 chips for nearly the same money. In a single cpu, the Athlon64

3200+ or 3400+ is the bang for the buck leader, hands down.

Muggs, you're hardware choices are identical to the systems I just built, except the 3400+ wasn't available at the time I bought. Personally, I'd save a couple hundred bucks and go 3200+, since you'll want to do it again next year anyway when SWX 2006 is released :) But either way, you're system is going to cook!!

- Eddy

This is a great article that explains the differences.

I just cancelled an order from Dell because of a delivery delay. I'm new at this and wonder...... where are you purchasing this computer?

I've purchased a copy of Solidworks and am looking for a home for the software!

There isn't much choice for AMD among the bigger players and those that do carry AMD I wouldn't recommend.

If you want to build your own you can't go wrong with

If you want to end up with an Athlon64 (not FX) with 2Gb of ram you'll want the Corsair CMX2048-3200 matched pair which you'll find at as newegg seems to be out of stock currently. If you want to buy a pre-made workstation then one of your best choices is

Good luck,

- Eddy

Well, Like Eddy said, I bought mine from newegg.com. I might have been able to save some nickels and dimes by shopping around and going to different places, but I found everything that I wanted at newegg.

HTH, Muggs

Thanks. I used monarchcomputer.com

is good too.