Closer Look at AMD Opteron 165

Although Opteron 165 is designed to work in Socket 939 systems and supports regular DDR SDRAM, you can still notice some features typical of a server processor. It is true that all dual-core Opteron processors feature 2MB of L2 cache memory (1MB per core). The 165 model is no exception, of course. This is one of the main features distinguishing our today’s hero from the Athlon 64 X2 with the lowest performance rating, which are based on a cut-down Manchester core for price-lowering purposes. Opteron 165 uses Toledo core, which is used only for top-end Athlon 64 X2 processors with the performance ratings 4400+, 4800+ and FX-60. As for the Opteron 165, it costs so little because of the lower working frequency, which is only 1.8GHz. In other words, this is today’s lowest frequency dual-core processors from AMD. Moreover, its cores work at the frequency of AMD Athlon 64 3000+, which seems to be ridiculously low for the “high-performance” server processor. However, the most important thing you should remember is that the major strength of the Opteron 165 processor is not in its frequency but in the dual-core architecture.

These are the official specs of the AMD Opteron 165 CPU:

Well, there is nothing special about these specs: we see a CPU based on a 90nm Toledo core (E6 revision) working at 1.8GHz core clock. The diagnostic CPU-Z utility reports the same thing:

The funny thing is that even the CPUID indicates that Opteron 165 and Athlon 64 X2 on Toledo core are relatives. So, we don’t have any concerns about the possible incompatibility of out today’s hero and contemporary Socket 939 mainboards.

Well, AMD Opteron 165 didn’t have any surprises up its sleeve neither from the technological, nor from the architectural standpoints. As for the marketing, the official AMD’s price-list suggests that Opteron 165 should be selling for $278. It is $23 less than the current price of the Athlon 64 X2 3800+. As a result, from the pricing prospective, Opteron 165 cannot be competing with Pentium D 920, which is currently selling for $241. However, it is considerably better value than Pentium D 930, which is positioned at $316 a piece. So, if we regard Opteron 165 as a desktop product, we will now be able to see what target group it is aimed at relative to what the competition offers. Even though it is the today’s slowest dual-core processor from AMD, the manufacturer positions it slightly higher than the slowest dual-core processor from Intel. So, keeping this fact in mind, let’s check out the performance of our today’s baby.