I am considering purchasing an Opteron 144 but before i take the plunge are all s939 Opteron 144's venus core? I have seen some advertised as venus core and the one i plan to purchase does not state which core it is. Any help appreciated.

Besides the 144, all other single core Opterons alike (146, 148, 150, 152 and 154 model) are codenamed 'Venus' even though they all basically appear to be the same thing as the San Diego's.

Yeah some people get that confused with the Venice core since the two core names are close in pronouncing, but the L2 cache will give it away that it's based on the San Diego core. No Venice core has 1mb L2 cache and nore will they ever. AMD Athlon 64 X2 4400+ 2GB Dual Channel DDR 3200 Nvidia 7800GS SATA II 2x 200gig 7200rpm 16mb cache RAID-0 Gigabyte Nforce 4 SLI

From what I've read, the Venus core used in the Opteron is the "cream of the crop" from the San Diego cores. The Opteron is supposed to be used in servers, so the cores must undergo & pass more rigorous testing before being labelled VENUS

Is any opteron 144 a great overclocker because i've head stories about CABNE CABYE CABGE and CAB2E steppings giving very different results?

While you may be able to weed out the stepping you don't, for the most part the stepping you end up with is going to be determined by the supplier and there is not much you can do about that.

.....weed out the stepping you don't want,..... Opteron Stepping Info: CABNE 0539 and before were great overclockers ~3.0ghz+ CABNE 0540 and after havnt been that great but still not bad ~2.8ghz CABYE 0539 and before not to bad ~2.8ghz CABYE 0540 and after great oc'ers ~3.0ghz+ CABGE All weeks not the greatest 2.6-2.7 at high voltage CAB2E All weeks are hitting about 3.0ghz+ except the 0546 FPDW, which has never been seen above 2.8ghz, even at 1.6v. CACJE from 2006 have also been doing pretty well, 2.9ghz+ on relatively low voltage and air cooling. http://wiki.extremeoverclocking.com/wiki/Opteron