best bang for the buck

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wraslor

Weaksauce
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Jan 30, 2006
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I've got a gigabyte ds3 with 3 gigs of ddr-2 667. the stuff overclocks pretty well as I had a e6400 running at 3.4ghz but had to sell it and have been using an old pentium d to hold me over. My question is what is the current best option in upgrading cpus for my situation?

Thanks a lot.
 
You sold the E6400 or the entire setup?

You could get a M0 E2140/60, or a E2180 for <$100. After that, I think you'd have to skip up to the E6550/E6750 @ $180/200.
 
Just the cpu was sold. I just ordered a new 8800gt and figure i'll need some more power behind it for crysis.
 
E6750??
I am ordering mine tomorrow and have my new PC put together next week...I think it gives you good power for under 200
 
Your 6400 at 3.4 was a good bang for the buck. Find something similar that will go 3.4+ at around the price? :rolleyes:
 
wraslor said:
any other ideas anyone?
Click to expand...

Find the cheapest dually Core 2 you can and overclock it. Higher models *might* give a better overclock, and four cores are...well, four. But both of these are marginal upgrades to the performance you get with the overclocked cheapo dually.
 
E2160 or 2180 are decent for the <=100$USD range, after that I would recommend E4500 which is about 120$ at mwave for the moment, followed by E6550 which runs for 165$ or so at a couple places.
 
Thanks for the replies. I was looking at the specs on these and the 21xx series only has 1m cache while some of the newer ones are 2m or 4m as far as gaming is concerned does this make much of a difference? I know just about anything I get will kill the pentium d i'm running right now, i'm just trying to find my best bet.

Thanks again.
 
wraslor said:
Thanks for the replies. I was looking at the specs on these and the 21xx series only has 1m cache while some of the newer ones are 2m or 4m as far as gaming is concerned does this make much of a difference? I know just about anything I get will kill the pentium d i'm running right now, i'm just trying to find my best bet.

Thanks again.
Click to expand...

well obviously a chip with more cache will be faster in some games. (more is always better, but is it worth it)

Most games are constantly working in the system ram (not cache) so FSB & ram speed helps a lot in gaming.
And CPU speed is where its at (besides having a fast videocard) so you can make up for a smaller cache with
more CPU clock speed, very easily. I believe it was Anandtech that did a review showing the difference between
cache size, and it was generally like 1-2% difference. So all you have to do is clock your processor about 2% faster
and you'd get that 2% difference back.

An E21x0 overclocked to a high speed with fast FSB will game fine. It still has more cache than most games / apps are designed to work with.

ie: many apps are designed to work with 128kb-512Kb as their lowest common denominator for cache size. / P4 or Celeron cache sizes.
 
The few tests I've seen regarding the effects of cache size on current software indicated that there was a fairly noticeable performance difference between 1 & 2MB, and around half of that difference over the step from 2 to 4.

The numbers I remember off hand were a 35% increase in clock speed necessary to account for a 3MB cache difference, and a 20% increase in clock speed to compensate for a 2MB cache difference.
 
system in sig.
stock cooling, perfectly stable.

3dmark06 score at stock 2.66 was 11816
3dmark06 score now at 3.2 is 13865

I'd say there is a benefit. I'm getting AVG 45fps in the GPU bench for Crysis.
It was around 39fps at stock.
 
If your DS3 mobo is an older rev like mine, you may want to steer clear of quad core as the voltage regulators on those boards we're apparently not quite up to snuff for the current that a quad draws. Having said that, my Q6600 is overclocking like a champ in this board. I'm sure it could go higher with a newer board, but I am happy with 3.5GHz of quad action.

In your case, I'd recommend an E4400 or E4500 which at least has 2MB cache and should overclock to 3.0-3.5GHz on a memory friendly low FSB.
 
E4500 . . . I got one for 115. Yes it's more but it gives you a better multi and twice the cache.


I also got the M0 (? i think ) stepping. It ran cooler than the E4400's I had bought up to that point.
 
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