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Budget PC: e7200 the right choice?

B

Bigwillis

n00b
Joined
Jul 22, 2005
Messages
59
I'm building a low-cost PC for a friend.

I'm trying to decide if the e7200 would be sufficient, or if I should go with the e8400 instead.

Any advice?
 
Overclocking or not? and what do you plan to do with the box? if you are overclocking the e7200 should be enough for a while. If you aren't, it will still be enough but will probably be a dinosaur about one or two game gens earlier than the e8400.
 
If the PC is basically for web surfing and office apps then that e7200 will keep your friend happy for a long time.
 
Jakalwarrior said:
Overclocking or not? and what do you plan to do with the box? if you are overclocking the e7200 should be enough for a while. If you aren't, it will still be enough but will probably be a dinosaur about one or two game gens earlier than the e8400.
Click to expand...

How can you say that? With the severe gpu limitations of todays games the e7200 is usually pulling in the exact framerate as the e8400 at a common res like 1680x1050. At the end of the day the doubled L2 cache is not enough to say it will last a gen or two longer than the E7200.
 
E5200 is also good way to go on the cheap. You should be able to get it too 4.1 GHz 12.5 x 333 FSB with a good board and ram.
 
No need to overextend the budget if the PC is going to be used only for surfing and the casual game if that.
ecstatic.gif
 
Fry's sells the E7300 for $114, that's the best value in a Core 2 Duo on the market today IMO. Just got one the other day for the Wife's new build and it's fast, very fast, and runs OSx86 quite nicely. :)
 
if you are going to be nothing but web surfing then yah get an e5200 or e7200 the price difference really doesn't exist.
 
just got an e7200 for a budget upgrade myself, to hold me up until i7 becomes more affordable. No regrets whatsoever! Cheap, cool and fast! you cant go wrong!
 
CruisD64 said:
just got an e7200 for a budget upgrade myself, to hold me up until i7 becomes more affordable. No regrets whatsoever! Cheap, cool and fast! you cant go wrong!
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QFT! The E7x00 are the foundation of the budget gamers builds these days
 
gaming wise, you'll probably be more limited by the GPU. I'd just get the e5200 for cheap and overclock it. You can get them up to 3.7 - 3.8 which is only .2 - .4 ghz less than a e8X00. At the least, you'd be spending about $40 more used or $80 more new. That's about double the cost of the e5200 for .2 -.4 more mhz. Just save the money and upgrade later and sell your cpu. At most you'd lose $40 and you'd get a good cpu in the mean time.
 
Awesome, thanks everyone for all the great input. The rig will be used mostly for surfing / Office with a casual game thrown in here and there.

I think I'm gonna cross my fingers for a sub-$100 e7200 deal and then pull the trigger.
 
GonzoP said:
How can you say that? With the severe gpu limitations of todays games the e7200 is usually pulling in the exact framerate as the e8400 at a common res like 1680x1050. At the end of the day the doubled L2 cache is not enough to say it will last a gen or two longer than the E7200.
Click to expand...

No, but almost 500mhz core, 300mhz FSB (Ram bandwidth), and double cache will make it last longer before its useless. By gen though I mean gen of games, not of cpu. New generations of games with higher requirements come out pretty frequently.

Awesome, thanks everyone for all the great input. The rig will be used mostly for surfing / Office with a casual game thrown in here and there.

I think I'm gonna cross my fingers for a sub-$100 e7200 deal and then pull the trigger.
Click to expand...

Just about anything dualcore with 2 gigs of ram+ is plenty for that! One of those 24 dollar low wattage AM2 chips that had on sale a while back would have been perfect. At work I use a 2.8ghz single core P4 and get by fine! except when I get a little crazy on the 1000th level of some tower defense flash game and bring it to its knees lol.
 
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