Price sensitive Quad Core showdown?

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GeminiCool

Weaksauce
Joined
Jan 11, 2005
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I'm not really a fanboy for AMD I just hate paying higher prices. I remember the $350 Celeron 300a, I also remember the $85 3800X2 that OC'd to 3Gig. I much prefer the cheap fast than the expensive fast. :)

That said my game pc now runs an E6750 @ 3.55G on a P35 MB. So, $180CPU and $130 MB... oh and lets not forget the $200 8800GT card. My second PC is an [email protected] (1Meg cache) on a AMD 690G chipset. So, $100CPU and $90 MB... The Intel rig runs about 20% faster but bumped my price some $120! With 4 kids, my days of being able to justify high priced hardware are long gone.

So enter today. I'm not shelling out $1k+ for a CPU. Given current pricing the CPU has to be under $300 bucks to even be considered. I guess I see my current options as a 3 way CPU showdown:
E6750 or equivalent OC to 3.55
E6600 OC to 3.0
Phenom 9850 OC to 2.9

Seems to me these 3 CPUs are darn close in performance with the edge going to the 6750 when not using all 4 cores. The 6600 will likely perform faster than the 9850. So now motherboard price.... What the heck is going on here?? I remember "high end" boards come close to $200 bucks but now, $400 bucks!!!

When I consider a platform, the picture blurs. So I guess here's my real question. If you build a PC with a P35 type motherboard for sub $150 and put the 6750 or 6600 on that MB how fast is that system compared to say a 790 chipset sub $150 MB with the 9850?

Any thoughts?

Peter
 
I had a similar dilemma when I built my Core2 Duo system about 2 years ago... I could go for the 'cheap' P965 chipset or the 'enthusiast' 975X chipset.
I went for the P965 because the motherboards were much cheaper. There is little or no performance difference between these chipsets, and the same goes for the P/X chipsets today. The X-chipsets do tend to have more PCI-e lanes, more onboard peripherals and that sort of thing, but unless you really need that, it's not worth the premium price in my opinion.

So yes, I'd go with the P35, should perform just fine, like my P965 does.
With a Q6600 at 3 GHz (but with a decent cooler they can get 3.2-3.5 GHz easier than the Phenom gets to 2.9 GHz as far as I've heard) you should get excellent performance.
 
Why wouldn't you just get a Q6600, overclock it past 3GHz, and use your current motherboard? All you need is a ~$200 Q6600 and you are good to go. There is nothing wrong with a P35 motherboard, and performance is the came compared to the newer X38/48 based motherboards. If you NEED to get another motherboard, you can get P35 boards for around $100 that overclock to like 98% of the potential of a $400 board.

Also, considering a Phenom 9850 instead of a Q6600 for overclocking is just silly. Q6600 wins that hands down. Its ridiculous that AMD wants over $200 for the 9850 given that the Q6600 beats it on almost everything.
 
GeminiCool said:
I remember the $350 Celeron 300a,
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You probably don't remember as well as you think. ;) The 300A retailed for $149 at introduction in Slot 1 format. The Socket 370 version was a little over $100.
 
I love reading about Intel processors in the AMD section.

But honestly, why would you upgrade now? Your system seems like it's more than enough to hold you over until Shanghai (45nm Phenoms) or Nehalem, where you'll see major improvements. I don't think that the processors listed are going to give you nearly the performance boost you'd like to see. It seems like a waste of money, and intel has a new architecture coming and Shanghai has speak of a 20% increase in performance per clock through tweaks, as well as a die shrink which will allow for more overclocking and cooler temps.

690G chipsets are for socket AM2 motherboards. Phenom will run in most AM2 motherboards. I would see if your model will handle a phenom. You could probably get away with just upgrading the processor to a Shanghai when it comes out, and save yourself the money on a new motherboard and all that other stuff.
 
Your current CPU/Motherboard is more than adequate for any game. Normally id say spend the money on a better video card, but even the 8800 GT is pretty adequate. The only thing id consider if i were you, and you need more gaming performance, and you game above 1600x1200, is SLI.

Why do you think you need a new PC?
 
He doesn't. If you are still feeling the need for speed though, you can always pick up a Wolfdale if your motherboard supports it. As for a new video card, I would really wait and see what ATi and NVIDIA are about to introduce in the coming weeks before making a purchase.
 
Thanks for the feedback....

As to remembering the 300A, it was actually just pre that time... Let's see.. I had just graduated college, no kids... It was a bleeding edge slot 1. I purchased an Abit motherboard with the 440LX chipset. Truth be told, I purchased a 266 because the next jump was stupid expensive. And yes the 266 WAS over 300 bucks. Infact, this build was at the pinical of the Voodoo2 card which I also bought. It was about 6 months prior to the TNT2 card, it was pre 440BX. The days when Q2 running over 20fps was insaine speed.

I'd like to move one of my home PC's to work. Problem is the Phenom was horrible!!! E6750 truly is faster (both PCs have 8800GT cards). My main game is SUPREME COMMANDER!! Unit cap at 750 units on a 4v4 Setons, evil for my CPU. I can tell you, AMD X2 vs C2D, the C2D IS at least 20% faster.

Rebuilding my PCs takes forever, hate it. If I rebuild my work PC I don't want to do it for a small bump. IE going from an [email protected] to an [email protected] hardly seems worth while. Moving to the E6750, maybe that is worth while. What about giving up the E6750 for gaming then?? I could put the Pheneom in the 690G board, mount some heat sinks to the mosfets, hope they hold... If I have to consider a new board to support the quad AMD, should I just go Intel... and there you have it, the complete question.

My delema, I built the AMD rig for home assuming the Phenom would not suck. I built the C2D machine to be my work machine. I installed Vista Ultimate on the C2D machine to "test" and really just enjoyed the OS and faster game speed. Now, the AMD machine sits there... asking... can I ever perform as good as the C2D? What if you installed a 2.5Gig Black edition Phenom... then would i be good enough?

Thanks for the feedback,

-Peter.
 
What motherboard do you have in the AMD PC? Because the list of supported motherboard for a Phenom 9850 is *very small* due to the high power useage, and if you overclock it, its fairly risky in light of current events (Phenom 9850s killing motherboards at stock CPU settings). Since you seem to be concerned about getting a long life from your hardware, Phenom is not looking like the way to do it. You even said it yourself:

I could put the Pheneom in the 690G board, mount some heat sinks to the mosfets, hope they hold...
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Phenom 9850 is not really a good solution for much of anything right now. Its not faster than a Q6600 at stock speeds, and the Q6600 overclocks much more, and is easier on the system componetns. You would probably be better off jsut getting a Q6600 and a cheap ass motherboard (like an openbox newegg board) for slightly over the cost of the 9850.
 
It sounds like you want to hear an excuse to buy the Phenom, even though deep down you know it can never match the performance of a Core2 system?
Phenom isn't a good gaming CPU anyway, in most games it is outperformed even by the old 6400+.
 
Scali2 said:
It sounds like you want to hear an excuse to buy the Phenom, even though deep down you know it can never match the performance of a Core2 system?Phenom isn't a good gaming CPU anyway, in most games it is outperformed even by the old 6400+.
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That is how I am reading this too.

Gemini if you want a Phenom just to get one, then do it. Personally I think its a bad idea given everything else you posted, however you gotta make your own choices. Honestly after reading all the contradictions in this thread so far, I barely know whats going on.

And yeah Celeron 300A was never $300. I went from a K6-2 266@300 -> K6-2 350@400 -> Cel 300A@450 -> Cel 366@550 -> Cel 533@800+Golden Orb on a slotket (I still have this system), I was elbows deep in the cheap overclocking, I never would have bought any of those for anything close to $300.
 
I think what you point out here is true... I am looking for a way to justify a Phenom.

ocellaris, I mis-spoke. The CPU I bought was a Pentium II 266. It was over 300 bucks! The Celeron's of that generation had no cache and were horrible. The 300A came along several months after my purchase as did the 440BX chipset. Sorry for the confusion there... but the point is still valid. At that time, without any real competition, Intel charged a higher price.

So, my thought desire to purchase the Phenom is founded in my experience with high priced Intel CPUs.

Looks like I'm kind of stuck... upgrading CPU & MB = much work and re-installing. I was hoping the Phenom was "close enough" where a simple CPU upgrade would hit near the performance of the Q6600... seems popular opinion is no.

I was also hoping some of you had experience installing the Phenom in 690G motherbords. My board is rated for a 125W X2 but not the 125W Phenom... go figure. My enermax case has a large fan in the side. I wanted the Phenom to simply work in my AMD rig to avoide re-installing and offer near Intel speeds...

That's all for now
 
GeminiCool said:
ocellaris, I mis-spoke. The CPU I bought was a Pentium II 266. It was over 300 bucks! The Celeron's of that generation had no cache and were horrible. The 300A came along several months after my purchase as did the 440BX chipset. Sorry for the confusion there... but the point is still valid. At that time, without any real competition, Intel charged a higher price.
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Is that really true though?
The Pentium II was high-end. Celeron was an Intel processor aswell, yet it was very affordable. And in the early days the Pentium MMX was still around aswell, also an affordable processor (and with pretty decent performance too) Nothing has really changed in all those years. High-end CPUs can demand high prices.. It's just that in the old days there was no 'Extreme Edition' or 'FX' nametag on the fastest CPUs.
At the introduction there were only two PII models. The 233 and the 266. So if you bought it at that point, you actually had the fastest CPU available... For much less than what a QX processor costs today, or an Athlon FX processor a few years ago, when they were fastest.
But does that really matter? Because back then there were the Celerons and Pentium MMX systems for more affordable computers that performed quite well, and today we have really cheap Pentium Dual-core and Core2 Duo models aswell.
I think it's strange that just because *some* Intel CPUs are expensive, most people see Intel as an expensive brand. Intel has always had affordable CPUs. And when AMD's K8 was the fastest CPU, their high-end cost the same as what Intel's high-end usually costs. So it's not like AMD is any better... they just generally can't afford to demand such high prices because they don't deliver the performance. K8 was the one time that they could, and they didn't hesitate for a moment, and launched the FX series.
 
GeminiCool said:
I think what you point out here is true... I am looking for a way to justify a Phenom.

ocellaris, I mis-spoke. The CPU I bought was a Pentium II 266. It was over 300 bucks! The Celeron's of that generation had no cache and were horrible. The 300A came along several months after my purchase as did the 440BX chipset. Sorry for the confusion there... but the point is still valid. At that time, without any real competition, Intel charged a higher price.

So, my thought desire to purchase the Phenom is founded in my experience with high priced Intel CPUs.

Looks like I'm kind of stuck... upgrading CPU & MB = much work and re-installing. I was hoping the Phenom was "close enough" where a simple CPU upgrade would hit near the performance of the Q6600... seems popular opinion is no.

I was also hoping some of you had experience installing the Phenom in 690G motherbords. My board is rated for a 125W X2 but not the 125W Phenom... go figure. My enermax case has a large fan in the side. I wanted the Phenom to simply work in my AMD rig to avoide re-installing and offer near Intel speeds...

That's all for now
Click to expand...

it is close enough, a good 790fx mobo and a 9850 should get you around 2.9-3.3ghz, and even tho its certainly not as fast as a q6600, its not that much slower either. and u can run shanghai without a mobo change

and ull hve more fun tweaking that phenom, trust me. that only applies if you like tweaking em tho. other advantages would include more 'snappiness'(im sure someone else can explain it better than me), even tony from OCZ said that. i never experienced it myself tho

all that said, a q6600 + P35 mobo would be the best deal
 
64bit_is_here said:
it is close enough, a good 790fx mobo and a 9850 should get you around 2.9-3.3ghz, and even tho its certainly not as fast as a q6600, its not that much slower either. and u can run shanghai without a mobo change

and ull hve more fun tweaking that phenom, trust me. that only applies if you like tweaking em tho. other advantages would include more 'snappiness'(im sure someone else can explain it better than me), even tony from OCZ said that. i never experienced it myself tho

all that said, a q6600 + P35 mobo would be the best deal
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Given AMD's recent history, I think it would be a moderately bad idea to make any purchases now based on what AMD plans to be doing in the future. And getting a 9850 to overclock to 3.3GHz is a pretty big stretch :p
 
I have to say that although there is a bit of time involved in a new mobo+processor as you have already mentioned, I feel as though it is worth it. I have built many systems recently that are based off of the Q6600 with a P35 mobo (Mostly a DS3-L, however I have found out that the IP35's from Abit are pretty awesome as well) and I can't say I would have gone any other way (AMD I mean). Not to knock on AMD, it's just that I feel the price/performance is just too great when building a system that does something other than surfing the web.
 
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