To AMD or Intel, that is the question...

[moogle]

like ebay. i cant believe people are still paying £200 for a X2 4800 and £300+ for a FX - 60
if only ebay had an option where you could post out loud about the items. Id be saying, "are you out of your mind?"

[Oakleyb]

Sorry with the late reply, I had a suspected mini heart attack through too much gym work.

I'm recovering well now though and almost back to normal, youth is thankfully on my side.

Asrock 4CoreDual-VSTA with an E4300 is going to be the cheapest you can get. It does ddr, ddr2, pcie and agp.

The board froogles for £40, E4300 about £100, so an expensive option, BUT it is certainly a good upgrade on my (now defunct) 2500+ XP.

If you want to upgrade from AGP to PCI, go for a chipset with integrated graphics and PCI-E, and buy a new graphics card later on...

Trouble is my present AGP card is a 6800 and I whilst integrated graphics is fine for Linux, I'll miss the 6800 for gaming. I can't stretch to a new graphics card right now. Ditto for the ram. DDR2 is very nice, but not essential right now.

If you're seriously into Linux, try and head the route of nVidia. Their Linux drivers are (still) much better Intel or ATi.

Agreed. My present Nvidia card runs well in Linux. My other Linux computer runs an ATI card. I still haven't got the drivers working properly with it. Come on AMD, give us some decent Linux drivers!

Another option within £100 would be to get a Presler Core Pentium D with the Asrock board and then upgrade to Core 2 Duo later in the year. Scan have a 915 for £59 so still in budget.

Nope, nice idea but I'm not touching netburst.

AMD themselves made the AM2 CPUs unable to run with DDR1, but Intel made the C2Ds able to run DDR1 + DDR2 which is why Asrock make Intel boards like it and not AMD ones.

Kinda crappy of AMD really, making people buy more RAM aswell when their chips aren't the best on the market...but then I guess they don't know whilst they are in design and production stages what Intel are doing with their next chips.

FinalD

Ah, didn't know that. That sucks. So now I'd have to fork out for more memory. That changes the economics. My opinion of AMD has just collapsed.

Oakleyb, what do you currently have?

As others have said, the Asrock dual-VSTA board seems ideal for you to upgrade to new tech as-and-when. The board is cheap but will certainly push you over budget due to the E4300 costing £100 on its own.

Still, a damn cheap upgrade at ~£150 that lets you upgrade to PCI-E and DDR2 as you see fit, while gaining the power of Conroe now.

The other option is to check the classifieds and ebay for a bargain AGP 939 board and CPU.

Yeah, seems I'm goin for either
Asrock £40/AMD dual core £60/DDR2 512MB £20
=£120
Or Asrock £40/Conroe E4300 £100
=£140

The smart money's with the Conroe then. Agreed? Does that mean Intel win on price/value in the budget dual core segment ?

[shaithis]

The smart money is on Conroe, of that I don't think anyone will disagree.

As for the budget dual core market, it's dependant on what you currently have and what you want to keep.

Creating a whole system from scratch, AMD will win due to cheap CPU prices.


Upgrading, the Intel can push its nose in front due to the ability to re-use your DDR ram on certain boards (memory controller is not integrated into the CPU like in the AMDs).

I know a fair few people that have gone the Asrock Dual-VSTA route now and all of them are happy (most are actually HTPCs).

[Oakleyb]

Been reading up on the Asrock Dual-VSTA, seems they have crippled the PCI-E to 4x in order to have the AGP connection there as well. Not a problem now of course, but when I take the plunge with a PCI-E card it will impair performance. The review I saw showed a drop in performance from 111fpc with a 16xPCI-E to 92fps with the 4xPCI-E, with a 7900GT. Is that the case with all AGP/PCI-E mobo's?

[shaithis]

Most 'full sized' PCI-E slots are 16x, some are 8x.

What makes me think that 4x is fine though, is that a lot of SLI and Crossfire boards only support 8x and a number of those that do support 16x set the second card in the SLI/CF config to run at 4x....so it can't be that much of a bottleneck at all.


Without seeing that test you have read, I can't say for sure but if it was pumping out 90fps with decent settings enabled, then I fail to see an issue, that's way way above what the human eye can discern.

[Oakleyb]

sorry, forgot link...

http://www.ocworkbench.com/2006/asro...al-vsta/b9.htm

the rest of the review places the performance on a par with the other board. Interestingly, DDR2 only improves performance slightly.

My only concern about this board is that I may need to upgrade my mobo when I upgrade my GFX in order to take advantage of a faster PCI-E. This could be done at relatively low cost later if I felt it necessary. I have to stick with AGP for now.

I think I've made my mind up, I just have to have a little chat with the Mrs now, it can be my 'Get well soon' present

[DecomposingStar]

The smart money's with the Conroe then. Agreed? Does that mean Intel win on price/value in the budget dual core segment ?

at the moment, yes. But AMD have some tricks up there sleeve, i'm sure. It's always the case with this area of retail. There would be no point in AMD releasing products that were just about as good as Intel, because that starts a price war, they might aswell wait for a little bit and then top Intels range at current. Intel will follow suit a few months later.

[Papa Lazarou]

AMD themselves made the AM2 CPUs unable to run with DDR1, but Intel made the C2Ds able to run DDR1 + DDR2 which is why Asrock make Intel boards like it and not AMD ones.

Kinda crappy of AMD really, making people buy more RAM aswell when their chips aren't the best on the market...but then I guess they don't know whilst they are in design and production stages what Intel are doing with their next chips.

FinalD

Its because all AMD 64 CPU's actually have the memory controller built into them. Intel chips don't, with them its on the motherboard chipset.

[Defenestration]

Definitely go for the E4300!

[MaddAussie]

Been reading up on the Asrock Dual-VSTA, seems they have crippled the PCI-E to 4x in order to have the AGP connection there as well. Not a problem now of course, but when I take the plunge with a PCI-E card it will impair performance. The review I saw showed a drop in performance from 111fpc with a 16xPCI-E to 92fps with the 4xPCI-E, with a 7900GT. Is that the case with all AGP/PCI-E mobo's?

I have a Dual VTSA A E6600 and a 7900GS and tbh I cant see any bottle neck, tho once i get some DDR2 ram and a new board I may change my tune

[Oakleyb]

Cheers for the info, I've got a brand new Asrock mobo and Conroe E4300 waiting for me at home!