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Thread: Question re. CPU choice

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    Question re. CPU choice

    Hello again... Firstly, let me just say that I have found this forum to be an excellent source of info & advice for the budding novice PC builder such as myself; the likes of Staffsmike, Blitzen, Dangel, Moogle (amongst many others!) are totally awesome in answering all the questions thrown out there, ya'll rock! (insert suitable audio - round of applause, general cheers and whistles etc etc )

    Now, onto another question

    I'm trying to decide on a CPU for my new PC... there are a lot of choices out there... plus there's the looming arrival of the vaunted Nehalem, which sounds like it could be a massive performance jump over ANY of the chips available today (and it's first iterations are rumored to be here in Q4 this year...) I know, I know, if you keep waiting for what's on the horizon, you'll never buy anything, but this does seem to be worth waiting for before spending 'big' money, right? It'll also mean a new motherboard and RAM as well won't it? So there's more pounds in the changeover...

    So... what I'm wondering is: should I just buy the cheapest CPU, RAM & motherboard that'll satisfy my requirements for now, (basically, something that'll give me the performance boost I'm craving over my current aging 1.73ghz Pentium M powered laptop!), spend proper money on everything else (PSU, case, GPU & cooling etc) and then replace the cheap bits early 2009 (by which time I'll be well over the initial performance boost and will have overclocked my chip to death most likely!)

    I've seen plenty of 'Bang-for-your-buck' PC's being built with the E2180 (overclocked considerably of course)... Should I just go down this path for now? I'm assuming this will give me the boost I crave? I need it to be able to run Photoshop CS3 (most importantly) and play Supreme Commander/World in Conflict/Crysis etc... I'll most likely opt for the upcoming HD 4870 as my GPU, so it's going to be the CPU that limits me (if anything) right? Will the lack of L2 cache be a factor as well? Oh, and I'll have a 24" and a 19" monitor setup

    What do you think? Will a heavily overclocked E2180 or E2200 (watercooled ) tickle my fancy till the end of the year?

    I await your thoughts

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    Re: Question re. CPU choice

    Well you've obviously got a great grasp of all the current and forth coming tech so thats a good start

    The pentium dual cores are plenty enough until next year. I beleive photoshop likes a bit of cache though so something like the E7200 might be a nice chip to have but at double the cost perhaps a bit ott.

    My money is on the cheap dual core, they will clock very nicely on water and give you a sizeable boost over you pentium M, thats actually what I wen't from when I got my E6600 and its a massive difference

  4. #3
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    Re: Question re. CPU choice

    You're a champion Sir staffsMike, always one of the first to reply!

    I guess this is my equation at the minute:

    Q6600 + IP-35 Dark Raider = £195 or thereabouts
    E2180 + Gigabyte GA-P31-DS3L = £85 or thereabouts

    I wonder if the extra £110 is worth spending for the next 6-8 months, or should I put it towards a better GPU for the moment... or just leave it in the bank of course

    Decisions, decisions...

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    Re: Question re. CPU choice

    Better.. than the ATi HD4870 is the wasteful 260 and 280 GTX's so I wouldn't bother with that.

    I mean for me it would be the Q6600 + dark raider and then wait about 2 years for things to get nice and cheap for nehalem. If you have the dual core you will want to be a first mover so you can get the quad core goodness, but if you have the q6600 you will see why it's recommended so much and probably won't want to change for a good while yet

    With that thinking in mind it may actually save money to go for the Q6600 in the end.. and if you don't sell it afterwards you will have a beasty chip for a secondry pc/HTPC lol

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    Re: Question re. CPU choice

    if it were me i would go the Q6600 route... and upgrade further along the line (cos nehalem is going to beastly expensive when it first comes out), so as mike says, i'd go with an O/C'd q6600 for 2 or so years and then upgrade to whats around.

    but in all honesty.... It's your personal preference and noone can make the descision (properly) for you, we can only advise..

    but i would build a tasty Q6600 rig for playing with at the moment
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    Re: Question re. CPU choice

    Thanks chaps... you've clarified one thing in my mind that was niggling away without actually properly registering... the price of being the first-mover, buying on the bleeding edge so to speak...

    I guess I'm kinda thinking/surmising/dreaming that the initial Nehalem release will have at least one non-extreme chip for around the same price as a Q9450, but that's probably wishful thinking!

    I'm sure the Q6600 will have all the processer power I need for at least a year or two, I've gotten by with my little Pentium M for 3 years now and it's only just starting to really drive me batty (too much multi-tasking being asked of it, plus web content is now so rich that it struggles with that at times as well... no point having a 20meg broadband connection if your PC can't keep up!)

    Still interested to hear anyones thoughts on this, keep them coming

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    Re: Question re. CPU choice

    Yeah my centrino was stuggling with flash based videos etc.. before it kicked the bucket. Well actually it's fine just needs a new HDD and is in peices in my laptop bag. Never buy a vaio lol

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    Re: Question re. CPU choice

    This 'Nahalem' buzz is the strangest thing around atm.

    Look at it like this.
    There are Quads and Dual Cores out there atm that are easily going 3ghz+. However, i would say that NON game out and about utilises all this oomph these things can throw in your direction.

    My advice would be to buy as good as you can afford out of the technology that is here now.

    Nahalem = New memory, new CPU (obviously), new motherboard, possibly new PSU. Thats alot of cash to get it right.

    Nehalem may be herre in 6 months time. How good will it be? Not know really. How good is the current tech? Bloody good i would say.

    Get yourself a good X48 motherboard, a decent Quad core and a nice new GPU and be happy with that machine for another year/18 months

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    Re: Question re. CPU choice

    Quote Originally Posted by tensim View Post
    E2180 + Gigabyte GA-P31-DS3L = £85 or thereabouts.
    My last upgrade was a biggie, as from a Socket A board I needed new (DDR2) memory, new (PCIe) GPU, new (SATA) drives as well as CPU/motherboard. I went for the E2180 until funds improve (running sweet as a nut at 2.9GHz), and considered that P31 board, but discarded it as too limited for system upgrading (the 2 RAM slots mainly) and got the P35-DS3L. I'd go for your better board now, even if you can't afford the better CPU at the moment.

    I also wouldn't rule out dual cores like the E8400 over the Q6600 if you've any intentions of overclocking.

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    Re: Question re. CPU choice

    What's the X48 good for in the next 18 months?

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    Re: Question re. CPU choice

    Quote Originally Posted by staffsMike View Post
    What's the X48 good for in the next 18 months?
    They are the nicest around. They have everything that is available at the moment.
    The X38 woul be just as good.

    I know how much the P35's float your boat but its not all about budget now is it

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    Re: Question re. CPU choice

    It's not so much about the funds available, I'm giving myself a max budget of £1000 or thereabouts for this PC (excluding a monitor, this'll be the Dell 2408 A01 once it arrives ).

    So I could plump for a Q6600 + Abit IP-35 Pro (around £227) or even spend an extra £104 and go up to the Q9450 + Abit iX38 Quad-GT (around £332)...

    Either of these options will be a monstrously massive improvement over my current laptop and will do absolutely everything I can throw at them for quite a while... But then, as far as I can tell, so will the E2180 option at around £85, right? Sure, it won't multi task as well or be as energy efficient, but there's nothing that it won't be able to run in conjunction with a powerful GPU (HD 4870) and a hefty overclock (3ghz + on watercooling), is there?

    And by the time the initial 'glow' from the performance boost has faded and I'm frustrated with the PC's performance again (I reckon around 6-8 months ), I'll be able to slot in a proper Nehalem based quad (whose lowest iteration is looking like being more powerful than even the current Extreme chips...) I'm basing these hopes on a single article I read the other day (http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets...oc.aspx?i=3326), sounds interesting doesn't it Though how reliable it is I don't know!

    Anyhoo... I guess what I need to figure out is, will a heavily overclocked E2180 happily run CS3 and todays games such as Crysis/World in Conflict etc... opinions invited

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    Re: Question re. CPU choice

    At 3.0GHz It will happily plod along with anything My E6600 is at stock right now and it happily just gets on with it. Video encoding, PS, gaming it's all good

    For 6-8 months it will more than adequate. The only reason I would get the quad now is so that you don't feel compelled to take an early dive into nehalem as I said before but if you don't have a problem with that then go for it

    As for the P35, X38.. If it was a permanent thing (3- 4 years) I may be inclined to agree with the X38/X48 but for the realtively short while this mobo, cpu and ram will be needed I really can't see the point. 1600MHz FSB won't be used, crossfire most likely won't be required, PCIe 2.0 isn't needed.. Just doesn't seem worth it at double the cost.

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