2.4C or 2.8E - Is it worth it?

[madwelshboy]

Hi all,

I currently have a 2.4C @ 260 fsb, is it worth me upgrading to a 2.8E and will I be guaranteed to get 250+fsb (as I have DDR500).
Any opinions welcome.
Oh reason for upgrade, my bro has offered me £100 for my 2.4C and a 2.8E is only £130........

[Rave]

I wouldn't get a Prescott. Get a 2.8C if you must upgrade, the Prescott really is a duffer IMO.

Rich :¬)

[skattrd]

I changed a 2.8c for a 2.8e a couple of weeks ago, and mine is great, it does 250mhz fsb @ default volts (3.5Ghz) I've heard quite a few people with similar overclocks, but watercooling/phase change is required if you're really gonna push it .
They do run warm, mine is 56c full load, and I have quite decent air cooling (4 case fans and an aerocool dp102 h/s with 2x 36cfm fans on it) I don't think I'd run one on a stock cooler
My main reason for changing was due to the 1mb cache and seti crunching, I get through 3 wu's a day more with a prescott than a Northwood did at the same overclock.

Its up to you, personally I'd go for the Prescott, but if you do expect cpu temp to be approx 10C higher than the equivalent Northy

[StarkMjolk]

Prescott scares me, I would perfer to go for a northwood if I would get an Intel... I guess you don't want to change platform aswell?

Changing a 2.4 for a 2.8 in your case isn't a bad idea, but northwood or prescott, you'll have to choose yourself. Both have pros/cons...

[Rave]

My main reason for changing was due to the 1mb cache and seti crunching, I get through 3 wu's a day more with a prescott than a Northwood did at the same overclock.

Yeah, I guess if the applications you use most run better on a Prescott then upgrade. There aren't that many though, Seti is the exception to the general rule.

Rich :¬)

[madwelshboy]

Are there any plans in the immediate future to utilize the Prescott's 1mb cache in games etc, or take advantage of its SSE3?

[Rave]

Are there any plans in the immediate future to utilize the Prescott's 1mb cache in games etc

A lot of games will already take advantage of it, but the performance gain is generally offset by the Prescott's immensely long pipeline.

or take advantage of its SSE3?

That will probably take a while longer, although I read somehwere that SSE3 is mostly made up of instructions from AMD's 3DNow.... I've no idea if that's true, but if it is perhaps games that are written to take advantage of 3DNow could use SSE3 already?

Rich :¬)

[chrisf6969]

That will probably take a while longer, although I read somehwere that SSE3 is mostly made up of instructions from AMD's 3DNow.... I've no idea if that's true, but if it is perhaps games that are written to take advantage of 3DNow could use SSE3 already?

Rich :¬)

I dont think SSE3 has anything to do with 3dnow. But it does have some ops similar to AMD's 64 bit extensions. Which would have let Intel keep up on certain apps by using SSE3 instead of x86-64.

[Moonshade]

Hm, I wouldn't go for Prescott..like someone above said, if you really want to upgrade you should upgrade to 2.8C! Which isn't such a bad idea.