Upgrade choices

[philipbain]

I've been looking at the various choices available to me as far as upgrades go. If you have a look at my current system (on the left hand side of this posting there should be a little my system link) then it looks like it was built on the extreme cheap, thats because it was built on the extreme cheap last year when my old computer was taken out by a power surge. Now that i've had time to get some cash together and look at my options I have some up with the following possibilities for a complete overhaul, all prices are from Scan (I did spec a s939 system too, but the price turned out virtually identical to the AM2 system):

AMD Athlon X2 AM2 system

AMD AM2 Athlon 64 3800 + Windsor Core, Dual Core 2GHz, 512KB x 2 Cache, Retail £104.56
Arctic Cooling Freezer 64 Pro - S754/939/940 £13.50
2Gb (2X1Gb) Corsair TwinX XMS2, DDR2 PC6400 (800), 240 Pin, Non-ECC Unbuffered, CAS 5-5-5-12 £145.28
MSI AM2 K9N NEO-F NF550, Socket AM2, PCI-E (x16), DDR2 800, SATA II, SATA RAID, ATX £49.97
256Mb Leadtek 7900GT, PCI-E (x16), Standard, Mem 1320 MHz, GPU 450 MHz, 24 Pipes, Dual DVI-I/HDTV £184.48
Xclio 3010B Black Midi Tower Case w/o PSU Hi End AMD64/Prescott Ready £25.79

Total: £523.58

Intel Core 2 Duo system

Intel Core 2 Duo E6300 S775, 1.86Ghz, 1066Mhz FSB, Conroe Core, 2M Cache OEM (w/o Heat Sink Fan) £135.07
Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro - P4 up to 4.4GHz - S775 Dual Core Ready £15.08
2Gb (2X1Gb) Corsair TwinX XMS2, DDR2 PC6400 (800), 240 Pin, Non-ECC Unbuffered, CAS 5-5-5-12 £145.28
Gigabyte GA 965P-DS3, Intel P965, S775, PCI-E (x16), DDR2 533/667/800, SATA II, ATX £98.69
256Mb Leadtek 7900GT, PCI-E (x16), Standard, Mem 1320 MHz, GPU 450 MHz, 24 Pipes, Dual DVI-I/HDTV £184.48
Xclio 3010B Black Midi Tower Case w/o PSU Hi End AMD64/Prescott Ready £25.79

Total: £604.39

Now the question is this: Is the Core 2 system worth the extra £80, considering that i'm looking at overclocking the thing too?

[mallett]

just look at james.robinsons OCing of his 6300 and i think u will have your answer

http://forums.hexus.net/showthread.php?t=81736

[nvening]

what about the PSU?

[chuckskull]

That core 2 duo system will ****e on the athlon at stock clocks and overclock like a monster and yeah dont forget your PSU and cabling(i've done it before).

[philipbain]

As its an upgrade of my current system I am carrying over various components, including the PSU, hard drives, DVDRW and all the peripherals so all that is listed is all I require for my upgrade, I'm only getting a new case because I want a bit of a change from the case that i've used since 1998!

[kasavien]

How old is the psu you have, what make/model/wattage is it.

[philipbain]

Its a rather nice 480W X-Clio one with SATA, PCI-E, 4 & 8 pin mobo connectors and a 24 pin ATX connector and a feature that will keep up to 4 fans running after a system has shut down to ensure that components have cooled down properly.

They sell it at Scan, have a look at it here if you want.

[kasavien]

Ah thats fine then, sounds like a decent PSU then, just wanted to make sure it was good enough for the components, you've no doubt seen the threads saying how important a decent PSU is

[philipbain]

Indeed, I have to confess that I am a bit of a system integrator myself, I have built a good few PCs over the years, my last one for a friend about a month ago, so i'm no stranger to building PCs and know whats required, I was just wanting opinions on whether to use a X2 or a Core 2 Duo, i'll probably go with Core 2 Duo, the first Intel system I will have built since my 1.4GHz Tualtin P3 system - which despite the cries of P4 fanboys WAS better thana a 2GHz P4, both general usage and benchmarks underlined it too. I avoided Intel stuff through the netburst era as I utterly detested netburst from the beginning and saw it for what it was - a marketing decision based on pumping out higher speeds to the detrement of actual performance and thermal efficiency. Core 2 Duo is sort of a Super P3 with a few years of process and technological advances in it and thankfully very little that ties it to netburst.