Core 2 Duo or AM2?

[BorisTheSpider]

Well let's just say that I'll be £50 over budget(£700 was my budget) if I go for the highest model, though if I want to then I could probably add the extra £50. Really at first I was only wanting to spend £600 but it hasn't quite worked out that way the way things are going .

[BorisTheSpider]

How noisey is the 256MB x1800XT? For some reason HIS don't do them with the silent cooler so I'll have to go for another make.

[chazt]

reference coolers are noisy on nvidia cards, and even noisier on ati. As discussed before, replacement coolers will invalidate your warranty, but will be much quieter and should allow for more overclocking headroom.
Here are some examples:
Arctic Cooling Accelero X2 http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Produ...oductID=353441
Zalman VF700 http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Produ...oductID=168309
Zalman VF900 http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Produ...oductID=369640

I'v got a vf900 on my 7800gt and its extremely quiet and keeps the gpu much cooler than the reference cooler, in addition to looking pretty bitching inside my case!

[BorisTheSpider]

How much do you think I'd get out the x1900GT? I can tolerate most games like FPS/3d Action at medium details, but any lower isn't too good(especially with low frame rates).

[BorisTheSpider]

Sorry guys I'm going round in circles hear . If I chose an AMD 3800 X2 AM2 and Asus M2N-E and went with the x1900XT 512MB then I'd save over £100, I know you guys told me to go with a C2D system but is it really worth the extra £100 to go with a C2D system? Graphics cards seem to have more influence in games and so would I notice a real difference bewteen the C2D and AM2 X2?

Again sorry for asking all the questions, I just want to make sure I'm going for the right system and deal.

[randomJ]

yees deffo get the c2d system... everyone with one will reccomend it! Theres nothing to complain about providing you have a full working combi!

[chazt]

you should check out this article on anandtech http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets...spx?i=2802&p=1
here's an excerpt:
"The processor landscape has been changed once more thanks to AMD's extremely aggressive price cuts. The Core 2 Duo E6300 is a better performer than the X2 3800+ but is also more expensive, thankfully for the E6300's sake it is also faster than the 4200+ and the 4600+ in some benchmarks. Overall the E6300 is a better buy, but at stock speeds the advantage isn't nearly as great as the faster Core 2 parts. In many benchmarks the X2 4200+ isn't that far off the E6300's performance, sometimes even outperforming it at virtually the same price. Overclocking changes everything though, as our 2.592GHz E6300 ended up faster than AMD's FX-62 in almost every single benchmark. If you're not an overclocker, then the Athlon 64 X2 4200+ looks to be a competitive alternative to the Core 2 E6300.

The E6400 finds itself in between the X2 4200+ and X2 4600+ in price, but in performance the E6400 generally lands in between the 4600+ and 5000+. Once again, with these 2MB parts the performance advantage isn't nearly as impressive as with the 4MB parts (partly due to the fact that their native clock speed is lower, in addition to the smaller L2 cache), but even with AMD's new price cuts the Core 2 is still very competitive at worst. If you're not opposed to overclocking, then the E6400 can offer you more than you can get from any currently shipping AMD CPU - our chip managed an effortless 2.88GHz overclock which gave us $1000 CPU performance for $224."

[BorisTheSpider]

Ok I'm still swaying towards the E6300, I might even overclock it at some point if I'm feeling a bit brave. Never bothered about overclocking before simply because I'm worried in case I damage the CPU, but the E6300 or C2Ds in general seem to be pretty easy to overclock from what i've read. The AM2 still seems like a good option to me, especially as the mobo's are quite a bit cheaper as well, it would save me quite a bit of money and It would mean I can go for the x1900XT and still be £50 below my budget.


I'm probably going to sell a few parts from my current machine as well. Anyway ideas what I'd get for this lot:

Asus A7N8X Deluxe
Athlon XP 2700+ w/ Thermaltake Volcano 12
Lite On 52x32x52 CDRW
Pioneer 16x DVD Slot Drive

[BorisTheSpider]

Anyone tell me what this ram is like?

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/acatal...R2_Memory.html

It's the first one.

I'm also gonna go for the HIS x1900XT, I've decided to just go for it.

[Steve B]

ram looks good dude those kits are gonna sell out methinks, so better get one fast!

[BorisTheSpider]

Ok I'm definetly going for the HIS x1900GT, Also I've noticed that the Gigabyte DS3 is only about £6 dearer than the S3, should I just go for the DS3 instead? Is there a difference performance wise?

I'll just stick with the Corsair RAM instead.

[EDIT]

Done! Just ordered the HIS x1900GT 256MB .

Thanks for your help guys, much appreciated .

[krazy_olie]

The only difference is that the s3 doesn't have RAID thingy it seems. DS4 seems to have some other bells and whistles like dual bios. For £6 no harm in going a model though, the difference is a bit bigger on scan.

[Couger]

not sure if im gonna jump to am2 or duo yet, ill stick with my fx-57 for now

[BorisTheSpider]

What would you guys rather go for out of the following setups?:

E6300 w/ 256MB HIS x1900GT

AM2 X2 3800+ w/ 512MB HIS x1900XT


Including RAM, mobo etc the two would come in at roughly the same price.

I decided to cancel my order for the x1900GT, just not sure, need more time to think about certain things.

[-Freebird]

6300 with the x1900 gt ..

The 6300 is probably better for gaming and that card is def enoguh for all games

[kalniel]

X2 3800 + 1900XT - it'll be faster in games than the core2+gt combination. The 3800 can also overclock to keep up for a few years yet.

Then again if you're doing stuff that needs a faster processor other than gaming then the core 2 is a good choice.