Is the extra cache on the 6600 worth the extra dough or should I just buy the 6400 and overclock the **** off it?
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Is the extra cache on the 6600 worth the extra dough or should I just buy the 6400 and overclock the **** off it?
Neither... buy the 6300 and overclock the **** off it.
Or wait for the E6420 - same cache as a 6600, same default speed as a 6400 and from what I've seen, the same price as the 6300 :)
Dave
6400 has better 'Bang for your buck' than the 6600 so either that or the new fangled one dave87 said.
easy to overclock.. just change the heatsink... =/
E6420 doesnt come out till Q2 according to another thread.
thats quite a wait. Im hoping the 4200 or 4300 or whatever
is going to clock well as it will be 800 MHz not 1066 MHz FSB
I love a good Ocing bargain I just hope a decent cheap Ocing
mobo comes out by then.
i thought about the same decision for a bit recently.
the $100 difference was significant to me as it freed up money to get other things that would make my system perform better.
right now the e6400 is probably the sweet spot in core2 cpus. the $100 difference to the 6600 gets you nowhere near the performance increase, plus the 6400's OC the best. ive seen more than one 6600 owner answer this same question and say the 6400 is a better deal right now.
if you can wait until Q2 then the prices drop and 6420 comes out, but that wont be till april or later.
i couldnt wait, e6400 on the way with some kickass cooling to oc it with.
Thanks for the info. It does seem like false ecomomy. With stock cooling you will probably be able to get a moderate overclock on a 6600 which should make it pretty quick. If you want the same performace from a 6300 or 6400 you would have to spend a fair bit of cash on some watercooling (which is my intention as my last watercooled case just gave up the ghost).
So, you pay more for the faster processor and less for the cooling or pay less for the processor and more for the cooling.... mmm, difficult.
How boring would it be to have air cooling though...
You shouldn't need watercooling to reach the same speed with an E6300/E6400 that you would with an air-cooled E6600......but you'll probably need faster RAM....and at the moment that is a price-hike.
Too true! Looking at £260 for 2GB of XMS8500! Possibly the most expensive item on my shopping list (apart from the 8800 :) Have you seen the price of the 9136 modules! Insane. Not to mention the price of Vista. Take a look at the price difference of Vista on the US vs UK Amazon site! We pay £360 and they pay $370 for the retail version. Doesn't seem to add up.
QFT!Quote:
Originally Posted by BlindMelon7
Just overclock an 6300 to 6600 stock speeds and then you will have an 6600 for half the price :D.
never had a 6400 but my 6600 is the best chip I have ever owned
But 3 to 3.5GHz is a must ;)Quote:
Originally Posted by Dipar
Could always buy an old Vapochill off ebay and superchill the sucker. 4Ghz here we come...
The 4meg of cache was the selling point, for the e6600, to me. Plus the fact that I have the chip at stock voltages running @ 3.2GHz (45degC load - stock cooling).
I am holding of going higher until my new PSU comes on Monday. The chip will soar higher though. :)
I got the e6600 cause it's easier to clock higher with non-uberuber high-end RAM
And yes "uberuber" is a new word ;)
What ram are you using. I am baulking at the £250+ pricetag of 8500 memory but want to get a good watercool overclock. Probably start with air cooling to break up the cost.
So 6600 get's the nod?
If you are pricing the RAM + CPU together, the e6600 does come down a lot. My ram was £165, so ~£80 less than that of the equivalent 8500 stuff.
6400 stuff can take a e6600 to 3.6gig (running at stock) where as the e6400 would run short at 3.2gig.
Add in the extra 2meg L2 on the e6600 and I personally think it's the better deal. I would say that in that case, the e6600 gets the nod.
Great! I'm off to convince the missus. Wish me luck.
In that case you will need an e6600 and a new pair of shoes... :/ Don't think scan stock those so you might have to goto some uncharted shops ^^.Quote:
Originally Posted by alexpollard
I think all purchases at Scan over £200 should come with a free bunch of flowers... Either that or a place to stay for the night :)
LMAO, Genius! Scan, get on it! :pQuote:
Originally Posted by alexpollard
How did the negotiations after your keynote go?
Ha, do you think I am brave enough to pose the "honey, I think I need a new computer..." statement before plying my other half with wine, dinner, chocolates and flowers?
I was hoping for a photo with a broken nose, or something to that effect. ^^Quote:
Originally Posted by alexpollard
the E6600 overclocks something silly on air anyway. Not much point in watercooling other than for a pricy entire system loop to keep things quiet.Quote:
Originally Posted by alexpollard
the 4mb cache barely does jack for 90 dollars - only on a few proggies like winrar. so if all you do is unzip files get the 6600. the 6400 oc's better anyways.
spend the money elsewhere and do better for your system.
go read 95% of the results on these chips on any forum. they support this analysis.
most of the people saying go 6600 either bought the chip and want to supprot their buy or didnt buy it and just want to get a bigger number
Now now, play nice. --Steve
Thank-you for your input, but please post in a mature and sensible manner please. Consultation of this thread will help you in your future posts.Quote:
Originally Posted by idiotekniQues
And that's why the E6600 beats the FX-62 in virtually all the benchies and the E6400 does not? Not because it has twice the cache, but because it has a bigger number?Quote:
Originally Posted by idiotekniQues
Cache does make a difference in performance, that's why companies quit chasing after Ghz and focused on architecture and features.
I would advice you to spend the extra $100 bucks, you get double the amount of the L2 cache but also with the E6600 the virtulization technology is enabled. Theses 2 things are not in the E6400.( well u get 2mb L2cache but not 4mb)
Unfortunately, a lot of the E6600 chips need a large chunk of voltage to hit high mhz. As you know, high voltage = high temps, and a good watercooling loop will reduce the temps significantly and often let you increase the overclock.Quote:
Originally Posted by aidanjt
Indeedy, though you can still pull pretty high voltage on air.
I'm not sure why you'd want to overclock them chips anyway, I think at this point of performance the reason for doing so is largely academic. Each to his/her own though.
Not saying I wouldn't mind a watercooling right, they look neat and it would cut down on the stack of fans I have, even though they are pretty low individiually, combined together they're still noticable.
It's just money you could put else where :/
Please don't mention not overclocking Core2Duo chips again. I have a nervous headache from that
Agreed about overclocking------Intel, board manufacturers (and coolers) are putting it all on a plate to taste, so why not enjoy.Quote:
Originally Posted by kempez
I thought most people talked in £'s here? :confused:Quote:
Originally Posted by idiotekniQues
I would have to agree that with the price of RAM as it is the 6600 is looking increasingly good.
Personally I have a 6400, with turned out well since I bought my RAM for a very good price (£130 for ram that'll do DDR2 950, from the dreaded OCUK :) )
I happen to think that the average 6400 and 6600 will clock to very similar levels (with the 6600 perhaps just nudging the 6400).
It was a simple matter of economics in my case.
The 6600 will be quicker but it will cost more.
When they first came out, C2D that is,there was a nice chart
where someone had tested the difference between the cache sizes on different apps. I think the only significant benefit was
on DIVX encoding which was at 10% games was the lowest lower than 1%. Other things were between 1 and 3%.
This has always been the way as far back as I can remember big caches never made much of a difference only very small ones
crippled the things. Same as with low latency ram only a few % and only worth getting if everything else is top of the range.
Personally I would spend the money else where.
I cant remember why, but having a large cache is supposed to be good for music recording. It cuts out hard drive clicks apparently.