Core2Duo - How have you got it?

[excalibur2]

I actually used the stock intel fan too at first. It was only a couple of degrees higher. Makes me wonder if my arctic heatsink and fan is not working properly or something.

..or you have your computer next to a radiator or it's touching the floor with underfloor heating

[DanceswithUnix]

The enthusiast only covers a very small percentage of the market anyway. The likes of PC World and Dell should shift boxes on prices alone - Mr. Average don't know or care where the silicon comes from (which is why the Celery is probably still the most popular chip).

Personally, I think at the moment, the Athlon64s still represent the best value for those average users, and even for a lot of us enthusiasts. That value has dimmed a little with the sudden demise of S939 though. I really think killing off S939 so quickly was a poor decision by AMD.

My comment was about the poll on here, not about the average market. I don't think the people who post on here are anywhere even close to the average market

I do agree that A64 is still excellent value for money, they just can't manage the high end performance ATM.

I did have enough money to upgrade to low end core2 from AMD single core, and spent it on a 7900GT instead as graphics was my bottleneck and I couldn't afford an 8800GTS. That's my tinkering budget for this year gone

[MoodyBlues]

You're right, AMD is the most affordable option available while still giving a hell of a lot performance for the price you pay. But we're indeed talking about enthusiasts, for those people the best price-performance ratio is the Core 2 Duo E6300 or in a couple of weeks/months the E4300.

Sure AMD has quite a good cpu with it's X2 3800+, but it doesn't get anywhere near Intel's E6300. Comparing those two even with the higher price of the E6300 in mind, I think Intel has the better option at the moment. Just so you know, I'm quite an AMD fan and it took me 2 months to finally make the decission to buy an Intel Core 2 Duo and not an AMD. And now I'm totally happy with it.