dual core on a budget.. a tight one

[Russ]

im fed up, i cant play supreme commander because by gfx card is to pap. but im still on agp, and i dont see the point wasting money on a better agp card only to have to spend more on another pci-e card when i upgrade everything else.

selling the old bits off my pc (psu,cpu,mobo,gfx,ram) i'd be lucky to get 150 quid, to put with my other 300-350, i'd need e verything apart from a case/optical drives and hard drives. would i be looking at a good enough system (or one with enough scope to upgrade when i can afford to waste money on guilty pleasures?

[muddyfox470]

If you are very low on budget, go for the AM2, you can get dual cores for around £60 from SCAN!

However C2D is the fastest and is a pretty good chip, this time around Intel has the upper hand.

But the AM2 still aren't bad chips they are just so so cheap that they are extremely tempting!

Ian

[tinners]

So for £500 how's about

Intel Core 2 Duo E6300 £116.01
Gigabyte GA 965P-S3 iP965 £65.90
1Gb (2X512Mb) Corsair TwinX XMS2, DDR2 PC5400 (667) £60.56
520W Corsair HX Series Modular PSU £69.29
512MB XFX 7950GT XT, PCI-E (x16) £175.00

Total £486.76

[muddyfox470]

Thats a damn good spec for the price to be honest, however I would probably go for an X1950pro 512mb which should be able to be had for a bit less.

The X1950's are better all-round cards

Ian

Here: http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Produ...oductID=521951

[Marcvs]

get an X1950XT for £160

[Psychotic Emu]

Scan sometimes has a MSI 7900 7900 GTO for under £150 (will EASILY sit at GTX speeds and probably much higher + it has a very nice HSF). I'd say that was a pretty tight deal.

I recently used an abit mATX board along with a 3800 X2 EE retail for a nice little setup (bought from scan the two cost £130)

Saves £50 there
+ you dont need uberRAM to overclock it like you do with the 6300.

Having said all that... I'm probably working to a tighter budget than you are...

Plus I'm a hypocryte cos I use an E6400

Thats what I would do anyway, sorry if I confuse matters

[Smudger]

I've been looking at something similar, and from Scan, got this lot:

256MB HIS Radeon X1950Pro, PCI-E(x16), Mem 1480MHz GDDR3, GPU 620MHz, 36Pipes, VIVO £114.99 £135.11

MI: AMD AM2 Athlon 64 3800+ Windsor Core, Dual Core 2GHz, 2x 512KB Cache, OEM + 2Gb (2X1Gb) Corsair £134.99 £158.61

LN15975 AMD AM2 Athlon 64 3800+ Windsor Core, Dual Core 2GHz, 2x 512KB Cache, OEM

LN12200 2Gb (2X1Gb) Corsair TwinX XMS2, DDR2 PC5400 (667), 240 Pin, Non-ECC Unbuffered, CAS 4-4-4-12

LN14170 MSI AM2 K9N NEO-F, NF550, S AM2, PCI-E (x16), DDR2 533/667/800/400, SATA II, SATA RAID, ATX £39.47 £46.38

LN16745 Arctic Cooling Alpine 64 - (Socket 754, 939, AM2) + All AMD Opteron £4.99 £5.86

Add in a PSU of your choice, and you're under £400, unless you go for the Corsair, which I would be tempted to do.

[Smudger]

Whoops, that looks a bit of a mess. Basically, the 3800 x2 and memory are bundled together, £158 the lot, which I thought was a pretty good deal...

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

This is also quite a decent spec for the money:

QTY Price (ea) Ex VAT Total Inc VAT Remove
LN17304
Intel Core 2 Duo E4300, Socket 775, 1.86 GHz, 800MHz FSB, Allendale Core, 2MB Cache, Retail £93.57 £109.94
LN15258
Gigabyte GA 965P-S3 iP965, S775, PCI-E (x16), DDR2 533/667/800, SATA II, SATA RAID, ATX £56.09 £65.91
LN13080
Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro - P4 up to 4.4GHz - S775 Dual Core / Core2Duo Ready £9.95 £11.69
LN16398
256MB HIS Radeon X1950Pro, PCI-E(x16), Mem 1480MHz GDDR3, GPU 620MHz, 36Pipes, VIVO £114.99 £135.11
LN12200
2Gb (2X1Gb) Corsair TwinX XMS2, DDR2 PC5400 (667), 240 Pin, Non-ECC Unbuffered, CAS 4-4-4-12 £109.54 £128.71
LN11608
400w Silverpower SP-400P1B thermal controlled cooling fans £20.79 £24.43
If you change any quantities, please re-calculate your basket
Scan Finance - Buy Now Pay Nov 2007
Pay £47.58 deposit and then NO payments for 9 months, then settle the balance and pay NO interest.

Scan Finance - More Sense Than Money

Net Total £404.93

Carriage £0.00

V.A.T. £70.86

TOTAL £475.79


The E4300 is an absolutely great overclocker!! You should be able to get it to at least 2.7ghz easily without even overclocking the memory!! For a budget system the E4300 is better than using a E6300 since it has the 9X multiplier of the E6600 and only a 800mhz FSB! This is unlike the E6300 whcih has a lower multiplier and a higher FSB. The Silverpower PSU has had good reviews and supposedly is able to output is maximum 400w quite comfortably!!

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

The X2 3800 system is also fabulous value for money!

[Russ]

i'd prefer to go down the c2d route personally, fancy a change from amd, and only heard good things about the c2d chips. is there any difference between the chips apart from clock speeds? looks like i can upgrade after all

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Some of the Core 2 chips have more cache onboard and a higher FSB.The E4*** series lack the virtualisation technology that the E6*** series has but this should make no difference for games!

I run my E4300 at 2.85ghz(normal spped is 1.8ghz) in my Shuttle SD37P2 SFF system;you should be able to hit 3ghz with 667mhz memory running at full speed with other systems! The SD37P2 cannot stably go over a 320mhz FSB!!

[Psychotic Emu]

Go for it, 4300 is gonna be awesome! CAT-THE-FIFTH I think you got it pretty spot on actually. You know how high that mem will go with higher latencies?

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Hi

I am using Geil Value PC5300. The memory timings are 5-5-5-15, I think!! I have not really messed around too much with them as the SD37P2 is a bit picky with memory!!

If you use 800mhz memory and decent motherboard you should be able to go even higher?!

I personally do not like overclocking memory so the E4300 was the perfect overclocking choice for me!!

[Psychotic Emu]

I agree, the 4300 is an excellent buy, especially since faster RAM can cost so much and often gives relatively small imporvements compared to CPU speed