dual core on a budget.. a tight one

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?

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

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

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

get an X1950XT for £160

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 :)

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.

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...

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!!

The X2 3800 system is also fabulous value for money!

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 :D

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!! :(

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?

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!!

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