£350 to spend

[dmurray0]

Upgrading in the next week or two and just need a cpu to finish off the upgrade. Got a Asrock 939 board (keeping my AGP card a bit longer), 2x512 Geil's, Artic 64 cooler and now need the CPU. I mainly use the PC for encoding (about 95% of the time) so was wondering if the Dual Core 4400 or Opteron 175 was the better option. Know zilch about overclocking, but am willing to learn!! Advice please......

Thanks,

Damien

 

[powned]

dont know much about the optys but imo the 4400 would be a good choice with its 1mb cache per core, i am going for the 4400 with my new build

 

[trojan698]

Go for the 4400+ imo, the price difference between the opty and x2 isnt much and both will probably clock equally well.

 

[easyrider]

Go for the opty 170.
Same ammount of cache and will clock better than the 4400.

 

[kbc]

Upgrading in the next week or two and just need a cpu to finish off the upgrade. Got a Asrock 939 board (keeping my AGP card a bit longer), 2x512 Geil's, Artic 64 cooler and now need the CPU. I mainly use the PC for encoding (about 95% of the time) so was wondering if the Dual Core 4400 or Opteron 175 was the better option. Know zilch about overclocking, but am willing to learn!! Advice please......

Thanks,

Damien

Either would do nicely, if you can get the 175 for the same price as the AthlonX2 4400+, then get the 175, always nice to have a server chip under your belt. The Opteron 170 costs more than the 4400+... and if overclocking isn't your cup of tea, then go with the cheaper 4400+, has a higher stock speed. They will both clock and benchmark similarly on decent air cooling...

 

[dmurray0]

Cheers for the advice. Might plump for the 4400. Have never overclocked before, and was wondering if I overclocked a bit how much time would I be able to save encoding a 700mb file, for example? If it's only a minute or two, I might as well leave it at stock level.

 

[trojan698]

You wouldnt really save a great deal of time tbh

 

[lemonkettaz]

go for the 4400... its cheaper....

plus at stock its 2.2ghz... whereas the oppy170 is 2ghz.

the opp170 will overclock better... but wow, you can hit a good 2.7ghz with the 4400.. thats good enough..

unless you become addicted.. and turn hardcore

 

[Mr Mister]

go for the 4400... its cheaper....

plus at stock its 2.2ghz... whereas the oppy170 is 2ghz.

the opp170 will overclock better... but wow, you can hit a good 2.7ghz with the 4400.. thats good enough..

unless you become addicted.. and turn hardcore

If you want hardcore then its mach 2 gt territory. Im hardcore

 

[lemonkettaz]

with a car like that in your sig... i expected nothing less than you to be hardcore

 

[easyrider]

You wouldnt really save a great deal of time tbh

I dont know a good extra 600-700 mhz never does nay harm when number crunching and encoding.