4600x2 (CPU only) or E4300 + mobo + ram

[benskia]

Hi,

Really struggling to make my mind up over this one.
I'm interested in moving to dual-core from a 3700 running at 2.8ghz.
My main use is games and music production (cubase / nuendo + vst plug-ins).
The 4600x2's are at a nice price at the moment, but I wonder how much extra performance an E4300 would give & whether it would be worth the additional £300 on top of CPU costs for the mobo and 2gb of ram.

I have the cash, but if the performance wouldn't be like at least 30% difference I'd probably put the money into an additional 32" LCD TV for the spare room.

I would overclock either of these CPU's as far as possible on stock volts.

Cheers y'all.

 

[Trusty]

Depends how look at it, you still get quite good money for socket 939 stuff so you might be better off selling that then getting Intel!

 

[El Jimben]

You'd be better off getting an Opteron 165 or 170 I reckon. They have 2x1MB cache as standard and clock ridiculously on stock volts, mine goes from 2Ghz - 2.8GHz at 1.35v

 

[easyrider]

A E4300 and an asrock vista mobo thats supports DDR1 would thrash an FX 62


cost


140 all in!

 

[jaffacakes]

if your going for a conroe it might be worth getting a decent mobo, asrock ones don't clock well, i had the Asrock ConRoe 945G and my 1.86 allendale wouldn't clock past 2ghz, anything over 287 in the FSB and it failed to boot, not even so much as POST, just nothing, had to disconnect and wait for 10 minutes then reconnect and quickly lover the FSB before it got stuck and crashed, my temps were 36 IDLE too so it wasn't even a temperature problem. i recommend at least the following boards:

Gigabyte DS3,
Asus P5B
Asus P5B Deluxe
Bad Axe

 

[easyrider]

if your going for a conroe it might be worth getting a decent mobo, asrock ones don't clock well, i had the Asrock ConRoe 945G and my 1.86 allendale wouldn't clock past 2ghz, anything over 287 in the FSB and it failed to boot, not even so much as POST, just nothing, had to disconnect and wait for 10 minutes then reconnect and quickly lover the FSB before it got stuck and crashed, my temps were 36 IDLE too so it wasn't even a temperature problem. i recommend at least the following boards:

Gigabyte DS3,
Asus P5B
Asus P5B Deluxe
Bad Axe

The E4300 has a 9x multi unlike the 6300 7x multi making even the rubbish clocking mobos give 2.7ghz

 

[jaffacakes]

true... go for the asrock then lol

 

[Kaiju]

All the talk about Conroe systems being blistering fast is all well and good, but I still feel the same way about my 3700+. Playing games, unzipping files, encoding media, messing around with Fruity loops á la music editing, it's all still performing well above my needs. I have the 3700+ @ 2.8 too and it's certainly no slouch.

As games is stated as one of your reasons for the upgrade, it could well be possible that a graphics card upgrade may benefit you instead as you won't get much more FPS with a S939 dual core. The Conroe on the otherhand will give you a welcomed FPS boost, but at a much greater cost of upgrading your memory and motherboard (also depending on how old your graphics card is).

I have a A8N32 Deluxe and 2GB of OCZ 2GB Plat EB's which are pretty much at the end spectrum of S939's technology (still going strong new at £120 and £150 respectively), so it would also depend on how much you can get for your current kit.

 

[easyrider]

The beauty of the 4300 is the nine multi.

He could easily get 2.7ghz flaw an equivalent AMD x2 and keep his DDR1

 

[peetee]

for an extra few £10s you could do what everyones suggesting and get the 4300 & a dual vista and use current ram. Id personally opt for this, then you can upgrade ddr2 when you feel the need to, and then the motherboard to something more beasty!!! ASRock dont half offer a good stepping stone for upgrades!

 

[Trusty]

ASRock dont half offer a good stepping stone for upgrades!

Very true!

 

[Limehouse]

{snip} i had the Asrock ConRoe 945G and my 1.86 allendale wouldn't clock past 2ghz, anything over 287 in the FSB and it failed to boot, not even so much as POST{snip}

Got the exact same Mobo on my mai rig, managed to get my P4 2.8 to 3.38, not spectacular, but my problem wasn't that it wouldn't POST, mine posted fine and a message came up about the HDD being unable to read from? No idea where that came from, but I lowered the FSB down by 1 and it worked, I really wanted to break the 3.4 mark as well....
Nevermind eh?

 

[~>Dg<~]

id wait til march april is it when good drop in prices and pick up a 66oo conroe if needed.depends on what you game at if your current rig is fast enough dont fall into the dreaded ive goto upgrade trap.if your pc does what it supposed to at mo why upgrade.what games you play do they stress pc .