Athlon 64 X2 4200 to C2D E6600 any noticeable difference?

[malachi]

Hi,
I’m thinking of upgrading my computer to a Core 2 Duo E6600 from my current system which is a Athlon 64 X2 4200(939). Looking at the benchmarks it’s obvious that the E6600 is faster but is it worth me upgrading that I will see a noticeable different in the speed. I do play some games on my computer but at the moment I’m mostly doing video encoding to DVD using WinDVD creator.

 

[Van Diemen]

An E6600 will give you a noticeable difference for video encoding.

 

[hai]

I noticed a different going from my 4200+ @ 2.5 to a e4300 even at 2.5 so think how good it is at 3.2

 

[Quixote]

It depends how far you clock it. At stock or mild overclock I doubt you'll notice a big difference but push it to 3GHZ & it'll be a different story.

 

[malachi]

Thanks, I would be keeping it at stock. Not too keen on overclocking as I dont want to risk doing damage

 

[peetee]

its easy getting a 20% overclock on most chips, and theres sweet FA risk really.

 

[PU7E]

plus the e6600 has 4mb of cache i do belive and more cache speeds up encoding a hell of a lot

 

[Quixote]

its easy getting a 20% overclock on most chips, and theres sweet FA risk really.

I agree. I'm not a big fan of silly mega overclocks which come with all kinds of caveats but a mild overclock (just bump it up a speed grade or two) is almost risk free. It might not work if you don't know what you are doing but you certainly won't cause any damage. You can just set it back to stock. Not to mention, many people on here will be happy to help you with your overclock.

If you don't overclock at all (& that's fair enough), then it's debatable if the upgrade is worth the cost. Yes, it will be faster but enough to justify new MOBO, CPU & RAM ? - I'm not sure.

For your information at stock the following is approximately true :

X2 4200 (Slightly Cheaper) = E6300

X2 4600 (Slightly Cheaper) = E6400

FX 62 (A fair bit more costly) = E6600

Obviously it will vary from one APP to another & the C2D chips are stronger in Encoding.

 

[Tombo]

plus the e6600 has 4mb of cache i do belive and more cache speeds up encoding a hell of a lot

Between the E6300 , E6400 and E6600 the cache difference makes little difference at all. (P.S. why isn't there an E6500)

 

[malachi]

Uuumm....well Im thinking of getting this motherboard. Would it be suitable for overclocking, if I ever decide to? Im thinking of getting a Geforce 8800 too but Im waiting for some proper directx 10 games to come out first before I make up my mind.

 

[pegasus1]

Uuumm....well Im thinking of getting this motherboard. Would it be suitable for overclocking, if I ever decide to? Im thinking of getting a Geforce 8800 too but Im waiting for some proper directx 10 games to come out first before I make up my mind.

Asus P5N-E SLi nForce 650 (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard £82.24 inc VAT
I went from a 3700SD at 2.65 to the above mobo and a E6300 at 3.3ghz and the speed jump just in windows is massive.
XP boots in about half the time and last night i burnt a few CD's and the converted in about half a second per track.
noticed a boost in COH (only game ive tried so far).