Best processor for an average machine

[Vertigo]

Contemplating upgrading the girlfriend's box and was wondering which processor would be the best bet. All we seem to get from the reviews is how the top of the range chips compare and very little on the lower-end models.

So, which of these processors would you say was the best bet? I'm sticking with dual-core rather than single as I think it's a lot more future-proof with the way things are going. Also, no "but you can overclock it" comments please, whatever processor is used will be run at stock speed.

1. Pentium 4 915 "Presler" 2.8Ghz - £106
2. Pentium 4 945 "Presler" 3.4Ghz - £129
3. Core 2 Duo E6300 "Conroe" 1.86Ghz - £135
4. Athlon 64 X2 3800+ (AM2) - £112
5. Athlon 64 X2 4200+ (AM2) - £141

With the frankly ridiculous amounts of hype surrounding Conroe you'd think that all of Intel's previous chips were now totally obsolete but how do the lower Conroe models perform? Can the E6300 really match or surpass the performance of the P4 945 which has nearly twice the clock speed? How do the X2s compare with the recent price drops?

 

[Vertigo]

I know I know.. but Conroe mate... if your starting new I would go with it

Conroe E6300. End of.

Sorry guys but this is just the kind of "Conroe pwns all" fanboyism that I'm trying to get past here.

We're not talking about the high-end models here, we're talking the lowest processor with a measly 1.86Ghz clock speed and half the L2 cache of the higher models. If, despite these limitations, it can still put up a good showing against the 945 then fair enough but I'd like some hard facts before I assume it's the next coming.

 

[Vertigo]

simple answer is its faster than all the rest with a moderate overclock

Argh! What did I say about overclocking?

Not being funny mate but do a google the cache size and its low clock speed still make it a better cpu than all the otheres for the price.

That may be the case, and if it is then great, I'd go for that over the P4. All I'm saying is that I'd like some hard figures to back it up rather than people just posting that the Conroe is better with no further info as you don't know whether these opinions are based on facts or "fanboyism" [/QUOTE]

why but old tech like the 900 seires cpu's?

Err, because it's faster maybe? If the P4 945 does turn out to be faster than the E6300 then it would make sense to buy the 945, especially paired with a board which could take a Conroe at a later date.

why buy am2?

Why not? If an AMD AM2 socket chip provides the best bang for buck then I'd go AM2, this is the whole point of this thread, to work out the best option!

mine spanks my opty 170 running at 2.8ghz (fx62 speeds) not by a little but by a massive margin they really are that good.

And what model is that? Not an E6300 I'll wager! Please read my original post again - I'm talking about the low end models here!

 

[Vertigo]

The measly 1.83Ghz Conroe still seems to outperform the 3.73Ghz Pentium 965EE in a large number of tests. Sure its not a 100% win in favour of the Conroe, but its quite amazine none the less. Moving down to a 3.4Ghz P4, and the Conroe looks even stronger.

Not only that at 1.83Ghz the Conroe is insanely easy on power requirements, pulling in results that only the 35W ultra low power version of the AMD X2 3800 can beat, and once you consider power V performance the Conroe is still the best.

You said its for your girlfriend, well if I were you I wouldnt even bother to overclock it. It's gonna be a good performance regardless. Get decent ram, but dont go over the top. The Conroe is very 'easy' of its memory, so going for ultra expensive low latency DDR2 memory wont buy you a big performance boost. If you think you may overclock however its quite handy to get memory with a higher clock rate DDR800 or at least DDR667, as you'll want to keep the memory running in line with the processors FSB.

My Girlfriend's into gaming, but only has a 2.8Ghz P4, and Im pretty sure that a 1.83Ghz Conroe would be a decent upgrade for her

Here's a link with loads of tests showing the E6300 at stock, and clocked at 2.94Ghz, a Pentium D at stock, and at 4.2Ghz, and AMD X2 3800 at stock, and at 3Ghz.
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/core2duo-e6300_10.html

Thanks for that, just the kind of informed post I was after.

The chip would definitely be run at stock and the lower power requirements of the Conroes is something I'd not considered until now. This could be very handy as a very quiet cooling system could be used.

The machine is mainly used for basic web and email type use but she does play games from time to time so something that can handle these "reasonably" is needed. At present she's got an old Athlon XP2400+ with my old 9800Pro which just about manages with most of the things she runs so an E6300 would almost be overkill.

A tempting alternative would be to get a single-core P4 3.2 for £65 with a cheapish motherboard that is Conroe compatible. This would still be a useful upgrade from the current chip but would allow a drop-in replacement to a faster Conroe at a later date.

Decisions decisions.

 

[Vertigo]

Sounds like you dont want to buy the best chip no matter what we say.

Oh do stop spouting rubbish

Weve told you the E6300 is the best and even given you some results to prove it http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cp...o-e6300_10.html

Err no, your first post consisted of this:

Conroe E6300. End of.

Very constructive! As for providing "results to prove it", some others have posted links but this is the first time you've posted any.

If the E6300 really is the best chip then that's great, I'll go with that and don't have a problem with it. I'm just trying to ascertain whether it is in fact the best. Given what's been posted so far it does indeed appear to be the best option but there's far too much assumption going on with regards to Conroe, as amply demonstrated by a couple of easyrider's comments:

"why but old tech like the 900 seires cpu's?" - Err, because they might be faster? Just because something is "old tech" doesn't mean it's automatically worse.
"why buy am2?" - So AM2 is automatically crap compared to Conroe is it, regardless of the processors involved?

These are exactly the kind of Conroe-fanboy comments I've been on about all long, and what I'm trying to get past to discover if the E6300 really is the best option or whether it's a victim of hype and an AMD or P4 would be a better option at this price point.

 

[Vertigo]

Im not spouting any rubbish

Try "Sounds like you dont want to buy the best chip no matter what we say." - Utter twaddle.

i told you which was best in the first post, short and sweet

And sounded just like all the "Conroe rulez" fanboys in the process. The fact that you don't see this is worrying tbh.

I never posted any results

Afraid you did, right there in post number 19.

The results you think I eventually posted...

I think you posted? Better check that post number 19 again mate.

...was a link i copied from Corasik

That's as maybe but you still posted them again

hence why i said "we've told you E6300 is the best" and not "Ive told you E6300 is the best"

So when you said "we", you actually meant "other people"?

Your not going to get many hands on reviews of a E6300 as I think theres only 2 or 3 people on this forum who have them atm. you can only google results like everyone else.

Fair enough, I just wanted to garner opinions from anyone that did happen to have one or had some handy links for me to check out. I shall also do some searching myself of course.

 

[Vertigo]

Why won't you just believe us the Conroe is better...

I'm fully prepared to, but only when backed up with some hard facts rather than people just claiming it's better. I'm trying to separate fact from hype, why is this so hard to understand?

You might wan to relax a little vertigo, you ask people for advice and then throw it back in their face?

I'm not throwing advice back in people's faces, I'm throwing back unsupported opinion. If the E6300 is the fastest chip then fine, I have no problem believing that but only when supported with some figures, just as Corasik provided. I'm not the slightest bit interested in posts such as "Conroe E6300, end of" or "Conroe, job done" which are not backed up with any reasoning or figures as there's no way of telling whether these conclusions are the result of reasoned investigation on the part of the poster or what I call "fanboyism", where the poster has just bought into the hype and is assuming the Conroe is faster.

are you serious? lmao!

Of course I am, are you!? Note that I said "If the 945 does turn out to be faster than the E6300"! Having read the very useful link that Corasik provided, it does indeed appear that the E6300 is significantly faster than the 945 but if it had turned out that the 945 was quicker then yes I may well have gone with one of those as it's also cheaper, why is that so hard to understand? I strongly suspect you completely failed to read what I said and assumed I was claiming the 945 was faster than the E6300.

am2 does not work out the best option bang for buck conroe smacks its ass and sends it to sleep

It may well be the case that Conroe is a better bang-for-buck processor than any of the AM2 chips but comments such as the above and "why buy am2" with no reasoning or references just paint you as a Conroe fanboy I'm afraid.

troll

the low end 6300 smacks the similar price amd x 3800 on the butt.

what don't you understand?

I don't understand why you're incapable of restricting your comments to the subject in hand and providing anything resembling a reasoned argument.

Have a look at Corasik's post for an example of what I was after - reasoned argument backed up by a very informative review related directly to my question. All we get from you, OTOH, is how Conroe "smacks butt" and "sends AM2 to sleep", comments on the performance of your E6600 which are irrelevant and talk about overclocking which I specifically said I wasn't at all interested in.

As I've said above, you, Devious and others may well have reached your conclusions on the back of facts, figures & reviews, in which case just point me in the right direction as Corasik did and that'd be great. The problem is you don't post anything of the sort, you just post short quips about how awesome Conroe is and there's no way of telling whether your opinions are based on fact or hype and hearsay.

 

[Vertigo]

This man is on the ball, if you don't get conroe you are a fool.

More reasoned argument

EDIT: Actually, I can't be bothered with this thread anymore. Many thanks to Corasik for being about the only person who understood what I was on about and posted some useful info and a good link. It does indeed appear that the E6300 is the best processor out of the ones I listed, despite its clock speed and cache deficiency compared to some others, which is what I needed to know. Some of you will now no doubt claim that this is what you were telling me all along and it's my own stupid fault for not listening, whilst being totally unable to grasp why I wasn't prepared to rely on your unsupported "omg, Conroe rulez!" type posts. Whatever

 

[Vertigo]

My post in another thread:

P4s don't even come into the equation. So I stand by my comment. You don't buy conroe you are a fool (or a fan-boy). Don't call me one, i've had 6 AMD rigs, XP, then a awsome XP-M, then 3200, 3700 and then a X2.

Fine, so why didn't you just give me a link to that in the first place rather than posting "Conroe, job done"?

 

[Vertigo]

These do? 6300 is currently the best value CPU on the market especially for games and things like winrar

Yep, excellent thank-you! Why couldn't people just post things like this to start with, it would have saved so much grief?

 

[Vertigo]

I sympathise with your longing for more actual data on the subject but you must understand that as abrupt as 'Conroe, nuff said' (or some such) is, it still contains within in it the abbreviated knowledge of some quite well informed people (not of course that you are to know that unless you cross-examine them).

Exactly. As I don't frequent this forum a great deal and don't know the characters involved, all I see is a bunch of posters all shouting "of course Conroe pwns all, what are you, stupid!?" which is hardly constructive.

Further, the 4th argument of evidence, as suggested by Henry Sidgwick, is to test consensus. And at least on that front you can be sure that Conroe is widely accepted to be the 'best thing since sliced bread'.

It certainly does appear that way.

 

[Vertigo]

So you were considering buying a slower older chip?

Give me strength! You really need to learn to read. I said that IF the 945 turned out to be faster then I'd consider going with that rather than the E6300. The fact that the E6300 turns out to be quicker is utterly irrelevant, I was postulating a course of action in the event that the 945 had been quicker. At the time I made this comment I didn't yet know which was faster.

I had already stated the conroe was faster but you didn't believe.

All you'd stated up to that point was "simple answer is its faster than all the rest with a moderate overclock" which I was unprepared to accept without supporting stats and you also mentioned overclocking despite my comments on this in the opening post. Is the problem here that you're offended that I didn't "believe" you when you posted unsupported opinion?

You believe a review on the internet but not first hand experience coming from someone who has had both AMD and 900 series cpu's in the past?

I believe comprehensive reviews with figures I can look at to draw comparisons over your unsubstantiated comments, yes. That you find this surprising amazes me. As for your "first hand" experience, have you benchmarked an E6300 at stock speeds? If so post the results otherwise your "experience" isn't relevant.

Your arguement is niether reasoned or very well put.You refuse to take advice from people that clearly know more than you

LMAO! The entire point has just flown straight over your head, hasn't it?

To summarise for the umpteenth time, it may well be that you know more than I do on this subject but unless you post facts and figures to substantiate your claims how am I supposed to know whether you're speaking from a genuine position of authority or just spouting hype and making assumptions?.

and have actually compared conroe against other cpu's available in real world tests.

Well from what you've said so far the only Conroe you've done any comparisons with is your E6600, which isn't what I'm asking about.

At stock of 2.4ghz (no overclocking) my E6600 was faster than my opty 170 running at the speed of the FX 62 by a staggering 9 seconds in 1mb super PI.

And how is this in any way relevant to my original question regarding the E6300? As the E6300 has half the cache, you can't even extrapolate results from the E6600.

I have posted screenies of my conroe showing how much faster it is.These are not opinions this is hard fact photo evidence.I really dont see what else you need.

Maybe something relevant to the E6300 processor I'm talking about, as others have posted.

 

[Vertigo]

Thanks for the support t31os and also thanks to those that have posted facts, figures and links for me to check out.

As for those that are incapable of reading and understanding basic English, whatever. I really can't be bothered any more. The thread has (finally) served its purpose. I'm out of here.