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CPU decision time 2180 or 8400?

Prophet

Prophet

Prophet

Soldato
Joined
5 Oct 2004
Posts
7,395
Location
Notts
May sound a bit of a no brainer but I'm looking to buy a budget gaming PC that will OC nicely and run 24/7 with 100% stability.

Firstly, is the 8400 worth the extra £'s over the 2180 in real world terms?

What stable clock would I expect from either CPU?

What RAM/Motherboard combo are tried and tested?

I could stretch to the 8400 but tbh money isnt flowing as I'd like it so unless the 8400 is superhuman compared to the 2180 I'd rather save the cash for now.
 
Orange Peel said:
May sound a bit of a no brainer but I'm looking to buy a budget gaming PC that will OC nicely and run 24/7 with 100% stability.

Firstly, is the 8400 worth the extra £'s over the 2180 in real world terms?

What stable clock would I expect from either CPU?

What RAM/Motherboard combo are tried and tested?

I could stretch to the 8400 but tbh money isnt flowing as I'd like it so unless the 8400 is superhuman compared to the 2180 I'd rather save the cash for now.
Click to expand...



Well I can only comment on my E2180 experience, as I haven't run an E8400. From a gaming point of view, there isn't a game I have that stresses the E2180 to the max, Crysis, Supreme Commander*, COD4, Company of Heroes, to name but a few. They all seem to be GPU limited. They all run very well with the 8800GT at higher resolutions (usual caveat of Crysis @ 1200x1024).

Is the 8400 worth the extra £90? For gaming purposes not to me, and would be better spent on a faster graphics card.


* I know people say this game is CPU bound, I haven't found that myself, maybe I haven't created enough units or whatever stresses the game! Having said that, got a nice increase in frame rate using the core maximixer tool, it just doesn't use 100% of each core.
 
KelticDaz, noting your system specs, what cooler are using on your E2180? and whats temps are you getting at 3.2GHz. Thats not a bad voltage you got there bud. :)
 
k.Jacko said:
What cooler are using on your E2180? and whats temps are you getting at 3.2GHz
Click to expand...

TT-120 for me at just slightly lower. I can get 3.5Ghz too but it was windows and games stable and then I reverted back to 3.2Ghz.
 
k.Jacko said:
KelticDaz, noting your system specs, what cooler are using on your E2180? and whats temps are you getting at 3.2GHz. Thats not a bad voltage you got there bud. :)
Click to expand...


HSF as in sig :) OCZ Vendetta, didn't want to buy an extreme HSF yet, just wanted one that used standard Intel attachments (so no need to remove mobo to fit). It was a toss-up between this and the Arctic Freezer 7 pro, what swung it for me was the reviews. In every one I read, it beat the 7 hands down. Added to this, it looks better (IMO), and has a standard 92mm fan, so you can change it for a different one if you choose. Great cooler for around £17. Quiet as well, have it set to 37.5% fan speed from the bios, runs at 1390 odd rpm, never raises fan speed except for an Orthos run.

Temps, reaches 58-62C (TAT) after an 8hr+ Orthos run, depending on room temperature. In practise, playing say COD4 for a couple of hours, using the Rivatuner monitor, never gets above around 53C.
 
you could get a 2180 form the MM, overclock it and save that extra money for a quad when they can be used for gaming to their full extent. or buy a better graphics card.
 
I just recently got a E2180 instead of waiting for a wolfy and I dont regret it a sec. With the dough I saved plus alittle saving I had enough to order a 8800GT 512 that should be here monday:)

Eventually I want a E8xxx but I really dont mind waiting for one with this E2180.
 
The E2180 would be the better choice at this stage. If you push it to 3Ghz you'll have plenty of power for any games in the near future. I doubt many people with Wolfs really need the power...yet. And by the time most people do, they will be somewhat cheaper.
 
Gaming pc? E2xxx for sure. I believe theres never really a point to paying over £100 if you are not running some media center / server etc. In this case not even over £50! :) For games just pass on your savings to GPU/Ram and you'll have more performance.
 
Orange Peel said:
I'm looking to buy a budget gaming PC that will OC nicely and run 24/7 with 100% stability
Click to expand...
Well the first question is what's the budget?

Once you decide the budget deduct the cost of an nVidia 8800GT, a nice P35 mobo and 2GB of RAM that can run 400MHz-500MHz then see how much is left for your processor :)
 
As Big.Wayne said above, you need to give some budget ideas. The E8300/8400 would give a good performance boost over a E21xx but then they are that much more expensive.
 
Well he's saying he can stretch to the E8400 if it's that much better than the E2180 but it's probably not really worth it if you're trying to keep it as cheap as possible.

Just go with the E2180. At just over 50 quid it's so cheap that it isn't really a big deal when you do eventually need to upgrade it.
 
Like KelticDaz said, I think you would get a better performance if you brought a 2180 and spent the extra ~£90 on a better gfx card.
 
Intel Core 2 Duo E2180 "LGA775 Conroe" 2.00GHz (800FSB) - Retail
£54.04 inc VAT

Gigabyte GA-P31-DS3L Intel P31 (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard
£52.86 inc VAT

OCZ 4GB (2x2GB) PC2-5400C5 Dual Channel Vista Upgrade Gold Series DDR2 (OCZ2VU6674GK)
£52.86 inc VAT

Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro CPU Cooler (Socket LGA775)
£17.61 inc VAT

Done a rig at this spec before Xmas and it runs at 3.33ghz with a little tweek to the cpu volts (mem/fsb at 333 x 10 multi).
The 4 gig ram even in XP more than makes up for the limited cache of the E2180.
 
As long as you've not got dual graphics cards the E2180 would be fine. I made the mistake of skimping on the cpu and now it can't keep up the Crossfire and is seriously limiting me :(
 
Thanks for the replies guys :)

I'll go for the E2180.

I'm now looing for a motherboard and 4GB RAM combo that will work well with the E2180. There's so many choices I'm getting in a mess deciding what route to take. I'll be running Vista64 and would like the mobo to be as future proof as possible. RAID isnt vitally important but plenty or SATA's and a stable overlock is.
 
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