E2xxx which should i go for??

[sare^baw's]

E2xxx which should i go for to suit my system ?

i have the upgrade bug but im on a budget, i bought a new 22" monitor and then decided on a gfx card upgrade and got a HIS x1900xt for £60 in MM.

so then i was looking for a cheap pci-e mobo to house my p4 3.0, people suggested upgarding to a dual core cpu and mobo but i dismissed this expecting it to cost the earth, after reading many posts and trying to get my head round the new technology i realised i can make the upgrades without bursting the bank.

so i read the gigabyte GA-P31-DS3L mobo is highly recommended as a budget board and under £50 so i kindas decided i may go for this board, now i want to know what cpu i should get are ound £50, am i as well going for the dual core E2200 since there is not much difference in price ? I will likely o/c to get the extra performance from my system.

my pc is a htpc and i have it very quiet with zalman coolers on the gfx card and cpu, i need to keep it nice and quiet as its in my living room. I play dvds and hi def movies on my plasma and occasionally play the odd game, i want to get into more gaming and try games like cod4 to play lovely on my 22" monitor .

the GA-P31-DS3L has only 1 ide port, currently i run 2 dvd burners and have each as a master on each ide channel, i often burn to both burners at the same time, will this no longer be possible if i only have 1 ide channel.

also here is my proposed set up please tell me if theres any particular thing here will be creating a problem in performance or compatability.

new hardware

GA-P31-DS3L
core 2 E2xxx
HIS x1900xt 512mb gfx card

ill be using it with these existing parts of my system

XP mce
seasonic 430w psu
1gb ocz pc4400 ram heatsink 2 x 512 dual channel

 

[Superjeep4x4]

Hi. I havent recieved them yet but you will basiclly have the same set up im going for. Same MB, gpu and I think the fellas here talked me into a E2180 instead of a E4300. For a HTPC there might be a better board out there for ya with more HTPC-friendly options but im more versed with the AMD arena then Intel on that. For what your using it for id imagine a E2xxx would do the job very nice.

You would be able to use both dvd burners with 1 ide but it will split the speed between the two so they would both slow down but as im looking at boards it seems finding 2 IDE is becoming very rare. You would just have to set 1 as master and one as slave. another thing is if your keeping it quiet and a HTPC I would doubt you would be overclocking so from the looks of it the intel G3x chipset seems to be the "HTPCesque" micro atx boards and will probably find an even cheaper price then that board. Those boards also come with built in graphics which can come in very, very handy if your vid card decides to die on you.

If it were me, and this is before all the fine gents throw in there two cents I would probably get a decent little G3x board and a 2180. If you wanted to spend even less you could pick up a cheap AM2 690 chipset and lets say a AMD 4xxx+ series chip. The AMD solution would probably be cheaper and be plenty of power for what your doing.

 

[sare^baw's]

well i was considering the e2200 as its £57 with free delivery and an extra 0.2ghz over the e2180, the gigabyte GA-P31-DS3L mobo i can get for £48 from another place buy something for £2 and get free delivery next day

i just want to be sure that all my hardware is compatable and no particular item is letting my set up down, i know i am limited as i have a htpc but i am surely able to o/c the cpu without going into noisy fancs, i would probably get a zalman cooler or something quiet.

i am happy with the noise level of my htpc so as long as i dont add any noisy fans ill be ok. i have a vf900 on my 6800le so it will be going onto my x1900xt to keep it quiet.

 

[Superjeep4x4]

I see no problem at all with this set up. I made a post early this morning and have been reading all the posts on the forum here on the E21xx series and have heard nothing but good things if ya oc them.

 

[sare^baw's]

I see no problem at all with this set up. I made a post early this morning and have been reading all the posts on the forum here on the E21xx series and have heard nothing but good things if ya oc them.

yes indeed, is the E21xx series different from the E2200 as far as oc'ing goes

 

[Superjeep4x4]

No from what I have read it will clock the same. You might consider that chip if its in the budget though because its a little faster so it would run a tad cooler as you wouldn't have to overclock as much(200GHz anyways). All in all they are close.

 

[sare^baw's]

only £6 difference between the e2200 and the e2180

 

[pegasus1]

E2180 and with an AC Pro7 it will run at 3.3ghz easily, add to that 2x2Gig PC5400 and you will have a nice system. The E2180 has a x10 multi so very easy to OC.
Built one the other day and its 24 Orthos stable.

 

[sare^baw's]

E2180 and with an AC Pro7 it will run at 3.3ghz easily, add to that 2x2Gig PC5400 and you will have a nice system. The E2180 has a x10 multi so very easy to OC.
Built one the other day and its 24 Orthos stable.

hi m8 im gonna order my E2180 today and gigabyte mobo and ac freezer 7 pro, i reckon the 2 x 1gig ram will be enough for my needs.

someone recommended this geil ram to match my mobo im getting CLICKY as some memory modules have problems with some of the gigabyte mobos

 

[Columbo]

Ive got an e2200 coming tomorrow so I'll post up what they clock like when I've had a play. The 11x multi was what attracted me to it over the 2180.

 

[MeatLoaf]

Your existing RAM wont work. You need DDR2 RAM, you PC4400 is DDR1

 

[pegasus1]

hi m8 im gonna order my E2180 today and gigabyte mobo and ac freezer 7 pro, i reckon the 2 x 1gig ram will be enough for my needs.

someone recommended this geil ram to match my mobo im getting CLICKY as some memory modules have problems with some of the gigabyte mobos

Remeber that due to the 333fsb and 10 multi on the E2180, you dont need PC6400 Ram as PC5400 will be running at 1:1 if you clock your CPU to 3.3mhz (well 3.33mhz to be exact).

 

[sare^baw's]

Your existing RAM wont work. You need DDR2 RAM, you PC4400 is DDR1

thanks mate ill perhaps buy the geil on offer on ocuk at £30 for 2 x 1gb pc6400, pity my old memory wont work more money sigh

 

[pegasus1]

thanks mate ill perhaps buy the geil on offer on ocuk at £30 for 2 x 1gb pc6400, pity my old memory wont work more money sigh

With that memory you can drop the multi so you could have 400 fsb x 8 multi + 3.2ghz at 1:1. Every little helps

 

[sare^baw's]

Remeber that due to the 333fsb and 10 multi on the E2180, you dont need PC6400 Ram as PC5400 will be running at 1:1 if you clock your CPU to 3.3mhz (well 3.33mhz to be exact).

sorry but i dont understand that bit

i get the first bit, are you saying i need to go for pc5400 ram and if so why ?

the gigabyte mobo im getting is fussy with what ram works and that geil ram was recommended to be compatable

 

[sare^baw's]

With that memory you can drop the multi so you could have 400 fsb x 8 multi + 3.2ghz at 1:1. Every little helps

are you saying ill be able to oc my cpu higher if i use pc5400 ram

 

[Hesky82]

No, you will find that this Geil PC6400 is more flexible than pc5400.

If you were to stick with 1:1 you may be able to tighten up the timings a little, maybe bring it down from cas4 to cas3 as you may not ever need to run them at their rated 400mhz (800ddr)

or as pegasus1 suggested you could drop the multi and run the cpu 1:1 with the pc6400 ram at its rated speed.

 

[SDK^]

are you saying ill be able to oc my cpu higher if i use pc5400 ram

What's he's saying is go for the 2140 (8x Multi) rather than the 2200 (11x Multi).
It does makes sense; your new RAM (GEIL 800 DDR2) will run at 400 bus speed. 400 x 8 (2140) is 3.2GHz and it's unlikely you'll get more out of it (2200) using the stock cooler.

 

[pegasus1]

No, you will find that this Geil PC6400 is more flexible than pc5400.

If you were to stick with 1:1 you may be able to tighten up the timings a little, maybe bring it down from cas4 to cas3 as you may not ever need to run them at their rated 400mhz (800ddr)

or as pegasus1 suggested you could drop the multi and run the cpu 1:1 with the pc6400 ram at its rated speed.

Tighter timings on C2D systems show no or very very little performance gain.
PC 5400 RAM is designed for a 333 fsb CPU and Mobo.

If you ran your Mobo FSB at 333 with the E2180 using its 10 Multi then the CPU would be running at 3330 Ghz (333x10) which is the stock speed of PC5400 Ram.
If you instaled PC6400 Ram then it would be running at well below its stock speed (333 rather than 400). Now you could just crank up the fsb to 400 but this would need a lot of CPU VCore and top notch cooling.
I only used PC5400 Ram cos it was a fair bit cheaper than PC5400 stuff and as anything over 3.3ghz would probably have needed better cooling.
Now if you get PC6400 ram (400fsb) you could drop the multiplyer and raise the FSB for the same CPU speed but with more bandwidth due to the higher FSB.

1 320fsb x 10 multi = 3.2ghz

2 400fsb x 8 multi = 3.2ghz

Option 2 would run faster due to the higher bandwidth, although this is more pronounced in quad cores as they are bandwidth hungry beasts.

Simple

 

[MeatLoaf]

are you saying ill be able to oc my cpu higher if i use pc5400 ram

No, if you use PC6400 ram you can get a higher potential overclock