E4300 or E6300 for ASRock 775DUAL-VSTA?

[BigToe]

Hi,

I'm looking for the cheapest route to Core 2 Duo, and as I have an aging Socket A system with DDR1 & AGP video card it would seem the ASRock 775DUAL-VSTA motherboard is the best bet; allowing me to use my old graphics card and RAM.

Now, I know this motherboard is no real overclocker (no voltage adjustment for a start!) but I have heard of people pushing to around 300MHz FSB with E6300 processors. Not incredible obviously at around 2.1GHz, but still a slight improvement for a combo that costs around £150.

My question is, should I go for the E6300 or the E4300? The E4300 has a lower FSB of 200MHz and higher multiplier of 9, so in theory it should be possible to reach around 2.7GHz on this modest setup, providing it doesn't need any extra voltage at that speed. Please bare in mind that in the future I will be looking to keep the processor and upgrade to a "real" 775 mobo with DDR2.

Anyone got any experience with these processors? I'm a C2D noob, when do you usually have to start adding the volts to push them further?

 

[Big.Wayne]

an e4300 'should' produce a higher clock if your FSB limited, which in your example seems to be the case. There will be some results on the new CPU's trickling in today/this week so keep your eye open!

 

[oweneades]

E4300 for that board no questions asked.

The FSB limit for the board seems to be around the 300mhz (bios max is 340mhz) area so for each cpu you are looking at:

E4300 (9x300) = 2.7ghz

E6300 (7x300) = 2.1ghz

All things being equal at those clocks the E4300 is a much better buy.

Aslo IIRC most of the reviews I have seen have pushed the E4300 to 2.9ghz on stock volts so the 2.7ghz estimate should be achievable on the Vsata.

 

[BigToe]

Cheers guys.

Think I'll place my order today then. Having played on a C2D system recently I got the upgrade itch but can't afford to replace all my components. I'm coming from a Barton @ 2.0GHz so I'm expecting a nice boost

From what I've read I don't think I'll miss the virtualization tech.

 

[oweneades]

Cheers guys.

Think I'll place my order today then. Having played on a C2D system recently I got the upgrade itch but can't afford to replace all my components. I'm coming from a Barton @ 2.0GHz so I'm expecting a nice boost

From what I've read I don't think I'll miss the virtualization tech.

Should be a very nice boost indeed!

I just picked upmy laptop with a C2D T5600 in it (1.8ghz/2mb cache) and its quite quick indeed. (puts my desktop celery D 356(512)@4.3ghz to shame lol).