Good upgrade?

Energize · 12 May 2007 at 16:49

Gigabyte GA-965P-DS3
1x1GB Elixir DDR2 800
Intel Core 2 Duo E4300 Retail

£178 inc Del

I know the ram is a crap make but if I use a divider will I need to run the ram past 400Mhz anyway? I only use the pc for gaming and encoding, for which memory bandwidth seems not to matter so I don't have any real wish to overclock it.

Edit I've just seen the E1260 for £15 less. Is this any slower or worse at overclocking than the E4300?

mishima · 12 May 2007 at 17:24

You really could do with 2GB if you are gaming and encoding. Get a cheaper C2D and motherboard, like Gigabyte S3 and upgrade the RAM to 2GB - Crucial, GeIL, OCZ are all very low priced at the moment.

jamie2497 · 12 May 2007 at 17:24

Out of interest how much is the RAM by itself?

If you could stretch to something like this

GeIL 2GB (2x1GB) PC5300C4 667MHz Value DDR2 Dual Channel Kit (GX22GB5300DC)
£47.99
(£56.39)

It would make it run so much better.

Also ive been told to go for the DS3P rather than just the DS3 because its ironed out a lot of the older bugs.

The E4300 just has double the cache of the E1260 as far as i know

Energize · 12 May 2007 at 19:07

Yeah I'll be upgrading to 2GB later, once I sell my old pc. The 1GB DDR2 800 ram is £28 delivered.

£170 now with the cheaper motherboard.

Energize · 13 May 2007 at 21:12

Is the s3 any worse at overclocking than the ds3?

mishima · 13 May 2007 at 21:16

The boards are very similar, and the S3 is a great overclocker so I have heard. Have a look at the reviews - google search! ("Gigabyte S3 review")