Much of a performance change?

jm240 · 11 Mar 2010 at 13:27

Hi all just wondering, do you think there will be much of a noticeable performance enhancement if I upgrade to a 775 Pentium Dual Core E6500 (not C2D as the cache is only 2MB) from a Socket 939 X2 Athlon 3800, or do you think it will be negligable?

Redmint · 11 Mar 2010 at 13:40

The E6500 is a very nice chip and will overclock pretty nicely, so yes you will see a performance boost. However, depending on where you're buying (new/2nd hand) and what the rest of the build is, it might make more sense to go with a budget AM3 build, Intel 775 is considered 'old tech' now so it wont have too much in the way of upgrade options.

stulid · 11 Mar 2010 at 13:45

I use to have an athlon X2 3800 and it was ok in its day, but a mate got a E6600 setup and the speed difference was large.

pastymuncher · 11 Mar 2010 at 13:47

The performance boost will be big but it makes little sense to go down the 775 route at this late stage in it's life. More sense would come from going down the budget AM3 route as Redmint suggests.

jm240 · 11 Mar 2010 at 13:47

Redmint said:
The E6500 is a very nice chip and will overclock pretty nicely, so yes you will see a performance boost. However, depending on where you're buying (new/2nd hand) and what the rest of the build is, it might make more sense to go with a budget AM3 build, Intel 775 is considered 'old tech' now so it wont have too much in the way of upgrade options.

Well, money is really tight atm and the old motherboard on my machine has conked out (939skt) so I am sourcing either a replacement or a new upgrade.

All components are new and as follows:

I've already got a nVidia GPU 7800GT which I'll be keepng along with a case and PSU, the new machine will feature an E6500 chip, 2GB Ballistix 1066mhz, new mATX mobo and 500GB WD Caviar Blue HDD including full retail Windows 7 and Keyboard/Mouse all for £299 including delivery

Don't think I could get an AM3 for anything around that price could I?

pastymuncher · 11 Mar 2010 at 13:50

You can get a AM3 board and cpu for less than £100. Avoid Ballistix as the failure rate is horrendous.

stulid · 11 Mar 2010 at 13:54

Pastymuncher is right, easily get a comparable AM3 for the same cost.

jm240 · 11 Mar 2010 at 14:02

Ok thanks for the advice guys I'll look into AM3. Ballistix is not recommended? I've always had good experiences with Crucial but everyone seems to prefer Corsair

CAT-THE-FIFTH · 11 Mar 2010 at 14:04

The socket 939 version of the X2 3800+ is worth around £40 to £50 on a famous auction site IIRC.

CAT-THE-FIFTH · 11 Mar 2010 at 14:09

I assume you have a decent PSU??

Does your case take an ATX motherboard??

I would probably get something along the lines of the following:

AMD Athlon II X3 435 ~ £61

MSI 770-C45 DDR3 ~ £49

4GB Crucial 1333MHZ DDR3 ~ £80

Samsung F3 500GB ~ £43

Windows 7 64 bit OEM ~ £76

jm240 · 11 Mar 2010 at 14:31

Thanks for the suggestion seems to be about 40 quid more expensive but OEM Windows 7, I'd rather be able to use the OS again on another machine should I choose to upgrade components, OEM does not permit such action if I remember rightly from the OEM Vista / Retail debate?

pastymuncher · 11 Mar 2010 at 14:53

Retail is worth the extra £13 i would say. From his spec you are also getting a tri core cpu rather than a dual core like the E6500.

jm240 · 11 Mar 2010 at 15:33

pastymuncher said:
Retail is worth the extra £13 i would say. From his spec you are also getting a tri core cpu rather than a dual core like the E6500.

Yeah me too. I have it all in the basket, the samsung F2 drive is a 1TB.

The price is now 370 inc delivery as opposed to 299, 70 quid over what is really acceptable and I'm asking if there is much of a performance or benefiit increase from 775 to AM3? I mean is that 70 quid really justified when I'm sure a 775 intel would be just as good...

I mean in my experience most components and hardware become dated or start going wrong in couple of years anyway so I made a pledge to never buy the latest hardware or spend a lot on motherboards ever again. By the time the mobo conks out there's always a new socket and RAM type out so you end up buying a whole new machine instead of upgrading anyway.

Hmm tough call....

CAT-THE-FIFTH · 11 Mar 2010 at 16:05

jm240 said:
Yeah me too. I have it all in the basket, the samsung F2 drive is a 1TB.

The price is now 370 inc delivery as opposed to 299, 70 quid over what is really acceptable and I'm asking if there is much of a performance or benefiit increase from 775 to AM3? I mean is that 70 quid really justified when I'm sure a 775 intel would be just as good...

I mean in my experience most components and hardware become dated or start going wrong in couple of years anyway so I made a pledge to never buy the latest hardware or spend a lot on motherboards ever again. By the time the mobo conks out there's always a new socket and RAM type out so you end up buying a whole new machine instead of upgrading anyway.

Hmm tough call....

The build I suggested has 4GB of DDR3 RAM and the F3 is a much faster drive than the F2. The total comes to £309 including free Supersaver postage. With a 1TB F3 drive(£62) and the retail version of Windows 7(£95) the total comes to around £347.

If you want to go with a cheaper motherboard with 4GB of DDR2 you can get the MSI 740GTM-P25(£38) and 4GB of 800MHZ DDR2(£67) and this will drop the price of the AMD build with a 1TB F3 hard disk,4GB of RAM and the retail version of Windows 7 to around £323. The E6500 build has less RAM and is generally slower especially for non gaming tasks.

If you only get 2GB of 1066MHZ DDR2(£45) the AMD build will cost around the same as the Intel one.

Look at this comparison of the 2.8GHZ E6300 and the 2.9GHZ X3 435:

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/default.aspx?p=112&p2=94&c=1

Even you add 5% to the E6300 scores since the 2.93GHZ E6500 is clocked higher the X3 435 still is faster especially since both the AMD

jm240 · 11 Mar 2010 at 22:31

CAT-THE-FIFTH said:
The build I suggested has 4GB of DDR3 RAM and the F3 is a much faster drive than the F2. The total comes to £309 including free Supersaver postage. With a 1TB F3 drive(£62) and the retail version of Windows 7(£95) the total comes to around £347.

If you want to go with a cheaper motherboard with 4GB of DDR2 you can get the MSI 740GTM-P25(£38) and 4GB of 800MHZ DDR2(£67) and this will drop the price of the AMD build with a 1TB F3 hard disk,4GB of RAM and the retail version of Windows 7 to around £323. The E6500 build has less RAM and is generally slower especially for non gaming tasks.

If you only get 2GB of 1066MHZ DDR2(£45) the AMD build will cost around the same as the Intel one.

Look at this comparison of the 2.8GHZ E6300 and the 2.9GHZ X3 435:

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/default.aspx?p=112&p2=94&c=1

Even you add 5% to the E6300 scores since the 2.93GHZ E6500 is clocked higher the X3 435 still is faster especially since both the AMD

Thanks a bunch for all your advice (and everyone else's) today.

I took the plunge on this budget system and went with your recommendations of the cheap and cheerful AM3 MSI board with the X3 435 chip. 4GB DDR3.

It looks like AM3 has much more capability for future expansions and more life than 775 Intel and for 370 all in, including Win7, can't complain.

Lets hope I don't get any issues with this board freezing up, I've heard the memory volts can cause issues with freezing, but a simple amendment in the BIOS solves it.

molemole0 · 11 Mar 2010 at 22:33

Yes, you should see a reasonable performance boost