Pentium D 805 or C2D E6300???

mince bigalow · 23 Dec 2006 at 00:30

Hi all, I'm about to upgrade my Media Center PC as it's starting to really chug under Vista. I used to be really into upgrading etc but have been out of the game for ages; the PC is an Athlon XP 1700+!

I'm pretty sure the motherboard I'm going to get is an ASROCK 775DUAL-VSTA, so the question is which processor to get and do I really need to upgrade my RAM (166MHz Samsung DDR)?

I want to overclock to get the best value out of either the PD 805 or C2D E6300. Which will work best with this mobo, and is the C2D worth twice the cash? Also should I upgrade the RAM now also, and if so, what should I go for to suit the mobo/proc combo.

Please note, I'm trying to spend as little cash on this as poss. Max £200 hopefully. Basically I want the best price/perf ratio possible.

Many thanks for helping me out

joeyjojo · 23 Dec 2006 at 00:49

Try your best to get the core 2. Well worth it.

lay-z-boy · 23 Dec 2006 at 01:48

Core 2 duo, no competition.

Snapshot · 23 Dec 2006 at 07:54

The 820 is approximately .75 of the performance of the E6300, according to SiSoft Sandra. The advantage of an E6300 in a media centre PC is that it runs much cooler than the 820 so there should be less fan noise.

That RAM is going to be the bottleneck. From the Dual-VSTA thread I believe there's not much difference between DDR400 and DDR2 on that board so it would be worth getting some secondhand DDR400. You could then sell your existing CPU, mobo & RAM as a functioning unit.

Get your posts up to 250 and you can join the MM.

Jonathan

SiD-P · 23 Dec 2006 at 10:56

The E6300 is the better of the 2 CPUs.

My advice is add an extra £30 or so to your budget (if its possible), it will allow for a much better setup. I would say:

E6300
ASRock CONROEXFIRE-eSATA2 SKT775 945P
OCZ 1GB DDR2-533 PC2-4200 (OCZ25331024V)

or even
Corsair 1024MB DDR2 XMS2-5300/5400 (667/675MHz) 4-4-4-12 2x512mb (TWIN2X1024-5400C4)

£230 or there about, I build 1 just last week,
look around and get the best deals.

Nogimmix · 23 Dec 2006 at 15:54

I moved up from a 805 @ 3.6 to a E6300, which is currently at 2.6 and the performance is so much better and quieter.

I've also got a Zalman HD160 media case and it is extremely quiet thanks to the E6300, with the temps being at 43 idle.

Go on, go for the Conroe, you won't regret it

jongeeone · 23 Dec 2006 at 17:09

Yep go conroe, its the way forward

mince bigalow · 24 Dec 2006 at 14:45

Thanks very much for the info guys. It looks like the C2D is the way to go then.

So if I was to get the DUAL-VSTA board, what is the maximum overclock I would be looking at if I was to get some DDR400/DDR2 ram also? From what I've read the board wont go above 300fsb. Is that going to really hold me back? If so are there any other good/cheap mobos around?

I'm trying not to spend too much on this upgrade TBH, as it's just a media center PC, and the XP1700+ copes OK.

SiD-P · 24 Dec 2006 at 19:40

If the board will only do 300fsb, your overclock will be limited to only 2.1ghz.
Going even £20 over budget will allow for a better board & a better overclock.

My advice is go for the ASRock CONROEXFIRE-eSATA2 SKT775 945P (cost around £20 more than the DUAL-VSTA. DDR2 400 will not only be about a tenner cheaper than somin like this OCZ 1GB DDR2-533 PC2-4200 (OCZ25331024V)

mince bigalow · 24 Dec 2006 at 19:49

Thanks Sid. So using the CPU/mobo/RAM you recommended, what overclock did you manage to achieve?

If the VSTA board will go to a max of 300fsb, does that mean that the theoretical maximum I could get with the Pentium D 805 is 6GHz (20*300)? If so would I not be worth going for this and looking to overclock the PD to about 3.4GHz? It would cost much less than the other mobo and C2D?

SiD-P · 24 Dec 2006 at 20:54

mince bigalow said:
If the VSTA board will go to a max of 300fsb, does that mean that the theoretical maximum I could get with the Pentium D 805 is 6GHz (20*300)?

NO. the cpu core would get very hot (most probably melt if they did not come with a safty shut off feature) it will need far too much Vcore to get to 6GHz.

The C2Ds overclock well due to their low stock vCore, hence they produce less heat.

The ConRoeXFire-eSATA2 is not as fast as say the 965 and 975, but this is to be expected as it is based on the 945P chipset and many improvements towards performance had been made since the 945. I would say it is more suited to the C2D then the ageing PT880 chipset of the DUAL-VSTA

I have only gone to only 2.66Ghz (295fsb) with an E6600 on the ASRock CONROEXFIRE-eSATA2. I think 300fsb may be an AsRock wall, but the DUAL-VSTA will surly struggle to get even close to that.

For RAM I would suggest OCZ 1GB DDR2-533 PC2-4200 (OCZ25331024V)
or
Corsair 1024MB DDR2 XMS2-5300/5400 (667/675MHz) 4-4-4-12 2x512mb (TWIN2X1024-5400C4) for 2-3 quid more.

If you want a better overclock you should look at something more like the Abit AB9, Best budget mobo for a C2D.

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MB-106-AB

If you need help, just email me. [email protected]