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The usual question - E4300 or E6600?

Hades

Hades

Hades

Man of Honour
Joined
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I've decided on motherboard and RAM:

Asus P5N-E SLI
Team Extreme 6400

So that just leaves the decision on which CPU. This will be in a watercooled and overclocked system. I was previously going to get the E6600 but the E4300 looks extremely tempting. I've tried to see how far each are clocking but there obviously arent many results for E4300 yet.

Is the E6600 likely to clock much further than the E4300? For gaming will the extra cache be useful?

To be honest I'm now leaning towards the E4300 and saving the £90 difference for a future upgrade.
 
Van Diemen said:
I would go for the E6600. A very heavily OCed E4300 just about beats an E6600 @ stock
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I very much agree, fwtw. Pushing a 4300 to 3.38GHz will require good knowledge of parts, what mobo with what ram, ram-timings, fsb settings, cooler setup, etc. My own choice would be between 6400 and 6600, atm, though I wussed for a 6800 early on - now running at 3.4GHz stable.

However you do say you're looking at wc/oc so I'll assume you know your stuff and leave it to yourself. Good luck with your new build :)
 
Van Diemen said:
A very heavily OCed E4300 just about beats an E6600 @ stock
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The 3.38ghz quite soundly beats the E6600, its far closer to the X6800 in the 2nd and 3rd benches, which itself is running at 2.93ghz.#

Admittedly an overclocked 6600 will beat a 4300, but at almost twice the price I doubt it's worth it.
 
Thanks for the replies so far. Still undecided. The E4300 is clearly the best value but if I could guarantee the E6600 getting a significantly better overclock then I'd spend the extra.

Currently it's looking like best value to stick with the E4300 as it's only looks like a small difference in speed (if any) and there doesn't seem to be any compelling evidence that the extra cache benefits games that much.

But I'm still open for opinions :D

Oh and I already have a custom water setup. It's going to be a PITA rebuilding it all:

http://www.ajb.nildram.co.uk/pictures/atcs_s4000/watercooled/closeup_rad.jpg
 
Minstadave said:
The 3.38ghz quite soundly beats the E6600, its far closer to the X6800 in the 2nd and 3rd benches, which itself is running at 2.93ghz.#

Admittedly an overclocked 6600 will beat a 4300, but at almost twice the price I doubt it's worth it.
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Thats what I am thinking myself. I would love to get the E6600 but i cant afford it with the new ram.
 
Minstadave said:
Really nice looking setup btw!
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Thanks. The rad is inside the case and also helps blow air across the whole motherboard. I need to move the res to the drive bays to neaten it up but with two kids I never have the time to do that. I didn't have the right res when I built it. So perhaps I'll do it when I upgrade.

http://www.ajb.nildram.co.uk/pictures/atcs_s4000/watercooled/side_open.jpg
http://www.ajb.nildram.co.uk/pictures/atcs_s4000/watercooled/front_angle.jpg
http://www.ajb.nildram.co.uk/pictures/atcs_s4000/watercooled/front_open.jpg

I'm a bit fanatical about having a plain looking case and making it just about silent even when overclocked. Water gets a bit addictive :) but it is a pain to upgrade components :(
 
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why are the E4300's so slow compared to there E6*** cousins, i mean 3.38Ghz barely beating a E6600 at 2.4Ghz, like an old netburst at 3.6Ghz just beating and AMD athlon 64 at 2.4Ghz, something went wrong or something? cause thats horrid trade off, that would mean you'd be better off getting E6400 or something (higher multiplier than E6300 while substancially cheaper than 6600) cause they'll demolish a E6600 at 3.38Ghz right?
 
Gashman said:
why are the E4300's so slow compared to there E6*** cousins, i mean 3.38Ghz barely beating a E6600 at 2.4Ghz, like an old netburst at 3.6Ghz just beating and AMD athlon 64 at 2.4Ghz, something went wrong or something? cause thats horrid trade off, that would mean you'd be better off getting E6400 or something (higher multiplier than E6300 while substancially cheaper than 6600) cause they'll demolish a E6600 at 3.38Ghz right?
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They are not slower :confused: An E4300 @ 2.4ghz will be faster than an E6600 @ 2.4ghz because it will have an FSB advantage. An E4300 @ 3.38ghz will be significantly faster than an E6600 @ 2.4ghz.

Admittedly you could drop the multi on the E6600 and therefore raise the FSB and get the same results as the E4300.. and probably overclock it further. But an overclocked E4300 will definitely beat an E6600 at stock even with less cache.
 
Hades said:
They are not slower :confused: An E4300 @ 2.4ghz will be faster than an E6600 @ 2.4ghz because it will have an FSB advantage. An E4300 @ 3.38ghz will be significantly faster than an E6600 @ 2.4ghz.

Admittedly you could drop the multi on the E6600 and therefore raise the FSB and get the same results as the E4300.. and probably overclock it further. But an overclocked E4300 will definitely beat an E6600 at stock even with less cache.
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look at the games benchmark section in that link, the 3.38Ghz E4300 doesn't even beat X6800 at stock? and beats E6600 at stock (not by a huge amount) with an almost 1Ghz clock speed advantage?
 
Hades said:
But an overclocked E4300 will definitely beat an E6600 at stock even with less cache.
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:rolleyes: . it depends how cache intensive the program is. end of :p.

either that benchmark is erroneus or that particular game likes a bit more cache.
 
Ah, fair enough. I didn't actually see the benchmark before. Somehow missed it. I have to admit I was talking pants :) I suspect it must be the extra cache because there doesn't seem any obvious reason the E4300 should behave like that. Any other benchies around?
 
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Hades said:
An E4300 @ 2.4ghz will be faster than an E6600 @ 2.4ghz because it will have an FSB advantage. An E4300 @ 3.38ghz will be significantly faster than an E6600 @ 2.4ghz
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Hi Hades, I don't think that quite right but as u already corrected yourself all I can add is an e4300 clocked to 2.6GHz would be more of a match for a 'stock' e6600. It seems an additional 2MB of cache gives the processor about an extra 200MHz worth of performance.

There are a few comparisons here and here that show you where 4MB cache comes in handy. In particular DivX 6.1 encoding see's a healthy 10% performance boost (Most encoding appears to do better with the extra cache).

CPU cache is extremely expensive stuff (hence the much higher prices for the e6600/e6700!) jeeps to think we will have 100's of MBs of cache on future processors! :eek:
 
Remember the 4300 is only £110 with a decent heatsink. The 6600 is twice the price basically!
 
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