To upgrade or not to upgrade

Sarduk · 24 Apr 2007 at 17:50

I am looking at upgrading my current system:

ASUS A8N-SLi
X800 ATi Graphics Card (HIS)
1 GB Corsair XMSPRO TwinX
AMD Athlon 3700+ Sandiego

With a new CPU (4400+ X2 2MB Cache Toledo) and another 1GB of RAM. This will cost me about £240.00. Is this worth it, or should I spend about £500 - £600 on a brand new system? I do not need a gaming PC, but I do demand a lot from it.

My only concern here is whether or not the 400MHz FSB on my motherboard will be enough for such a high capacity CPU and 2GB of RAM.

semi-pro waster · 24 Apr 2007 at 18:17

You could move to Core2Duo which will be as fast at stock speeds (as the X2) and will overclock better as below plus it is marginally cheaper. If you wanted to stick with the X2 plan then the 400mhz FSB is fine.

Gigabyte GA_965P_S3 (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard £59.99
(£70.49) £59.99
(£70.49)
Intel Core 2 Duo E4300 "LGA775 Allendale" 1.80GHz (800FSB) - Retail £66.99
(£78.71) £66.99
(£78.71)
OcUK 2GB (2x1GB) PC2-6400 800MHz DDR2 Dual Channel Kit £59.99
(£70.49) £59.99
(£70.49)
Sub Total : £186.97
Shipping cost assumes delivery to UK Mainland with:
City Link Parcel Next Day (Delivered Mon-Fri)
(This can be changed during checkout) Shipping : £8.25
Vat : £34.16
Total : £229.38

Sarduk · 24 Apr 2007 at 21:39

Is that chip equivalent to a 4400+ X2 with 2MB of cache then?

semi-pro waster · 24 Apr 2007 at 21:51

Yep, more or less, without wishing to get too complicated the E6300 is about equivalent to an X2 4400 when both are at stock speeds, the E4300 is clocked .06ghz slower (1.86ghz v 1.80ghz) which is a minimal speed bump. Both of the Core2Duos are likely to overclock far in excess of what an X2 can do, some people have been getting around 100% overclocks although that does very much rely on good cooling, good Ram and good luck in whether your chip is capable but most people appear to get at least 2.5ghz out of their E4300.