• Competitor rules

    Please remember that any mention of competitors, hinting at competitors or offering to provide details of competitors will result in an account suspension. The full rules can be found under the 'Terms and Rules' link in the bottom right corner of your screen. Just don't mention competitors in any way, shape or form and you'll be OK.

Which CPU?

Nick1881

Nick1881

Nick1881

Soldato
Joined
4 Feb 2007
Posts
9,899
Location
Nuneaton, UK
I'm thinking about building a second machine for web browsing, maybe films, backing up data.

Would be nice if it was quick but still energy efficient.

Looking at the following

AMD Phenom II Black 3.1Ghz 8mb
Intel E5300 2.6Ghz 2mb
Intel E6500 2.9Ghz 2mb
Intel E7300 2.8Ghz 3mb

This will be in a m-atx mobo and case with 4Gb DDR2.

Any others I should be looking at? Budget around £70-80.

Thanks
 
What graphics card/chipset are you planning to use with it? If you've got graphics hardware that doesn't need to offload too much processing onto the CPU for things like films then you can get away with just about anything right down to an Atom. The poorer the graphics card the more you need to make sure you have plenty of CPU power.

Edit: To be clear, the above is specifically referring to the "films" part of your requirement. Obviously if you have other things that you've not mentioned that require more processing power but are not graphics-related then my question doesn't apply.
 
Last edited:
I would look at one of the Athlon II xxx e processors. You shouldn't need anything too powerful for watching movies. You could also pick up an Athlon x3e or x4e processor (i think they've been released now) for under 100. AMD have the low end market sewn up until i3's are released.

Atom struggles with video playback. If you do want to go atom look at the ion platform. Makes the atom tolerable.
 
mr_x_plosion said:
I'm thinking about building a second machine for web browsing, maybe films, backing up data.

This will be in a m-atx mobo and case with 4Gb DDR2.

Any others I should be looking at? Budget around £70-80.
Click to expand...
feeddagoat said:
I would look at one of the Athlon II xxx e processors.

AMD have the low end market sewn up until i3's are released
Click to expand...

Hey mr_x_plosion, for approx £85 smackers you could get a CPU/Mobo combo like this:

mrxplosion.jpg


These Sempron (Sargas) chips are sold as a mono-core 2.7GHz (45w) but as they are actually built using (Regor) cores you stand quite a good chance to unlock then into proper dual core Athlon II's, depending whether your feeling lucky or not that represents Insane value for money right there! :)
 
Sounds interesting but it's something I would rather not have to mess around with, I never have much luck either.

Don't think I will have any problems no matter what I get.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom