• 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.

x2 vs. C2D

2smoothbooth

2smoothbooth

2smoothbooth

Associate
Joined
23 Nov 2007
Posts
176
First of all let me say its good to finally be an OCUK member, i've been a longterm reader but finally mustered the effort to sign up!

So...at the mo i have a s939 x2 3800 overclocked to 2.5 but i'm getting tempted by the 775's. If i get a e2140 and overclock it to 3ghz +, will it be a big improvement? Bearing in mind i'll have ddr2 ram instead of ddr like i have currently
 
You don't fancy AM2 then?
Come join us minority AMD users. :p

I think you'd see a hefty improvement there though bud, if you wanted to take the Intel road.

Welcome aboard btw. :)
 
lol believe me, it goes against everything i stand to move to the darkside! I've always been an AMD fanboy but intel are taking charge!

I was originally going to go the quad route but i heard there's no point unless you're encoding a lot?!
 
Going to ddr2 will be a huge improvement, even just going for some PC6400 will be a HUGE improvment, probaly more than the cpu
 
I did exactly that, went from a 3800+ X2 (939), with 1GB of DDR. I ended up with an Abit IP35-PRO, 2GB of OCZ PC2-8500, and an E2140 (yes, the motherboard and RAM were overkill for the CPU, but I bought in anticipation of going quad-core at a later date, which I now have).

My E2140 ran 100% stably, and cold, on stock cooling at 3.3GHz, which for such a cheap chip was superb! It blew my 3800+ X2 rig clean out of the water in responsiveness, gameplay, and things like video encoding, certainly was money well spent IMO.

EDIT: This was my thread from when I got my E2140
http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=17754599&highlight=startername_paradigm
 
Last edited:
yea i'd probably get the the 2gb of geil 6400 as its so cheap, timings ar pretty damn good too! Does anyone know if overclockers is selling the M0 revision of the e2140's? Apparently they overclock better?

Thats exactly where i'm coming from paradigm. I only have 1gb of pc3200 and its killing everything i do...like when i play crysis for example which took up 900mb of mem lol. Would it be a noticeable difference then? I do want to upgrade for the sake of it so if anyone wants to put me off here's your chance :)
 
Last edited:
i'm leaning towards the gigabyte p35c. its had good reviews and i want a solid board for the overclocking. i'm willing to go to the £100 mark (or just over) and the gigabyte p35-ds4 is enticing, mainly because of the heatpipe cooling. Whats the verdict on cpu coolers? Thermalright ultra or thermalright ultima?
 
To be honest, a nicely clocked X2 will perform exactly the same as a nicely clocked Core2Duo when gaming - it's only things like encoding/photoshopping where the Intels make any difference.

It's arrived at the point where a powerful graphics card is more important than CPU, so - in my opinion - I would get the most overclockable CPU possible (whether AMD/Intel - it makes little difference for what I use computers) and drop the extra on the graphics card.
 
So the ddr2 ram wouldn't make much of a difference in the everyday performance? I managed to buy myself an 8800gts 320mb for £100 the other day, i know its mid range but it should be good enough for the time being
 
2smoothbooth said:
i'm leaning towards the gigabyte p35c. its had good reviews and i want a solid board for the overclocking. i'm willing to go to the £100 mark (or just over) and the gigabyte p35-ds4 is enticing, mainly because of the heatpipe cooling. Whats the verdict on cpu coolers? Thermalright ultra or thermalright ultima?
Click to expand...

I have the P35 DS4 mate, very good board, extremely happy with it. I use a tuniq tower on it for my E6750. Pain in the bum to fit but was worth it :D
 
i'd be lying if i said i wasn't worried about the thermalright ultima not fitting on the p35 ds4, doesnt look like theres enough room for a cpu cooler with a 120mm fan!

Would the Corsair VX 450W ATX PSU be enough to power an overclocked e2140 and an 8800gts?
 
I would expect it would be seeing as my 6750 is clocked to 3.64Ghz(had it at 3.9 stable) and my X1900XT is clocked to 661/828 on a HX520W corsair. With 4 HDs and loads of other stuff too. If the Tuniq fits im certain anything else will.
 
i've heard good things about the corsair psu's and i'm on a bit of a budget (being a student and all that) Some things i want to budget on like cpu, psu and ram but other things like motherboard and vga i dont want to.
 
Budget on anything else you want except HD's (buy Seagate at any cost! ;) ) but never budget on your PSU.

You see, it can kill everything else in your box.

And if it cost you 20 quid it inevitably will.
 
2smoothbooth said:
i'm leaning towards the gigabyte p35c. its had good reviews and i want a solid board for the overclocking. i'm willing to go to the £100 mark (or just over) and the gigabyte p35-ds4 is enticing, mainly because of the heatpipe cooling. Whats the verdict on cpu coolers? Thermalright ultra or thermalright ultima?
Click to expand...

Ive got a DS4 and the heatpipe cooling is an excellent feature :cool:
 
I think this is a little one-sided comparing a DDR 1GB system versus a 2GB DD2. The AMD would also ramp in performance with double the ram and at higher speed.

In fact I run a Core2 DDR2 at work and compared to my AMD DDR2 system it feels slower in windows for normal tasks (Outlook, Word, Excel, Project etc). Then again the work machine has AV, my home PC doesn't.

Compare apples with apples.
 
Edleake said:
In fact I run a Core2 DDR2 at work and compared to my AMD DDR2 system it feels slower in windows for normal tasks (Outlook, Word, Excel, Project etc). Then again the work machine has AV, my home PC doesn't.

Compare apples with apples.
Click to expand...
At first my Core2 Duo system felt a lot slower in windows and actual use compared to an older socket 939 system, after a week or two my mate found out it was the onboard audio (or the drivers for the audio) that was lagging Windows Use. As a workaround I just disabled the normal Windows sounds and the system felt very nippy. I have since installed an SB X-Fi and disabled the onboard audio.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom