eascarface

A little bit of wisdom from Solid.

Quote: Quote: Amazingly the E6300 was no slower than the overclocked E6700 in these games. Of course there will be quite a few games that will see processor bottlenecking becoming a problem, but these three games are not them. Even so, X3: Reunion still saw even the Athlon64 X2 3800+ deliver highly playable performance at 1600x1200 with FSAA 16x + Aniso 16x enabled. ...after having run a number of tests on the GeForce 8800 GTX, we believe that it is not as CPU reliant as first thought. Of course at lower resolutions with lower quality settings enabled, the CPU would have much more of a strangle hold on performance. However, by testing at 1600x1200 with maximum FSAA and Aniso settings enabled, the CPU performance is not nearly as important. Legion Hardware For todays current crop of games, I would say your CPU is fine...but when DX-10 titles hit the market, they will be able to take advantage of dual core CPU's from what I have read. Wich begs me to question why you aren't considering going to a Core 2 Duo system or AM-2 and DDR-2? (Costs are going to be similar overall) The next gen of games will most likely start seeing beneifits from 4GB of ram, and Vista that you will need is certainly a Ram hog (The kits are due out soon!) and of course you have the option to upgrade to quad core CPU's someday, with 939 you are stuck forever with dual core as the best you can get...not to mention you proabably will have to use 4x1 sticks of ram to reach 4GB. I just hate to see you drop all that coin on a system that has limited potential for future upgrades when you are replacing everything but the cpu allready! FYI, you can get an Intel SLI board for around 150$ a E6300 for 180$ E6400 for 220$ (Both are 2MB cache) and a 4mb cache E6600 for 300$ (That is what I have, and it was worth it!) My E6600 is in the 12.4 second range of super Pi (1 Mb test) at 4ghz (Max OC on air) while my last AMD 939 was in the 26 second range at 3GHZ (Opty 146, similar to your FX with 1MB cache) Super Pi is one of the best ways to measure CPU "Horsepower" and you can plainly see my Current Intel rig is over 2x as fast as my AMD!

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Coelacanth

Update: Well, after reading your advice, I will probably go with a motherboard supporting dual x16 PCI-e and LGA775 Core 2 Duo/Extreme CPUs. But I could probably count the number of available motherboards on both hands, with fingers to spare, that currently support this. Only a very few support both these 2 features, and if you rule out non-overclock-friendly brands like ECS, you even have fewer options. If you want to stick with an nForce chipset, you have like 3 or 4 choices only. I was set on nForce until I saw the ABit AW9D. (Btw, the price for going to this setup over an AMD setup is probably at least $150 to $200 more.)

I really like the ABit AW9D board. Imagine how cool these components would look inside the black & blue-themed Chakra case I'm putting together for the "Modding On The Cheap" project?




Next question: 7600GT or 7900GS?

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RBIEZE

7900GS For the win!!
It scores about 2000 more points in 3Dmark 06

And in response to your original post,my 2 OC'd 6600GT's spanked most single 7800GTX's in 3DMark03.


May they rest in piece(sizzle...POP)

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Dirty Moogler

yeah i agree with rbieze ....
2 ocd 6600gts .... performed as well at my friends 7600gt ....
plus they looked better
i think its a matter of how much u want to spend :p have benched my leadtek 7300gt extremes (sli)
as vista doesnt have working drivers ....
(nvidia haven't prepared for the lauch i guess ...and official release is in 2 wks plus :s)

sli and crossfire is bling for sure ....
it may b cost effective is some cases as it did when i got em (6600gt)
did me good for 19mths ..... anyhows its a point to ponder
hope my ramble helps in some way

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Coelacanth

It all depends on my budget. I have a fair amount of cash tied up in a little-known MMORPG (Project Entropia) that I once posted about in its early, before-Gold days right here in Pimprig's game forums...I put in $20 USD, that ran out in a week or so but got my feet wet; I followed that up with another $50, and was almost empty-pocketed when I suddenly realized how absolutely TERRIBLE 95% of the typical in-game player-character traders were; dishonest, scamming noobs, spamming endlessly without even paying attention to what other people were saying...and I realized that a personable, sociable and respectable/honest trader could really make a profit, gaining the trust of veteran players to sell their goods for them, and so on...at one point I had about 16 players selling their stuff through me while they did their hunting/mining/crafting...and I spent 25% of my time having fun, and 75% of my time "working"...(same as real life, who'da thunk it?)

I already cashed out over 1,000 USD and my avatar is probably worth 2,500 to 3,000 more, with over 1,000 of that liquid assets that I could cash out. I'm thinking that's just what I'm gonna do, because after 4+ years of periodic playing that game, I find I'm tired of it.

There I go, blah-blah'ing again, hijacking my own damn thread!

Anyway, I really love that ABit mobo, looks like I'm gonna have to get hacked drivers to get nVidia SLI to work, or wait for nVidia to support that feature on the Intel 975 chipset...

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eascarface

Well if you're set on that Abit mobo (which I wholly understand--that thing is SEXY) than you can always go with some ATi cards. The x1650XT is about equal to a 7600GT and the x1950 is about equal to a 7900GS.

X1950Pro
X1650XT

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Coelacanth

I'd first like to thank you guys for your advice. Going Core 2 Duo is a no-brainer, after seeing all the reviews. I just figured AMD was still the king of gaming CPU performance as they had no competition from Intel for the last several years. But the C2D appears to be the first of the "next level" of CPUs, much more than just a higher-clocked CPU version. It's amazing that it could be that powerful, and still be more energy-efficient than AMD's top dog!

I just won an eBay auction on a slightly used PowerColor X1900 XT for $194 USD...I wasn't expecting to even win an X1800 series for under $200 so I think that's quite a deal. And it performs as good or better than everything from nVidia up to the 7900 series. So the only disappointment is that I couldn't find a single ATI card with other than a red PCB. The vidcard will clash quite a tad with the overall black 'n' blue color scheme. But performance is always part of the equation with any system I build; old or new, I always try to squeak the most out of my hardware that I can.

Any tips & feedback from you overclockers on pumping up the E6300 C2D? I read that only the Extreme edition allows you to adjust FSB...

Thanks again for the great advice!

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BigAkita

The RAM you use will determine how much you can bump up the speed. There are a few different tricks depending upon the motherboard you end up with. Most involve turning off all the CPU and board bells and whistles, and kicking up the FSB.

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Coelacanth

Isn't the 6300 FSB-locked, and only the multiplier can be changed? That'd be really sweet if you could play with the FSB, I got really nice overclocks with my old Gargoyle running that 1.6 GHz Northwood...

For RAM, I'll probably get either Mushkin or Kingston HyperX, 2 x 512M. Blue to match the theme of the case. The Mushkin is CL4-5-4-11, the Kingston is CL4-4-4-12.

NCIX.com - Buy Mushkin HP PC2-6400 HP2-6400 1GB 2X512MB DDR2-800 CL4-5-4-11 240PIN DIMM Dual Channel Memory Kit - 996532 In Canada.



NCIX.com - Buy Kingston HyperX PC2-6400 1GB 2X512MB DDR2 800MHZ CL4-4-4-12 240PIN Dual Channel Memory Kit - KHX6400D2LLK2/1G In Canada.

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BigAkita

It's the other way around... the multiplier is locked and the FSB can be adjusted. Some boards, like my Asus, will allow you to lower the multiplier but I'm not sure how many others will do that now.

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$SOLID$ Necro

If time is on your side, the E4300 will be out soon, and will drop to around 130$USD supposedly a month or so after launch.

X-bit labs - Articles - Cheaper Core Micro-Architecture: Core 2 Duo E4300 CPU Review

I will spare you the realy long details,you can read them all in the above link, but to sum it up, it loses one feature you probably won't use that has to do with running multiple OS's and drops the FSB to 800 instead of 1066...but that is a good thing for Overclockers on a budget! (Higher base multiplier means you don't have to spin the FSB to the moon, wich makes it easier/cheaper when it comes to getting a motherboard and ram)

Other reasons to wait would be the impending release of the E6450, it will have 4MB cache instead of 2MB of the 6400, and the price should stay where it's at...and that extra cahce makes a huge difference in performance on Intel!

Any way you go (E4300, 6300, 6400 or 6450) budget and time wise, you will be much happier with Intel right now...I was glad to see your going Core 2 Duo, I thought you were an AMD fan or something, so I did not bring that up.

Ah well..at least your up to "Speed" somewhat on todays offerings

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Coelacanth

Quote: Originally Posted by $SOLID$ Necro If time is on your side, the E4300 will be out soon, and will drop to around 130$USD supposedly a month or so after launch. Any way you go (E4300, 6300, 6400 or 6450) budget and time wise, you will be much happier with Intel right now...I was glad to see your going Core 2 Duo, I thought you were an AMD fan or something, so I did not bring that up.

I'm probably going with an E6300 or E6400. I might wait a little and see if they drop in price after the release of those other processors (E4300/E6450). I'm not a fan of any brand. I'm a fan of getting the most performance I can with what I can afford, taking overclocking into account. My best systems over the years were a Celeron 300A @ 450, Duron 800 @ 980 (would run at 1040 with higher multiplier and lower FSB but had some issues), Athlon 1.2 GHz @ over 1.4 GHz and P4 1.6A Northwood @ 2.45 GHz, all on air-cooling. I'm looking forward to overclocking the E6300, been reading some great reviews on its overclockability!

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goodman123

Quote: Originally Posted by eascarface Well if I were you I would pick up a a 7600GTS. Its essentially a 7600GS core running at GT speeds with GDDR3 memory so it essentially equals a 7600GT (minus the massive oc potential). Plus at $99 its fairly cheap. I picked up one after Christmas and have been really happy with it. And iirc a 7600GT is about equal to a 6800GT which was about equal to 2x 6600GT's. Not to mention that you can always throw in another 7600. Also the 7 series support Shader Model 3.0 which is nice.

well the 6600GT also support SM3 mine does
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