highend presler vs lowend conroe?

[second_derivative]

i'm considering building a rig for $1-1.2k. leaning towards an intel processor but am not sure whether to hop on the Conroe bandwaggon with an E6300/E6400 or go with Pentium D 940/950 for $180/$220 respectively. in either case i would probably go with a 965x/975x Asus mobo and 2gig of Corsair ram. for the video card i think a 7600GT or similar would do nicely. i do moderate gaming but more often use computationally intensive programs ie Matlab and SolidWorks and the like. any comments and suggestions are very appreciated (especially on the CPU and PSU).

to sum up:
CPU: E6300/E6400 or PD940/950.............~$200
Mobo: Asus 965X/975X............................~$250
RAM: Corsair XMS2 2GB DDR2 800............$160
VC: XFX 7600GT 256MB PCI-E x16.............$185
HDD: Seagate Barracuda 320GB SATAII.....$100
PSU: Antec TPII 550W maybe....................$85
Case: Coolermaster Centurion...................$50
DVD: Samsung 18X DVD±R.......................$35
.....................................................total: ~$1065

 

[joefriday]

Even the lowest end Conroe, the E6300 at 1.83 GHz, outperforms Intel's fastest Pentium D, the Extreme Edition 3.73 GHz, in the majority of benchmarks. A pentium D at this point could only be recommended if the price of $183 is just too much for you to spend. An Athlon X2 3800 at $150 would be good money spent, but since you're looking for Conroe compatibility, I'd recommend either coughing up the money for Intel's E6300 or buying one of the cheap Pentium Ds (805, 820, 915, 920, 930) and living with the decreased, but still very good performance.

Even the Pentium 4 506 for $50, or the Celeron D 352/356 for $60-$70 are okay buys if you don't heavily use multithreaded apps.

 

[dwe_khal]

clearly you should go with the 6300

Here u have 2 links :

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/core2duo-shootout_6.html
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/core2duo-e6300_12.html

Good luck !!!

 

[second_derivative]

clearly you should go with the 6300

you're completely right: it is clear! sad that i didn't see it before. i can probably stretch my budget for the E6400 even ($225) though probably not for the E6600 ($316) with its larger L2 cache.

I guess i will probably wait a little longer for availability/price to stabilize as well as to figure out what mobo will be best for Conroe (suggestions/theories?).

Thanks, for the advice and quick responses. More comments are always appreciated (especially on mobo and psu). Thanks again!

 

[The_Prophecy]

you're completely right: it is clear! sad that i didn't see it before. i can probably stretch my budget for the E6400 even ($225) though probably not for the E6600 ($316) with its larger L2 cache.

I guess i will probably wait a little longer for availability/price to stabilize as well as to figure out what mobo will be best for Conroe (suggestions/theories?).

Thanks, for the advice and quick responses. More comments are always appreciated (especially on mobo and psu). Thanks again!

Wait, keep saving and go for the E6600. The extra cache should be very helpful down the road.

For the board, go for any of these 3:

Gigabyte GA-965P-DS3

Abit AB9 Pro

Asus P5B

 

[dwe_khal]

The E6600 is the better choice but if you're budget is limited you should have no problems with the E6300...

Here is a link on how the L2 influences the performance of the C2D processor:

http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=2795&p=4

 

[elbert]

i'm considering building a rig for $1-1.2k. leaning towards an intel processor but am not sure whether to hop on the Conroe bandwaggon with an E6300/E6400 or go with Pentium D 940/950 for $180/$220 respectively. in either case i would probably go with a 965x/975x Asus mobo and 2gig of Corsair ram. for the video card i think a 7600GT or similar would do nicely. i do moderate gaming but more often use computationally intensive programs ie Matlab and SolidWorks and the like. any comments and suggestions are very appreciated (especially on the CPU and PSU).

to sum up:
CPU: E6300/E6400 or PD940/950.............~$200
Mobo: Asus 965X/975X............................~$250
RAM: Corsair XMS2 2GB DDR2 800............$160
VC: XFX 7600GT 256MB PCI-E x16.............$185
HDD: Seagate Barracuda 320GB SATAII.....$100
PSU: Antec TPII 550W maybe....................$85
Case: Coolermaster Centurion...................$50
DVD: Samsung 18X DVD±R.......................$35
.....................................................total: ~$1065

Stay way from the E6300 and E6400 as the X2 AMD's provide about the same speed. For the price of the CPU and mobo you would be better off buying a X2 5000+ and a $145 AM2 mobo. Heres a equal Asus mobo in the AM2 design.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16813131013
Newegg should have the X2 5000+ shortly and it truly take the E6600 to beat the X2 5000+. The 2 low end Core 2 duo's have problem in Office XP, Nero, and many high end Audio codec's, Windows Media Encoder being 1, and when added to Mozilla benchmarks it dies compared to the Mozilla's only. The E6600 is the best choice performance per price on all the CPU's.

The mobo is a bad choice as Intel readys a new mobo for release next month and the price is the worst so wait and atleast get a new design for that price. The memory you choice may need to change with the new mobo design.

Seagate Barracuda 320GB SATAII is a great drive but the SATA take about 1 to 2% more CPU processing cycles than the older ATA's while at the same time not exceeding the bandwidth of the ATA100 spec.

 

[second_derivative]

Seagate Barracuda 320GB SATAII is a great drive but the SATA take about 1 to 2% more CPU processing cycles than the older ATA's while at the same time not exceeding the bandwidth of the ATA100 spec.

i can't agree with you there: SATAII(3Gbps ~ 300MB/s) clearly exceeds the bandwidth of the ATA100 spec. the performance may not be bandwidth limited, in which case there's no gain from the added bandwidth, but as harddrive technology improves (hopefully) there will be a need for the added BW. in general, SATA HDDs offer some other advantages as well (NCQ, convenient RAID options, slimmer cables).

 

[elbert]

Seagate Barracuda 320GB SATAII is a great drive but the SATA take about 1 to 2% more CPU processing cycles than the older ATA's while at the same time not exceeding the bandwidth of the ATA100 spec.

i can't agree with you there: SATAII(3Gbps ~ 300MB/s) clearly exceeds the bandwidth of the ATA100 spec. the performance may not be bandwidth limited, in which case there's no gain from the added bandwidth, but as harddrive technology improves (hopefully) there will be a need for the added BW. in general, SATA HDDs offer some other advantages as well (NCQ, convenient RAID options, slimmer cables).
Yes but how many HD will you have to daisy chain together to use up that bandwidth? I truly dont know of anyone daisy chaining HD's on SATA yet. Only the Iram or other Solid state drives can use that much bandwidth. Not even RAID can sustain anywhere near that bandwidth on a daisy chain setup nor could RAID max out SATAI at only 150MB/s.

Good advantages but disadvantages are higher costs of HD's as ATA's are really cheap right now, uses an extra 1 to 2% of the CPU Cycles over the ATA's, and the SATA HD's take up a SATA that would be better used for SDD. The 1 to 2% extra CPU usage is SATA's big downfall as that could slow a CPU costing $100 higher down to its cheaper slower performance counterparts level.

 

[The_Prophecy]

Good advantages but disadvantages are higher costs of HD's as ATA's are really cheap right now, uses an extra 1 to 2% of the CPU Cycles over the ATA's, and the SATA HD's take up a SATA that would be better used for SDD. The 1 to 2% extra CPU usage is SATA's big downfall as that could slow a CPU costing $100 higher down to its cheaper slower performance counterparts level.

The price difference between a SATA and a PATA drive of the same capacity and model, is only (at most) 15$. I would gladly pay an extra $15 for a drive with higher data throughput, NCQ, and much smaller cables.

 

[elbert]

Good advantages but disadvantages are higher costs of HD's as ATA's are really cheap right now, uses an extra 1 to 2% of the CPU Cycles over the ATA's, and the SATA HD's take up a SATA that would be better used for SDD. The 1 to 2% extra CPU usage is SATA's big downfall as that could slow a CPU costing $100 higher down to its cheaper slower performance counterparts level.

The price difference between a SATA and a PATA drive of the same capacity and model, is only (at most) 15$. I would gladly pay an extra $15 for a drive with higher data throughput, NCQ, and much smaller cables.

Cool i'll pay less and get better CPU performance and the truth is your not paying for a drive that has higher thoughput. Your paying higher for a HD that can be connected to many other HD's without reaching the limit of the lower ATA or SATAI max thoughput.

 

[The_Prophecy]

The higher data throughput will benefit you more than an extra 1-2% of CPU performance.

 

[elbert]

The higher data throughput will benefit you more than an extra 1-2% of CPU performance.

Not if you only use 1 or 2 HD on a SATA channel as you want be using anymore throughtput than ATA offers. Late next year when the 1-2% of CPU performance falls below 1% due to much faster processors will be the time to more to SATA as it then will truly not matter.

 

[second_derivative]

extra 1 to 2% of the CPU Cycles over the ATA's

can someone link a reference for this?

also, slightly more on topic: many newer mobos are only coming out with 1 (or on occasion 2) ATA ports which means that if you have more than one optical drive (which are almost all still PATA) you'll be in a pickle for adding HDDs. On the other hand there's usually 4+ SATAs. This, along with slimmer cabling and essentially the same price, is why I am gonna go with a SATA HDD.

no one has said anything about power supplies yet, any suggestons on a <$100 PSU for the above system?

thanks again for the discussion and help.

 

[elbert]

extra 1 to 2% of the CPU Cycles over the ATA's

can someone link a reference for this?

also, slightly more on topic: many newer mobos are only coming out with 1 (or on occasion 2) ATA ports which means that if you have more than one optical drive (which are almost all still PATA) you'll be in a pickle for adding HDDs. On the other hand there's usually 4+ SATAs. This, along with slimmer cabling and essentially the same price, is why I am gonna go with a SATA HDD.

no one has said anything about power supplies yet, any suggestons on a <$100 PSU for the above system?

thanks again for the discussion and help.
Not really as theirs a device to let you hot swap on ATA so you could have up to 4 optical drives on 1 ATA connection but you can only use 2 at one time.

 

[Scarchunk]

Seagate Barracuda 320GB SATAII is a great drive but the SATA take about 1 to 2% more CPU processing cycles than the older ATA's while at the same time not exceeding the bandwidth of the ATA100 spec.

I never heard of this statistic. Do you have any links to support this? I googled and didn't come up with anything. It would be a shame since I'm pretty happy with my WD SATA and I love the cables.

 

[second_derivative]

Not really as theirs a device to let you hot swap on ATA so you could have up to 4 optical drives on 1 ATA connection but you can only use 2 at one time.

that seems like you're just going out of your way and probably spending more money for less usability. i wouldn't want to have to disable my hdd just because i am copying a cd in the optical drives...

 

[elbert]

Not really as theirs a device to let you hot swap on ATA so you could have up to 4 optical drives on 1 ATA connection but you can only use 2 at one time.

that seems like you're just going out of your way and probably spending more money for less usability. i wouldn't want to have to disable my hdd just because i am copying a cd in the optical drives...
Truly you wouldn't want your HD and optical drives on the same PATA but most all mobo's come with 2. I wouldnt perchase a cheap mobo with just 1 PATA. My suggestion was for more than 2 optical drives only on a single PATA.

 

[landlocked32371]

i was recently in a similar situation as you.

my need was for photoshop speed.

my decision was to go with the asus p5w dh, and a D805. the reason? in the future i want a media server anyway. so im going to run this d805 until january. by then the conroe's should have good availability and more reasonable prices. who knows...maybe even the quad core will be out then.

at that point, i'll just take the d805, and drop it into a budget mobo, throw in a couple of 320 gig hdds, and put linux on it and im set.

the upside is that now i have a dual core system that runs Photoshop a LOT better than my 1ghz machine did, and when im ready to go with a conroe, it will be a bios flash and a $300 chip, and i will have at least doubled my cpu capability. and, i dont have to worry about conroe availability or gouging. and, the p5w dh is based on a very establish mobo architecture.

i noted that one person recommended waiting until a new mobo came out from intel. thats not a good idea in my opinion. the main reason i selected the p5w dh is that it is based on proved technology...meaning many of the bugs have already been worked out. new mobos usually have lots of bugs....and that can be quite frustrating.

thus far, this board has been rock solid.

anyway thats my 2 cents.

 

[elbert]

Seagate Barracuda 320GB SATAII is a great drive but the SATA take about 1 to 2% more CPU processing cycles than the older ATA's while at the same time not exceeding the bandwidth of the ATA100 spec.

I never heard of this statistic. Do you have any links to support this? I googled and didn't come up with anything. It would be a shame since I'm pretty happy with my WD SATA and I love the cables.
The origanal benchmarks, when SATA came out, were done on the AMD thunderbird CPU and at that time took almost 10% of the CPU cycles. Im looking for links and may take a little while to find. To be upfront their is a better choice then even ATA as SCSI reduces the CPU cycle hit even more.

 

[landlocked32371]

the only time ive ever seen my cpu hit 100% is with my old single core 1ghz, and that was when i was importing some video from a DV. at that point, the 1-10% (supposed) performance hit from the sata would have come into play.

however, i just imported some video on my machine over the weekend, and my cpu never went over 60%. so...if my sata harddrives were taking an extra 5% of my cpu cycles...who cares? i was still able to do other stuff without any problem at all. most of the time cpu's are underutilized anyway.

if all you ever run are cpu intensive apps...then maybe it would make sense to stay with pata. but personally i love my sata's. very convenient, and flexible.

 

[landlocked32371]

In reply to your PSU question.

I went with a Fortron (FSP) 500 watt.

3 reasons.

1. the asus motherboard instruction book listed the 400 watt version of that PSU as 'recommended'. (download the pdf at the asus website for other recommendations)

2. research i did on FSP showed that they regularly were held in high regard.

3. i figured i could get by with 400 quality watts...but the price difference was only about 15 bucks...so...i went ahead and went with the 500.

i think i spent $80...maybe a little less.

 

[elbert]

the only time ive ever seen my cpu hit 100% is with my old single core 1ghz, and that was when i was importing some video from a DV. at that point, the 1-10% (supposed) performance hit from the sata would have come into play.

however, i just imported some video on my machine over the weekend, and my cpu never went over 60%. so...if my sata harddrives were taking an extra 5% of my cpu cycles...who cares? i was still able to do other stuff without any problem at all. most of the time cpu's are underutilized anyway.

if all you ever run are cpu intensive apps...then maybe it would make sense to stay with pata. but personally i love my sata's. very convenient, and flexible.

Ok I found the SATA, PATA, CPU utilization information and the information has changed as CPU performance has reduced the percent you see here.

The most interesting thing here is the very low CPU utilization of the parallel ATA drive. Most of the SATA drives demonstrate CPU usage numbers in excess of 11%. Only the Seagate drive drops below 10%. This may simply be due to the relative immaturity of the current implementation of SATA in the Intel 865 chipset, but it is interesting to note that the only native SATA drive – the Seagate – offers lower CPU utilization than the other drives.

http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,1329772,00.asp

landlocked32371 sorry about posting this as a reply on your post as your opinion is fine. Your just the last to reply to my post.

In look this information up I did however learn that Nvidia's new chipsets while doing RAID does reduce CPU utilization to about PATA as PATA RAIDS require more CPU utilization.

 

[The_Prophecy]

Truly you would want your HD and optical drives on the same PATA but most all mobo's come with 2. I wouldnt perchase a cheap mobo with just 1 PATA.

New boards (not specificly cheap ones as you implied) have 1 PATA channel because it's being phased out. It's not because they are cheap.

 

[elbert]

Truly you would want your HD and optical drives on the same PATA but most all mobo's come with 2. I wouldnt perchase a cheap mobo with just 1 PATA.

New boards (not specificly cheap ones as you implied) have 1 PATA channel because it's being phased out. It's not because they are cheap.
True but optical drive are moving to SATA leaving the 1 empty and the cheap mobos will be the first to see the PATA go down to 1. Most any you buy right now should have 2 and I would try to get 2 as they give greater options.