I'd appreciate your recommendation on a CPU chip.

I'm thinking about getting a new desktop this fall. I can't build one myself, but at least I can have one configured by Dell.

I would like to upgrade to Windows Vista Premium in the spring and keep the computer for 5 years, preferably without upgrading the hardware.

It would be used for general non-work tasks, plus Word and photo editing regularly and video splicing occasionally, but no gaming.

The chips I am considering are Core 2 Duo 6300 and 6400 and Athlon X2 4800 and 5000. How would you rank them performance-wise, without overclocking?

I have not seen direct benchmark comparisons of these particular chips, but it appears to me that the E6300 may be inferior to the 5000+ and equal to the 4800+ when gaming is omitted. What do you think?

By the way, this is the configuration I am thinking of, apart from the CPU:

2 gig 667MHz dual channel RAM
250 gig SATA 3Gb/s 7200rpm drive
ATI Radeon X1300 Pro 256MB GPU
Integrated 7.1 Channel Audio

Thanks,
Fuzzy

E6400 ~= 5000+
E6300 ~> 4200+

In video encoding, the Intel chips pull ahead of the AMD chips.

The CPUs are overkill for your application. If you want to run Vista Premium, you ought to upgrade the video card.

E6300 < 5000+ (if you can find one)

Core Duo 5300 and 5400 are not desktop processors. If you mean the E6300 and the E6400 then they can match or beat the Athlon X2 4800 or 5000.

See these these benchmarks:

AnandTech Review

Toms Hardware Article

Sorry, I meant E6300 and E6400. I have since corrected my original post.

Thanks for the advice.

Fuzzy

Either the E6400, or if you can splurge for the E6600 would be great. With VISTA in mind, most definetely get 2GB's RAM. If you don't plan on overclocking, then opt for DDR2-533, as Core2Duo works most efficiently when the RAM and FSB work synchrohously (1:1). If you plan on overclocking, then get DDR2-667, or preferrably DDR2-800. GL

Thanks for the tips, 1Tanker, pausert20 and evilr00t.

1Tanker, your comment about RAM is interesting. It raises the question whether it would be worthwhile to increase the RAM to 4 gig. An Athlon 5000 with 4 gig would probably be cheaper than an E6400 with 2 gig RAM.

Extra RAM might partially compensate for what I think is the real bottleneck, the hard drive. I find it frustrating how long it takes XP to boot up, and I expect Vista will be worse. A Raptor drive and a RAID 0 setup are unavailable in the Dell E520 and E521, and would probably be too expensive anyway.

Again, this is the rig I have been thinking about:
Core2Duo E6400 or Athlon X2 5000+
2 gig 667MHz dual channel RAM
250 gig SATA 3Gb/s 7200rpm drive
ATI Radeon X1300 Pro 256MB GPU
Fuzzy33

1Tanker, your comment about RAM is interesting. It raises the question whether it would be worthwhile to increase the RAM to 4 gig. An Athlon 5000 with 4 gig would probably be cheaper than an E6400 with 2 gig RAM.

Extra RAM might partially compensate for what I think is the real bottleneck, the hard drive. I find it frustrating how long it takes XP to boot up, and I expect Vista will be worse. A Raptor drive and a RAID 0 setup are unavailable in the Dell E520 and E521, and would probably be too expensive anyway.

Again, this is the rig I have been thinking about:
Core2Duo E6400 or Athlon X2 5000+
2 gig 667MHz dual channel RAM
250 gig SATA 3Gb/s 7200rpm drive
ATI Radeon X1300 Pro 256MB GPU
Fuzzy33I use 1GB of RAM with VISTA, and it doesn't take much longer to boot than XP Pro.

I agree with MrsBytch. I vote for an X2 3800+, and then you should spend the extra money on a more decent video card and some better memory. Stick with 2Gb of RAM, but make it DDR2-800, which matches up to the 2.0Ghz 3800+.

I just built a system with an X2 3800+, 2 Gb or DDR2-800 CAS 5, and a sweet 7900 GT KO Superclocked from eVga. Runs everything at max settings, including F.E.A.R, Oblivion, etc. So what I'm saying is with a setup like that you can run anything, and you can wait for any of the newest AMDs to drop in price.

However, if you REALLY want to go Core 2 Duo, go with the E6300 and again spend the (however less) extra money on a better graphics card. Any socket AM2 mobo will be able to have socket AM3 chips, when they come out. HOWEVER you'll never be able to stick, say an AMD Quad core socket AM2 into a socket AM3 motherboard because socket AM2 CPUs will lack the memory controler necessary to run DDR3 RAM, when this all comes out.

MrsBytch, I am not sure why you consider the X2 5000+ to be outrageously priced. On a Dell E520/E521, the X2 5000+ is CDN$180 more than the X2 3800+, but is still CDN$50 less than the E6300, which it surpasses on non-gaming tasks without overclocking, and apparently CDN$150 less than the E6400.
Fuzzy33

MrsBytch, I am not sure why you consider the X2 5000+ to be outrageously priced. On a Dell E520/E521, the X2 5000+ is CDN$180 more than the X2 3800+, but is still CDN$50 less than the E6300, which it surpasses on non-gaming tasks without overclocking, and apparently CDN$150 less than the E6400.
Fuzzy33

??? X2 5000+>X2 3800 CDN $180 but $50 less than E6300? Where did you get that price information from? The E6300 is only about CDN $50 more expensive than the 3800 X2 so it's definitely cheaper than 5000+. Please check your source, man. Even on a Dell E520 you have to add $250 which is about CDN $320 to upgrade from a 3800 X2, which is enough for you to buy a new E6400=$250. No idea where you get your info, which is outrageously misinformed.

yeah the 5000+ is $600 USD, which is very, very high. The E6400 is about on-par with the 5000+ in benchmarks. The difference? About $375 USD in favor of the E6400. That is insane.

Benchmarks comparison: http://www23.tomshardware.com/cpu. [...] &chart=169

5000+:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6819103757

E6400:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6819115004

First of all I would not like if you get fed mis-information. So in light of this I figured I'd take the time and post.

To be quite honest you cannot look at tests where the bottleneck is placed elsewhere on the system rather then the CPU when trying to compare Processor performance. In light of this I will link a few benchmarks on here.

These tests will show that a Core 2 Duo E6300 is on par with an AMD Athlon64 X2 4600/4800+. And the Core 2 Duo E6400 is faster then both the AMD Athlon64 X2 4800+ & 5000+.

So let's begin shall we.

First of all let's examine a segment in benchmarking (the only one really) where Intel's Core 2 Duo's (especially the lower end models) don't fare too well because we do wish to remain objective. This area is professional 3D rendering. So if you use 3D Studio Max alot then perhaps you'd be better served with an AMD Athlon64 X2 4800+ rather then an Intel Core 2 Duo E6300.


Ok... now we're done with that. Let's now look at applications and games that most users use. We'll start off with Video encoding.




Ok... Core 2 Duo wins this round... with the Core 2 Duo E6400 winning and beating out the AMD Athlon64 X2 5000+.

Now let's move on to gaming..







So in the end.. we have the Intel Core 2 Duo E6300/E6400 both winning in there respective categories. (as a 4600+ performs pretty much equally to a 4800+).

Hmmmm now for Canadian prices.

ShopRBC
Intel Core 2 Duo E6300 = $246CDN
Intel Core 2 Duo E6400 = $298CDN
vs.
AMD Athlon64 X2 4800+ = $349CDN
AMD Athlon64 X2 5000+ = $366CDN

You make your pick.

Reaper, I am looking at Dell only since it gives the option to configure, and I can't build my own. So, I quoted Dell prices for the E520 and E52l. They may not reflect prices in the real world.

Hopefully this link to the Dell E521 configurator works.
http://configure.dell.com/dellstor [...] 521_RBP_EN

It explicitly states that the Athlon X2 5000+ is CDN $180 more than X2 3800+.

To compare the X2 5000+ with the E6300, you have to configure the E520 exactly the same, with the default integrated GPU and the free 1gig RAM, at this link,

http://configure.dell.com/dellstor [...] 520_RBP_EN

Prices have apparently changed since I did this earlier today, but comparing the bottom line prices of these two configurations now shows that the E521 with 5000+ is CDN$240 less than the equivalent E520 with the E6300.

There is no way to directly compare the E6400 with the X2 5000+ at Dell, but according to the configurator for the Dell 9200 and 9200C, the E6400 is $100 more than the E6300, and it would seem to follow that the E6400 is now CDN$350 more than the X2 5000+ at Dell

That is why I thought that the 5000+ was not outrageously priced at CDN $180 more than X2 3800+.

Fuzzy33

If you were building your own (which is far easier than you think, you REALLY should try it) the Intels win easy.

The E6400 is marginally faster than the 5000+ (which nobody other than the OEMs has anyway) but a good bit cheaper.

The E6300 is pretty close to the 4200+ performance wise.

Both Intel chips massively out-overclock the AMD chips.

That being said, it you have to buy a Dell (my heart goes out to you brother - friends don't let friends buy Dell) it looks like Dell has gotten a mighty sweet deal from AMD, and is also looking for a really healthy profit margin of Core2 chips.

My advice - Swallow hard, drop down to the 4200+ in AMD land, and put the extra cash towards a decent video card.

ElMoIsEviL you insult my data saying that the bottleneck might be somewhere else on the system, when the Tomshardware charts clearly state the RAM used, while your charts show nothing but the processor...not even the core! You've got to be kidding me.

I was expecting people to view all the different benchmarks between the E6400 and 5000+...I didn't even mention the 4600+ and 4800+. Apparently some people are too lazy.

Something very strange is going on here, with the price of an X2 5000+ on Newegg is $600 USD, and on shopRBC it's only $366 CAD...of course we have to take into account the fact that it's out of stock on shopRBC, and they've most likely lowered the price so people will see it and want to order only to have the price jacked up again later. Typical for an online site. Do some thinking guys. The only X2 they have on shopRBC is @286 CAD, which is the correct price when you do the conversion (it's $247 USD on Newegg)

Why don't you do some research and some thinking, then refute everything I say.

Ummm I don't think you're getting it. Tom's test clearly bottlenecks the system at the Video Card (under FEAR). Where as Anandtech's test stress the CPU more so then the Video card. It's all about the Video card used and the resolution used. We all know that FEAR is a DEMANDING game on the graphics card (rather then on the processor).

That's where the bottleneck is... not the RAM. You see Tom's used a single x1900XTX where as Anandtech used an x1900XTX in Crossfire mode (x1900XTX+x1900CF). This enabled Anandtech's results to best highlight the processors performance by removing at least in part some of the Video Card bottleneck in the system.

Whoa, someone clearly isn't familliar with the power of these cards. A single X1900XTX bottlenecking data in F.E.A.R? You must be joking! You use the term bottlenecking a little too loosely. With the video cards in this price range, you can hardly factor in any data clogging whatsoever.

I ran F.E.A.R on max settings with framerates around 55 FPS on an X2 3800+ with a 7900 GT KO superclocked (a tad slower than that XTX) completely fine at stock speeds. You're right about F.E.A.R being very, very GPU intensive. You contradict yourself in the point that Anandtech uses a more powerful gfx setup, because you're going to have more of a chance of that graphics card setup greatly influencing the outcome rather than the CPU actually making the difference. Remember that ATI focused Crossfire on Intel motherboards in the beginning, so there may be a difference still when running crossfire on an AMD socket mobo and an Intel socket mobo Using the XTX should completely eliminate even the idea of a data bottleneck, hell, using a card that costs $50 or $75 more should have the same effect.

You'd better be sure as hell that RAM makes a difference. Compare the 3800+ socket 939 and AM2 running DDR and DDR2 respectively on Tomshardware, you're going to get an FPS increase around 3-5 FPS, which more than accounts for the simple difference between 939 and AM2.