PC Building Help: Which CPU?

[Newb888]

It's been a very long time since I actually had a custom built PC, way back when I used my trusted Abit BH6. Since then, I have or my wife has a P4 1.8 GHZ Celeron.

Too make a long story short, it's soon time to upgrade as my IDE port is toast and the Promise Card that I tried to use with it is no good. I already invested in a 400 watt PSU but I rather bite the bullet and get a new system since I wasnt happy with the CPU or ECS MB.

I don't know if I should go for the latest newest CPU as price and budget is an issue. Multi-tasking is a "nice to have" but I dont know if it's a necessity. I come from the old school, that faster is better. A while ago, I seen the P4 Hyperthreading CPUs and they do go up to a decent speed and price point.

The main reason I require a faster CPU is for rendering home movies and editing them. A lot of sites require CPU's faster than 2.8 GHZ. I currently have a 2.8 GHZ P4 in my Dell Laptop. Obviously, I want something faster in a desktop.

I also would prefer the new Vivv from Intel since some sites online require it.

Any suggestions are appreciated.

Thanks

 

[Anoobis]

price and budget is an issue

You might want to throw us a bone here, ehh?

Don't read too much into the marketing fluff of ViiV.

 

[Newb888]

Ok, for the CPU alone, I am looking at no more than $250 USD (I am in Canada). Ideally, less than $1000 USD for the full deal except no monitor, keyboard, mouse. One SATA drive is fine for now as I have two IDE drives I want to use.

A very stable, heat disappating MB is a must. The cooler the better. I hate heat, also a MB with 3 PCI connectors minimum and two IDE connectors, so I can use my old CD Rom and maybe buy a SATA DVD burner if their not expensive. I also have an AGP Video card.

 

[apt403]

ok, hate heat, have a budget of $250 USD, get an E6400. the absolute best cpu for that price. the C2D's arent like other cpu's, when there comparded the c2d's arent better in some things and worse in others, they just win. every time. without fail.

 

[Threshold]

ok, hate heat, have a budget of $250 USD, get an E6400. the absolute best cpu for that price. the C2D's arent like other cpu's, when there comparded the c2d's arent better in some things and worse in others, they just win. every time. without fail.

Technically, no, they take a hit in 64-bit mode, and, for instance while compiling (64-bit versions? Don't know, haven't actually tested this myself) Mozilla (as well as some other things) in a 64-bit environment, it takes longer than a comparable (i.e. same clockspeed) Athlon X2/FX.

But less than 1% of people are concerned about that anyway, so yeah.

For all intents and purposes, C2D is king. AMD is still cheaper on the lower end due to some complexities raising the price of a complete Intel system-at least if you intend to overclock...but that's a moot point.

And considering the E6600 is ~$312ish, that might be worth looking into as well. It does go over the $250 CPU limit, but, meh. Then again, things are a bit more in Canada. I believe anitec.ca should have it relatively cheap (i.e. close to US prices) and ncix.com is also good. TigerdirectCA should be avoided if you can, as most of their stuff is overpriced 10-30%-I've checked.

Anyway, out for a bit.

 

[Newb888]

Good info...thx. Are there any particular versions production dates, manufactured countries to avoid or get? It's not like I'll be doing an overclocking but it's good to know.

On another note, any recommendations on a decent stable motherboard with two IDE slots that I can pair with either of these two CPU's with?

Theshold, I am very impressed with your knowledge of computer stores in Canada. Are you a Canuck?

 

[Anoobis]

When you say you hate heat is that because you don't want any fans for ventilation?

There are plenty of good passive motherboards available, but you'll need at least one case fan for ventilation, more if you plan to overclock. I'd recommend at least one 120mm fan for ventilation. 120s are fairly quiet and do a good job of moving quite a bit of air compared to 80 or 90mm fans.

You might run into some problems wanting to use more than one IDE HDD with the newer 965 and 975 chipsets as they only have one IDE channel normally and part of it will most likely need to be used by the CD/DVD drive (sounds like you already know this). You can still get away with using the AGP card if you can find one of the Asrock boards that support both AGP and PCI-E for C2D.

However, if you don't want to overclock, then I'd suggest an nVidia 500 series chipset for Core 2 Duo. They're lousy overclockers but work just fine at normal settings and come with 2 IDE channels as opposed to 1 like the Intel chipsets. The AGP card will have to go if you use one of these. You'll have to weigh the trade of of buying a new PCI-E card or going with a more expensive SATA DVD drive and an Intel board.

The Intel Core 2 Duo CPUs would be the way to go if you're into encoding and editing movies. The larger 4 MB cache on the E6600 would definitely come in handy for encoding but the E6400 with the 2 MB cache is still light years ahead of what you're used to.