Which component to upgrade...

[czepiel]

I am currently building a new rig with the bundle Intel released this past October. It came with a DG965WH and an E6300.

I was curious that which would be my best bang for the buck between the following scenarios...

Swapping out the mobo for something with excellent overclocking support and cranking up the E6300 (which I have heard is an excellent overclocker)

-or-

Keeping the DG965WH and upgrading to an E6600 mainly for the 4MB L2 cache.

Money isnt a huge issue but I would like to work with what I have.

Suggestions please?

 

[The_Prophecy]

If you have a seperate video card you're planning on putting in this system, go with a Gigabyte GA-965P-DS3. If you are planning on using onboard video, get a Gigabyte GA-965G-DS3

 

[chogo]

OC Option
I would suggest getting a good overclocking motherboard such as Gigabyte S3/DS3 or Asus P5B series MB and a good aftermarket HSF such as Scythe Infinity or Tuniq Tower so that you have the ability to adjust the computer to your performance requirements.
Pros: sell the DG965WH on EBay, can OC to higher speed than stock E6600
Cons: experience the "joys" of overclocking


DG965WH & E6600 Option
Pros: higher stock performance, no issues with OC'ing, sell E6300 on EBay, 4MB vs 2MB cache for a minor performance increase
Cons: no ability to overclock (stuck at stock speed)


1) What other components (memory, GPU, PS, etc.) are part of the build?

2) What are your objectives with the build? Gaming? Office Apps? Photoshop? Audio/Video encoding? etc.

Review of E6300 overclocking: P965: Mid Range Performance Sector Roundup

 

[czepiel]

I am planning using this as a gaming rig, my good ol 3.06c is getting a little dated.

GFX: Will be a DX10 compliant card, really just waiting on the R600 to do a little comparing, but have been eyeballing the 8800GTS

PS: Antec Power Trio 650

Memory: 2GB Crucial Ballistix 4-4-4-12

The biggest thing I was concerned about was the larger, 4MB L2 cache on the E6600, but if its a minimal increase I may just pick up a new board and juice up the E6300 because i got it for next to nothing

 

[chogo]

Pretty good component list.

Obviously, the best performance would come from getting the E6600 and overclocking that but if you want to reuse at least one part then keep the E6300, get a new MB and overclock it.

Here is an article I found comparing some core 2 duo processors and AMD (discusses cache size): Core 2 Duo vs AMD. From a gaming perspective the extra 2MB cache seems to make almost no difference.

You can also do a search on "cache size" and check the results such as this one: 6400 vs 6600

DX10: Also, if you are getting one of these GPUs then you might want to get as much CPU as you can afford. Check out this article for more details: GeForce 8800 Needs the Fastest CPU