E4300 vs. E4400 vs. E6320 vs. E6420, mobo recs?

bgstewar

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May 16, 2007
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This may have been posted, but I can't for the life of me figure out how to navigate through 1.6 million posts, so here goes.

I've been struggling with a decision and can't seem to find anything pointing me in an obvious direction. Between all these processors, besides FSB and Cache, are there any major advantages of one over the other?

As far as my requirements - I am concerned about price/performance, so I'm leaning towards the 4300. I plan on overclocking, but nothing too major. I will be doing mostly Photoshop and multitasking (office, internet, etc.) and occasional gaming (HL2, Quake 4).

I guess I'll throw in the E6600 for consideration, although it's $100 more than the E4300, which is a big deal to me.

For mobos, I'm running circles in my head trying to find the best budget board. I'm leaning towards the ASUS P5B-E, but like a couple Gigabyte and MSI boards. I just want the most stable pairing between CPU and mobo - I'm so sick of crashes and bottlenecks.

Keep in mind I've never overclocked before, so I'm kinda flying by the seat of my pants.

I'm planning on getting dual channel 2 GB DDR2 800 RAM, and a 7600GT GPU.

Thanks so much for any advice! This is my first INTEL setup, so I'm not as familiar with them as I am with AMD.
 

Grimmy

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Feb 20, 2006
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Over all, all the CPU's you listed are fine OC'ers.

The E6320 and E6420 will have an advantage of up to 3-5 percent performance on only certain Apps/Games.

E4300 would be the best value in overclocking. Depending on your budget, and what or how far you want to push them would perhaps also be part in what would be best.

E4xxx I'd get DDR2/667 memory
E6xxx I'd get DDR2/800 memory

For OC purposes.

DDR2/533 if you don't want to OC, but perhaps get the faster of them in stock, out of those choices E6420. Its just on a view for best value or cheapest budget.
 

dragonsprayer

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Jan 3, 2007
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use the p5n-e with nb cooler or better yet use the p5n32-e sli plus - lots of fan headers nice raid


use ultra low latency ddr

skill ddr800 is 4-4-3-10 is $129 for 2 gigs run

run the 6420 at 3-3.2ghz - match the ram speed 1550 bus match to 775 ram