Pentium 2140 or Athlon64 X2 3600+ ?

[yquo]

which may be better bang for the buck ? Or which might have better performance ?

General office use, and gaming. mild overclock if any.

Possible other components:
ASUS P5gc-mx (intel 945GC), ASUS AM2n-mx (nvidia 6100)
1 Gb DDR2 667 Mhz Kingston
250 Gb Sata2 Seagate ST3250820AS or Samsung SpinPoint P120 SP2504C (still to decide)

Seagate 7200.10 perpendicular recording, both 8 Mb buffer.

 

[turboflame]

Bang for the buck: Athlon X2 3600+

Performance wise: unknown, haven't seen any benchmarks for the 2140

I'd go with the Athlon X2, it's cheaper and probably has the same or better performance as the Pentium

 

[yipsl]

One of the few reviews I've found is at Xbit labs:

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/pentium-e2160_13.html#sect0

They're fairly similar in quality, but in games the lack of cache affects the new Pentiums:

We have already mentioned earlier in this article that reduced to 1MB L2 cache is a significant slowdown for the Pentium E2000 series in gaming applications. Judging by the results of our comparative tests we see another proof to that point. Although Pentium E2000 processors outperform Pentium D 935 and Pentium D 925, they are still unable to reach the performance level of Athlon 64 X2 3800+ and 3600+. I have to draw your attention to the fact that this whole situation is pretty funny: games are actually almost the only application where the youngest CPUs with Core micro-architecture cannot even dream of competing with their immediate rivals.

Overclocking varies by processor, but Xbit labs says:

First of all we decided to test Pentium E2160 processor. We overclocked it by raising the FSB frequency, with the clock multiplier remaining at its nominal 9x. By increasing the processor Vcore to 1.5V we could push the FSB frequency to 378MHz thus hitting 3.4GHz clock speed. The CPU was running stably at this speed and passed the ORTHOS stability check...

...This is a very good result, as we overclocked our CPU by 89% above the nominal in this case and even exceeded the nominal frequency of the top CPU on Core micro-architecture from the Core 2 Extreme family.

The second processor, Pentium E2140, didn’t overclock that well at all. In the same testing conditions, i.e. with 1.5V Vcore, we managed to increase its FSB frequency only to 355MHz. further increase led to system failing to boot. Further experiments revealed that this CPU can even work without Vcore adjustment at this FSB speed, which means we have hit the “FSB wall” for this processor. This problem wouldn’t let us continue our overclocking attempts, and we had to admit that the maximum result for this processor would be 2.84GHz, which doesn’t look that appealing at all especially against the background of the previous result.

...However, you should always remember, that overclocking is a lottery to some extent, so far not everyone will score high in it. We decided to find out what you could get from overclocking with some good luck on your side by comparing the performance of the Pentium E2160 overclocked to 3.4GHz with that of Intel’s top dual-core processor – Core 2 Extreme X6800.

If overclocking is your hobby, go with the new Pentium's. If you don't overclock, I'd say it's a toss up with the AMD processors slightly better in games. Note the article didn't compare by overclocking the slowest AMD processors.

I still voted for AMD, if only because I think Intel needs to give up on the Pentium brand the same way they gave up on the Celeron. Then again, AMD's upcoming Phenom is a really horrible brand name. What idiot in marketing thought of that?

 

[epsilon84]

Bang for the buck: Athlon X2 3600+

Performance wise: unknown, haven't seen any benchmarks for the 2140

I'd go with the Athlon X2, it's cheaper and probably has the same or better performance as the Pentium

The X2 3600+ is the better bang for buck, but the E2140 is the equal of it in terms of performance. Xbitlabs has a review here: http://xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/pentium-e2160.html

The OP also listed DDR2-667, AM2 processors take a much bigger performance hit from slower RAM (under DDR2-800) than C2D. So in this specific case, generally the E2140 would be ahead of the X2 3600+.

However, the AM2 board does have much better integrated graphics capabilities, so for gaming it would be clearly the better platform. However, this really says more about how crap the Intel graphics is, rather than how good the 6100 IGP is. By saying this, I mean if 30fps @ 800x600 low details is your thing in gaming, then by all means, use the 6100 IGP. If you're really serious about gaming in the office (LOL!) then get a 'real' GPU.

FWIW, I voted the X2 3600+, bang for buck it can't be ignored, it's also not a shabby overclocker either. 8)

 

[Malaga93]

for gaming 3600X2, for rendering stuff and not gaming E2140,
it's that simple

 

[yipsl]

However, the AM2 board does have much better integrated graphics capabilities, so for gaming it would be clearly the better platform. However, this really says more about how crap the Intel graphics is, rather than how good the 6100 IGP is. By saying this, I mean if 30fps @ 800x600 low details is your thing in gaming, then by all means, use the 6100 IGP. If you're really serious about gaming in the office (LOL!) then get a 'real' GPU.

FWIW, I voted the X2 3600+, bang for buck it can't be ignored, it's also not a shabby overclocker either. 8)

I just wish Xbit labs had included an overclocking comparison with the X2 3600+ and 3800+. Not that I overclock, but many people enjoy the dubious fun of overclocking the slowest CPU in any line up to equal the fastest.

Were anyone to rely on integrated graphics for gaming, I'd recommend waiting for the DX10 IGP boards due out this holiday season. If they must buy now, then the AMD x1250 boards with the X700 based IGP's beat the 6100, which beats Intel, which beats Via and SIS.

I'd never rely on my board's IGP for games, unless I were RMA'ing the graphics card and felt a desire to load up TES: Arena in Dosbox! Nvidia's reported to be coming out with hybrid SLI that will not only power down the GPU and switch to the IGP while surfing the net, but will add the power of the IGP to the GPU, which should help the 8600 series later this year.