"Breaking" the 4850....

In the middle of building a light/mid gaming system and im not all that savy on the whole "bottlenecking" issue. Basically im in the process of cutting corners off the cost and I need to know how low I can go on the processor before performance is put in a cast.

Right now im pondering this http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 819103255. I know the Intel offers kick its ass yadda yadda, but im looking for the lowest point I can go before I hit the bottleneck remember. Intel dosent have any offerings around that same price except the Pentium E2200's with their ungodly 800mhz FSB, and is still $14 more........ http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6819116070

Ive heard 2.3ghz tossed around but I dont know if that holds any weight.

Are you at all interested in overclocking? the E2200 series can be OC'd to 1066 FSB with a cheap cooler like the Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro extremely easily on any P35/P45 board. Which would provide extremely nice performance for the price, you could even boost it higher if you want (I have my brother's E2180 @3.2Ghz)

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6819103211

Sorry, was preety damn tired when I made this, cant believe I left out the basics. So far im looking at....

Foxconn P45 if proc is an Intel http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6813186148
Biostar 790GX if proc is an AMD http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6813138128

4850 video card, 4GB of RAM, 450W Corsair PSU.....thats about it.

$800 is the max, with the Foxconn board and E7200 im at $792. System has to be ATX also, no mATX

This http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6819103289 has caught my eye. Hmm.....

Are you buying a new case? Optical drives? HDDs? ....or are you just needing the backbone MOBO, GPU, CPU, RAM, PSU?

how much do you have left for both?

Hmm....your E7200 + Foxcon board sounds like the best option at the moment.

You could go with AMD triple core 8450 for $104 at newegg. I am not too familiar with AMD CPUs though to be able to recommend them. Wouldn't hurt to look at it though.

Well, I see that people are getting the AMD triple core up to 3.0GHz. If you play games that like more than 2 cores that could get you a few more FPS than the E7200. But...I guess if the E7200 can get up to 3.5GHz...it would probably surpass a 3.0GHz AMD CPU.


Interesting to see how an X3 stacks up against the E7200 in UT3

Those triple cores are just too expensive, $104 for for 2.1ghz one, the 2.4ghz 8750 is $175. Im "sure" the 2.1ghz one will bottleneck the 4850.

**EDIT** Hmm, the results for those triple cores arent that bad....wow. I had no clue. The 8750 is right there with the E8400, and you get an extra core for only a few bucks more with the AMD. Even the lowly 8450 isnt bad. I need to dig up some more charts to see what impact the low clock has on GPU performance, also with the 790GX board I should be able to OC it a little more than with the others.

Also thanks for the heads up on the Foxconn dagger.

Rofl, E4700.

Intel pricing is pathetic. Just look at the E8400 price, then compare it to its lesser.

They price it at what people are typically willing to pay.

Absolutely. I am amazed at the Q6600 pricing right now. $190 vs $260 for the closest 45nm quad (Q9300)...this one is a no brainer.

^Very true. Look at X2 vs. P4/PD. Even though X2 was better people fell for the "faster is better" and now look.

Saving money is what oc is all about. A good aftermarket cooler only cost $30-40. Spend $30 on a cooler to oc a $180 q6600 from 2.4 to 3.6ghz and outperform a stock "extreme" version quad that cost $1500. You save $1290, and get better performance.

^ B3 or G0? High VID too.

I have the exact same 1.3125vid chip, and it's prime95 stressed stable at 1.45vcore @3.6ghz or 1.65vcore @4ghz, with loadline calibration on. It should do fine.

Strange how you can get that low vcore on that high VID chip. Are you sure you used the proper torture test and set it to halt when hitting error?

Lol, good job.