CPU/Processor advice

Hi All am new to the site and building a gaming machine. iv got the Asus Striker Extreme LGA775 mobo and was considering the Intel Core™ 2 Duo E7300 2,66GHz, Socket 775, 3MB, 1066MHz processor.
i was just wondering is this a good choice or is there a better recommendation.

Thanks
John

I would suggest going for the e8x00 (4/5/6) as the higher cache and clock speeds will be better for gaming, but as Magik said, we need to know your budget and othe components.

O no...

Sorry man, but you got raped on the graphics card. Not even the 9800GTX can effectively use 1GB of VRAM.

But, with such a low-end GPU, unless you plan on upgrading to a gaming-level card soon, I would go with the E7300 or perhaps even an E5200.

+9999999! E5200 FTW! even at 240mhz fsb it can hit 3.0ghz! overclocking ONLY limited by voltage, heat and the cpu!

the less variables (motherboard, RAM etc) to consider, the better overclock!

Depends what games you want to play and how much you want to spend. I would start with a 3870 or 9600GT for around $100, 8800/9800GT between $100 and $150, and a 4850 at $150 and up.

Worry not, any Intel processor you get that is based on the Core architecure is going to be 'half decent' at any speed over and including 2.6Ghz for at least a couple more years.

core i7 is coming out in two weeks. wait till then and prices of current Core 2 Quads will drop and you can have more money for a vga.

well if your cashing out on a striker extreme grab a high end cpu like e8400/e8500. if you want to save some money buy a cheap P45 and an e5200

ordered the Q6600 in the end seems to be the best way to go, thanks for all the advice guys

I suggest a Quad Core. My Q6600 is doing great so far, and it is running at 3.4 GHz.

Think of it this way: With a Quad Core you can always OC to get more MHz but you can't add more core's to a Dual Core CPU.

um guy with the weird name ^^, duals will overclock further than quads. fact. duals produce a lot less heat (obviously) and are monolithic instead of two duals stuck together..

theres just no need for a quad unless you're an impatient photoshopper, l0ol

that was me, i had a 680i couldnt get past 2.7 with my q6600, so im getting a gigabyte ep45-ud3p

Alright, here's your damn proof. I put this in other thread also.

Here's the chart of cache making a difference in only a 1,2 and 4 meg configuration @2.4 ghz. Notice how the benchmark on lame are the same.

http://www.tomshardware.com/review [...] 709-6.html

Now here some other benchmarks of the q6600 and e6850 configuration with different speeds. 3.0, 3.3, and 3.6 ghz.

Notice how on the lame benchmarks they are exactly even.

http://www.tomshardware.com/review [...] 20-31.html

Now, you will notice that throughout the benchmarks and comparisons they show similar patterns according to this.

Of course once you start to oc, the diffferences are more apparent. Looking at these benchmarks, it really narrows down to what the performance difference between overclocking and having more cache is.

But can possibly be made up by the oc of the dual... I'm not trying to assume anything here. That's an educated and obvious guess atm.

If running a quad at 1.55v trying to play catch up to the dual, which it never will btw, is fine with you, then get it. By the time quad is ready, I can guarantee you, it will be so much cheaper by then anyways. Yeah, it is coming soon "supposively", but your pretending like ghz and raw speed isn't a factor anymore. That's like computers 101 isn't it? No really, no sarcasm there either.

Pfft, yeah, like the benchmark you showed me wasn't biased or anything about the oc'ing... The biggest part of the performance gain was from overclocking, so that's obviously bs too. How the... If it's done properly? It's coming very soon? LOL! Your assuming and expecting too much at the same time to for that to be good advice.

I wasn't referring to that benchmark. Ummm, show me a 4.2 ghz q6600 and normal voltages for that, if you can even find one that is. LOL! Either way, that's not in the norm.

Let's compare the q9650 to the e8600, I know it's a $540 cpu. But that q9650 isn't going anywhere near the e8600 in oc terms now with the thermal specs and similar voltages on 45nm. Also, people go above specs all the time with 65 and 45nm, what's your point?