CPU Choice - Cache vs Clock speed?

[icraig]

Hello All,

I am new here so please be gentle with me.

I've been building PCs for around 8 years now, although I took a 'sabitical' from PCs in 2004 when I switched to a Mac. The last PC I built was a Pentium 4 Northwood 2.4GHz PC that I overclocked to 3.2GHz,

I've now rejoined the PC community, and I built a cheap PC using a used Core 2 Duo E6300.

The E6300 is all well and good but I'd like abit more speed on the cheap.

So my options are all Skt 775 and I am looking at the Celeron E3300. Would it be the faster than my current C2D?
I've managed to get my C2D up to 2.4GHz Stably but won't go further.

I'm all abit confused by these new processors as when I left the PC World it was easy to distinguish the better processor mearly by clock speed. Rather than these days the difference just being a few more Mb of cache.
So will the E3300 be faster with it having 1Mb of cache less but having a higher clock speed than my E6300?

Also what kind of temperature would I expect an E3300 run at on stock cooling?

Cheers

Craig

 

[Lmeow]

I doubt it, the Core 2 Duo is a bit faster than the Celeron. I'd stick with the E6300, how much can you spend? With applications which don't use much cache, the higher clock speed will be more beneficial.

 

[icraig]

I have about £75-80 to spend.

I mainly use the PC for games, and general surfing of the net. The games I use are things like Rail Simulator and MS Flight Sim X amongst a few newer games like COD etc.
Its also used as a HTPC on Win 7 Media Center.

The E6300 seems a little bit of a bottleneck.

I did buy recently a Pentium E6700 but it was faulty (it was running at over 74C underload!) So that went back and it really didn't seem that much fast than the C2D really.

Ideally I want something cool enough to be run with no case fans when using has a HTPC and a good overclocker for when the games come out.

The C2D runs mid 30c's idle and early 60c's under heavy load at the moment.

 

[Lmeow]

Hmm it seems like you'd need a quad core, although the cheapest is the Q8200 and I'd think you'd be better off with a faster Core 2 Duo.

 

[icraig]

Quad core's are abit of out my price range, the cheapest I can find is £120 and the cheapest faster C2D is coming out at £100.

Does more cache really make much of a difference in some games?

 

[Lmeow]

Well, in most games cache is quite essential, just looks the comparisons between the E7000 and E8000 series, the E8000 has double the cache and perform very well in gaming benchmarks, but clock for clock in most applications they are similar.

 

[Raidur]

You are using the 1.8ghz 6300 conroe right?

Surprising the only faster C2D you can find is that much more. Which CPU did you find for 100?

Can your motherboards support 45nm C2Ds (wolfdale)? Those CPUs have a huge OC headroom.

 

[Bluescreendeath]

The new Celerons are actually 45nm Wolfdale cores (same cores as the PentiumDual E5x00/6x00 and Core2Duo 7x00/8x00).

Clock per clock, they would be faster than the old 65nm Core2Duos.

However, because they have less cache, it would balance out and not be significantly faster than the older Core2s.

Have you tried getting a cheap $10-$20 aftermarket cooler and overclocking your C2D E6300? The old E6300 can reach around 2.8-3.0GHz or so on decent air cooling.

I remember my old E6300 was able to OC to 2.4-2.5GHz from 1.86GHz, and that was with a cheap $12 thermaltake cooler.

 

[Emperus]

The Intel Celeron E3300 gets a better passmark scoring than the E6700..

http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu_lookup.php?cpu=Intel+Celeron+E3300+%40+2.50GHz

Wonder if that is of any significance..

 

[icraig]

You are using the 1.8ghz 6300 conroe right?

Surprising the only faster C2D you can find is that much more. Which CPU did you find for 100?

Can your motherboards support 45nm C2Ds (wolfdale)? Those CPUs have a huge OC headroom.

Hi,

I was referring to the Core 2 Quads mentioned about being out of my price range. And yes my motherboard has support for some 45nm CPUs.

Craig

 

[mjsharma]

which is your mobo?

 

[icraig]

Its an Asus P5QPL-AM. Supports most, I did get an E6700 Pentium Dual Core and it doesn't support it properly

 

[Raidur]

Ah your new CPU isn't working? Did you update your BIOS?

 

[icraig]

Yep updated BIOS, etc etc. Tried everything. But alas doesn't work.

Plus Asustek have told me that they have no supporting motherboard, so its either junking this motherboard and OEM Windows 7 and getting a new board and another Win 7 licence or find the best CPU that this board supports that is new for £75-80 which is what I can afford!

 

[Raidur]

Which CPUs can you find in that price range? (Im USD)

 

[icraig]

Hi,

£80 is around $120 at the moment. And I can find the following:

Intel Pentium Dual Core E6700 £75
Intel Core 2 Duo E7500, £90
Intel Celeron Dual Core E3400 £50
Intel Core 2 Quad Q8300 £120

So as you can see I'm rather limited buying new.

 

[Raidur]

The E7500 is a fantastic CPU, especially for games. The OC headroom is huge!

This will be quite an upgrade from what you're used to.

 

[icraig]

Looking at the specs to the E7500 vs the £15 cheaper Pentium E6700 there is barely anything between them apart from the C2D had 3Mb of L2 and the P E6700 has 2Mb.

But surely the extra 300MHz of the E6700 makes up for the lower cache?

 

[Raidur]

Games will benefit from the 50% increase in L2, especially if you overclock. Both chips are VERY overclockable.

Here is a bench 2MB vs 3MB with the 3MB having a 270mhz handicap.

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/62?vs=94

As you can see gaming does benefit is there, even with the handicap.

 

[mosox]

Get the 7500.

 

[alhanelem]

^ 1+ to mosox
save up some more money and get the 7500

 

[Raidur]

Meant to add to my post... Wasn't the E6700 non-compatible with your mobo anyways?

 

[icraig]

Yes it was, I have Asustek on the case. Made them realise they have no boards at all that officially support the E6700.....