Dual Core E2160 vs Celeron E3400

[haider95]

Okay guys so i might be 10 years late on this question considering how old these CPU's are but still . I finally convinced my mum to buy me a desktop and im torn between two. I know people will tell me to get a better PC and increase my budget. Which is impossible.. Im getting the desktops for £20

I was looking at a Dual Core E2160 PC with 2GB's of DDR2 ram and windows 7 along with a 160GB hard drive now i know a thing or two PC's and i know that the E2160's a dual core with 1.8GHz on socket 775. I glanced over at another PC which roughly had the same specs i think but it was a celeron dual core and i guess it was cheaper. Ever since i've gotten home i've been thinking which one of them would give me better performance in games (SIMMER DOWN IM FAR FROM RICH. LIKE REALLY REALLY FAR) . And I believe it might be a Celeron E3400.. i dont think i'll be overclocking for now since the machines come with an intel motherboard, the E2160 machine had a 946 chipset though? (duno about the chipset on the celeron machine) I'll be running older games for now such as resident evil 5 and prototype 1 cod 4 and minecraft on a 1280x1024 resolution.. what machine do you guys think i should get?

 

[TheGreatHoylando]

You're right, they are a bit old, but you'll still get a good bit of use out of them. I'd go for the Pentium Dual Core E2160 PC. It will beat the Celeron, hands down. Trust me, the reason the Celeron is cheaper is that it is quite slow, the slowest that Intel do.

But, that said, if I were you, I'd save up some money and get a newer generation budget CPU like the i3. This way, you'll have much more support for the future, a faster CPU and will be able to run games at decent settings. Here:
http://www.scan.co.uk/products/intel-core-i3-2120-s1155-33ghz-5gt-s-hd2000-igp-850mhz-3mb-cache-core-r-33x-65w-retail
Also, if you're going to be doing some light gaming, get at least 4GB. RAM is pretty cheap these days. Here:
http://www.scan.co.uk/products/4gb-kingston-valueram-ddr3-pc3-10600-(1333mhz)-240-pins-ecc-registered-cl-9-9-9
Also, try and get a cheap graphics card, the games will benefit a lot. Here:
http://www.scan.co.uk/products/1gb-xfx-hd-5450-silent-pcie-21(x16)-1066mhz-gddr3-gpu-650mhz-80-cores-d-sub-hdmi-dual-link-dvi-i-hdc
Trust me, for the benefit in the future, it's worth waiting and saving a bit of money. As long as you've got these thing, you'll be all set to go! Good luck with the build

Regards,
Dan.

 

[Cazalan]

I disagree. While generally true that Celerons are slower than Pentiums these CPU are 3 years apart.

http://www.cpu-world.com/CPUs/Pentium_Dual-Core/Intel-Pentium%20Dual-Core%20E2160%20HH80557PG0331M%20%28BX80557E2160%20-%20BXC80557E2160%29.html

http://www.cpu-world.com/CPUs/Celeron_Dual-Core/Intel-Celeron%20Dual-Core%20E3400%20AT80571RG0641ML%20%28BX80571E3400%20-%20BXC80571E3400%29.html

They have the same amount of L1/L2 cache and both are dual core.

That particular Celeron is 2.6Ghz and is a good deal faster than the 1.8Ghz Pentium.

 

[stickmansam]

That celeron E3400 is amazing.
I used to run a E3300 with 3GB of ram and with a HD2600 I can pull in 30fps on a 60 man counter strike source 720p med settings (with zombie mod and huge maps). On a normal 32 player game, I pulled 60+fps.
Pair it with a 6570/6670 and you'll be fine for most 1280x1024p medium setting gaming.
The e3400 would psotovely kick the pentiums butt. it alsmot clcoked twice as fast on the same architecture (core 2).

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/celeron-e3300.html
From the gaming benchamrks, the e3300 is about on par with or faster than the pentium e2200 which is faster than the pentium e2160

The celeron name has a tendency to be associated with the ultra low end, but at least in the core 2 duo era, they were plenty fast.

Additional bonus is that the chipset/board for the e3400 has a higher chance to upgrade to a core 2 quad later.

 

[haider95]

Stickmansam, Thats what i was thinking. I think the celeron should hold me off for until i can get a job. I'll be pairing it up with a 9600GSO 384MB for now do you think it should be enough for games at 720p and medium/high settings. Also i'll be upgrading the ram to 4GB so im fine in that department

 

[stickmansam]

the 9600GSO is approximately equal to the 6570 so you should be plenty fine for 720p
medium settings for 1-2 years (depends how much the new generation of consoles push things)

 

[haider95]

Awesome. Im getting the 9600GSO for £15 which is pretty cheap. I hope i can overclock the celeron later to the E5400's level

 

[stickmansam]

I would say that you can overclcok to 3ghz almost guarenteed. There are plenty of e33oo/e5200 overclocking threads floating arround. I was ublucky that i needed 1.32 volts to get my e3300 to 3ghz (mine came with 1.285 vilts stock which is pretty much the highest stock voltage so i had a pretty bad binned chip). Just keep voltages below 1.4 and you should be fine. They do heat up a bit with the stock cooler when OC ubder prime95.