2500 Barton VS 2700+ Thoroughbred

I'm in the market for a new CPU but unsure what to do. On the one hand, the 2700+ has a higher clock speed than the 2500, but on the other the 2500 has two times the L2 cache but a lower clock speed. I've also heard that the 2700 gets really, really hot but with good cooling this shouldn't be too much of a problem...I hope. Does anyone have any advice on this? My old CPU just bought the farm so I need a new one ASAP. Thanks in advance.

Some Bartons overclock well and others so, so. You should be able to get 2.1ghz out of just about any with a good mobo and cooling combo, but after that some bartons hit the wall. With the higher end tbred B's 2100 (a steping that begins with "A" not "J" such as AIUHB) and above you have a better chance of geting a good Overclock than with the 2500. Out of the box though the barton I think should run very close to te 2400 and get outpaced by the 2700. In most real world aplications that extra cache doesn't do 'that' much (but it helps). So in conclusion I would say go witha 2100 or above Tbred, or wait a while until AMD makes a few revisions to the manufacturing process (changes stepings) and then get a Barton.

* Despite the cache size difference 2700+ is still faster than 2500+.

* A lot of folks don't like the retail heatsink+Fan. Cooler Master HAC-V81 Heatsink+Fan is a great alternative. Doesn't cost too much and cools very well.

38 is not high. It's Damn good for an overclock.

<b><font color=blue>Algebra was easy for the Romans because "X" was always 10 </b></font color=blue>
<font color=red>Jay Kay</font color=red>

The same holds for 2600+. Even though 2500+ has a bigger cache, 2600+ TBred 333MHz FSB is still faster than 2500+.