Originally posted by: hans007
well a e4300 is $150. a cheap 945g based board is about $65. a 965p maybe $85
965p boards for $85? The cheapest I've seen that was worth a damn is the s3 for around ~$120. Granted, you have more options with the E4300's lower multi, but still . . .
boarsd for am2 are about the same it hink, nf5 maybe $70. something good like an nforce 600 or something is gonna be $95-100
The two best boards I've seen, namely the Abit NF-M2 nView and the DFI NF UltraII-M2 run around $90-$100, but they are very good, full-featured boards. You can get cheaper boards but you may have issues getting past 300 mhz FSB with those. Some folks have had decent luck with that Biostar board featured in several Brisbane combo-deals. I've heard it's a bit finicky past 270 mhz FSB.
the cheapest am2 the 3600+ is probably $90. thats much slower than an e4300. i'd say an e4300 is probably equivalent to about a 4400+ athlon 64 x2. so i wouldnt say amd is cheaper. plus you get much more o/c capability with the core 2 chips.
At stock, yes, the X2 is a lot slower. However, several people have had issues getting E4300s past 2.7-2.8 ghz. The Brisbane 3600+ is good for about 3.1 ghz most of the time, provided you get a board that can hit ~330 mhz FSB or higher. With the right RAM, the X2 gains ground on E4300s (and the other 2 mb l2 chips) at high clock speeds.
when the e4300 goes to $115 in late april it will basically be no contest.
I wouldn't say that . . .
E4300: $115
Board: $70 minimum, $120 maximum
RAM: $150
Total: $335 minimum, $385 maximum
OC: ~2.8 ghz on minimum setup (i945p), crapshoot on maximum (3.2-3.5 ghz possible)
X2-3600+ Brisbane: $85 (may drop when the E4300 drops, who knows)
Board: ~$95
RAM: $160 if you shop around, $200 if you don't
Total: $340-$380
OC: ~3.1 ghz which will beat the 2.8 ghz E4300 but lose to a 3.0-3.5 ghz E4300, provided the X2 can be run at its maximum overclock with the 2:3 or 1:2 divider (i.e. needs DDR2-1000 or better, 5-5-5-15 2T)
Basically, you can beat the true budget E4300s that use cheap boards and/or cheap boards from combo deals if you go with the X2, a good OC board, and get the right RAM. Whether or not you actually pay a comparable amount ($340 for X2, $335 for budget E4300) depends on how much you pay for the RAM.
If the E4300 buyer goes the extra mile and gets a better board, he has a shot at beating the X2 + good RAM, but the chip might still peak at around 2.8ghz which means the X2 buyer still has better performance overall for about $40 less. And that's after the price drop. Right now, tack on another $70 or so to any E4300 purchase not including wacky combo deals.
if you go by recent frys deals a e4300 + el cheap ecs pt890 board is $159. a 3800+ am2 with board combo is about $129. i would probably justpay the extra $30. its probably worth it.
That deal on the E4300 is insane. You'd be better off taking the combo for $159, throwing away the board, and buying an S3. Most of the Brisbane combo deals out there are not good for the full 3.1 ghz OC, so they may not really be worth it from a price/performance perspective.
That only counts overclocking, though. At stock, yeah, you can save some bucks on the Brisbanes with a combo deal but your performance will be lower, and you will still need to get some DDR2-800 to make it run right (vs the E4300 which could theoretically be run with DDR2-400 without a huge performance hit). I would not personally look at Brisbanes unless I intended to OC one.
Originally posted by: cubeless
the trouble with the ddr2 systems is that u need pricier memory to get there, and the mem seems to be the biggest variable in your oc...
Nah, DDR2 is getting hella cheap, and E4300s can frequently OC on DDR2-800 or less. It's the X2s and E6300s that need faster RAM to reach their peak.