Back in the Game and Need Some Help!

[aintitthelife98]

Hey Everyone. Well the time has come and I need to upgrade my system. I've been sort of out of the system building world since around 2003 when I graduated school. Back then I had my 1.0ghz TBird overclocked to 1.5ghz using a custom watercooling system but that overclock is pretty small change now.

When I started looking a few days back I was almost certain I would build another AMD system as I've always been a bigger fan of them than Intel but now I'm starting to lean the other way.

Is it the general consensus that the Intel Core 2 Duo's blow away the AMD 64 X2's? Also in overclocking terms which processor has the better potential?

From my sparse reading it seems folks are getting some pretty big overclocks on the Core 2 Duo's. In terms of my needs for the PC, I don't game on it (thats what I have my Xbox 360 for). I generally use it for Video and Audio editing, DVD Authoring, a lot of DVD and CD burning and then general computer needs.

The processors I am considering are either the AMD 64 X2 4600+ or 4200+ or on the Intel Side the E6300 or E6400.

Any help is greatly appreciated. Thanks a lot everyone!

 

[RiBeNtRoP]

Any Core2Duo you can choose will be superior to AMD X2, and in terms of overclocking, the same, they can get a ver good overclock, especially the new one, C2D4300.

 

[Rike]

Welcome to the AT Forums!

An E6300 or E6400 would serve you very well. Match it with a board like the Asus P5B-E and you'll be good to go.

This link will give you an idea of you might expect regarding video encoding.

 

[Markfw]

Originally posted by: Rike
Welcome to the AT Forums!

An E6300 or E6400 would serve you very well. Match it with a board like the Asus P5B-E and you'll be good to go.

This link will give you an idea of you might expect regarding video encoding.

Yes, I still have 5 X2's left, but ny new E6300's @3.4 (sig wrong, had to downclock) are twice as fast as my X2's@2.5 in F@H, so there really is no comparison. The only thing wrong with that article, is that C2D's are easy to get over 3 ghz...

 

[aintitthelife98]

Thanks for the responses. Looks like I'll be building my first Intel system in over 8 years. Now to just figure out the other components.

 

[Noubourne]

I would suggest a mobo, memory, power supply, a burner, a hard drive or two, a video card, and a case to go with that CPU.

That's just me though. I am sure people will different opinions about what hardware you should get.

 

[aintitthelife98]

I'm all set on burners, hard drives, video card and case. Just have to figure out what mobo, ram and power supply to get.

 

[Markfw]

I like DDR 800 or 900 or even 1000 chips, as you can run them @ 1:1. Right now, I am using some gskill and some ballistix, and I don't see any different, other than the ballistix requires I boost the vdimm with other memory before I put it in, or it won't post in my S3 boards. Haven't setup my new P5B yet, so I can;t recommend a mobo for sure. PSU's, I like Antec, Fortron or PC Power and cooling. 450 watt or better depending on the vid card.