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Best value CPU per dollar

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@IGRACINA: Gaming is a side consireration for me 🙂 As long as the thing I'm building (on the cheap preferably) can somewhat compete against the latest gen intel CPUs or have great performance dollar wise in multi threaded operations such as video encoding, its fine with me.

@BUTCH1: I have a core2duo E6600 (first core 2 duo series out) on 3.06GHz. While it does its stuff fine (surfing, general encoding albeit slowly), it is really starting to get long in the tooth.
I could either
1) get a Q6600 or Q6700, OC the heck out of and call it a day for the next 2 years and get a good bargain then. The Q6600 can be had for $40-50 atm on ebay. These are the only Quad my Gigabyte P965 DS3 (Rev1.0) will accept.OR

2)try to build something now on the cheap.
 
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Going from LGA 775 Quad Xeon to 1366 Hex Xeon was a big difference for me, specifically video encoding. I make a lot of Blu-Rays, and the quad Xeon was working for 12-14 hrs. to render an 18-20Gb iso. X58 & overclocked Xeon hex core dropped time to 1 1/2 hrs 🙂 The Intel board you selected & a OC X5650 is plenty fast for what you do, now & for awhile..
 
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@IGRACINA: Gaming is a side consireration for me 🙂 As long as the thing I'm building (on the cheap preferably) can somewhat compete against the latest gen intel CPUs or have great performance dollar wise in multi threaded operations such as video encoding, its fine with me.

@BUTCH1: I have a core2duo E6600 (first core 2 duo series out) on 3.06GHz. While it does its stuff fine (surfing, general encoding albeit slowly), it is really starting to get long in the tooth.
I could either
1) get a Q6600 or Q6700, OC the heck out of and call it a day for the next 2 years and get a good bargain then. The Q6600 can be had for $40-50 atm on ebay. These are the only Quad my Gigabyte P965 DS3 (Rev1.0) will accept.OR

2)try to build something now on the cheap.

don't do option 1. Q6600 is not the way to go. Performance increase will not be worth it, imo
 
buying a socket 775 CPU today is absolutely ludicrous. No. If you're doing video encoding, get one of those dual socket Nehalem Xeon boards and 2x of those well priced Xeons
 
I'm still looking for a 1366 board either on ebay or locally. If I can't find one in say one month, I think I'd wait it out one more year (probably less) and wait for the next iteration of AMD/Intel CPUs and then buy 1150 or something new from there.
 
1) get a Q6600 or Q6700, OC the heck out of and call it a day for the next 2 years and get a good bargain then. The Q6600 can be had for $40-50 atm on ebay. These are the only Quad my Gigabyte P965 DS3 (Rev1.0) will accept.OR

Unfortunately that board only has three phase VRM so I would be careful how far you OC a Q6600.

P.S. Q6600 is going for about $30 buy it now on ebay (including shipping).
 
I'm still looking for a 1366 board either on ebay or locally. If I can't find one in say one month, I think I'd wait it out one more year (probably less) and wait for the next iteration of AMD/Intel CPUs and then buy 1150 or something new from there.

Offer this guy $130 and have a decent rig to play with for $170 complete (delivered).. Add some RAM & $60 hex core if you want, but it's plenty powerful now..
Xeon W3530
Performance
# of Cores 4
# of Threads 8
Processor Base Frequency 2.8 GHz
Max Turbo Frequency 3.06 GHz
TDP 130 W
Work station quality, good power/speed, & easy on the pocket too.. No brainer..
Best value per dollar..
http://www.ebay.com/itm/381018376596?_trksid=p2055119.m1438.l2649&ssPageName=STRK:MEBIDX:IT
 
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Offer this guy $130 and have a decent rig to play with for $170 complete (delivered).. Add some RAM & $60 hex core if you want, but it's plenty powerful now..
Xeon W3530
Performance
# of Cores 4
# of Threads 8
Processor Base Frequency 2.8 GHz
Max Turbo Frequency 3.06 GHz
TDP 130 W
Work station quality, good power/speed, & easy on the pocket too.. No brainer..
Best value per dollar..
http://www.ebay.com/itm/381018376596?_trksid=p2055119.m1438.l2649&ssPageName=STRK:MEBIDX:IT

Thanks Burpo. Just checked out the deal. Turns out the shipping is a bit on the high side 😀
Thanks for trying though. I live in Mauritius and shipping is always going to be an issue but for small items (CPU, BOARD, RAM etc) its ok.

Shipping: $997.58 UPS Worldwide Saver | See details
 
There's also a LOT of X5670 and X5690 out there. I saw a supermicro board for sale for under $300, it came with TWO 6 core 12 thread cpus! Can you imagine, 24 threads of nehalem for under $300? lol. Lots of companies dumping this old hardware because... well.. that's what they do every few years almost without thinking.

not true.. I asked my friend whose head of IT at a large company, why they did this.

its because the warranty period on said hardware expires without the option to renew.

Hence why they are forced to upgrade and hold onto warranty for mission critical equipment.
 
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