E6300 or the X2 3800?

[Needcash4newrig]

I plan on building a new rig (i'm a first-time builder) and i'm deciding between a Core 2 Duo E6300 at $183 and a Athlon 64 X2 3800 at $131,which would be a better bet for a budget rig???

 

[Markfw]

well, if you have a tight budget, the 3800, since it will OC to 2.5 with cheap memory, and a $65 motherboard. The E6300 will blow it away, but needs a $125 motherboard and $180 memory (at the minimum) to OC to a decent speed, so its all about money.

 

[Needcash4newrig]

Originally posted by: Markfw900
well, if you have a tight budget, the 3800, since it will OC to 2.5 with cheap memory, and a $65 motherboard. The E6300 will blow it away, but needs a $125 motherboard and $180 memory (at the minimum) to OC to a decent speed, so its all about money.

Can it reach 2.8 with good RAM and a good mobo???

EPox MF-570SLI Mobo?

Buffalo 2GB DDR2 800 RAM?

 

[Markfw]

good mobo = ASUS P5B or deluxe or Gigabyte DS3 or S3. I don't know about that motherboard...With one I listed and PC 8000, you can hit 3.4-3.5

 

[Furen]

The Nforce 500 series for Intel CPUs is a horrible choice, it's barely able to go above stock 266MHz FSB and it's very hot. Going for an Intel 965 motherboard would be the better choice, though I suppose an Nvidia 650i (when it is available) would be decent enough, too, if you need SLI compatibility. That DRAM is good enough, as long as you don't run into any weird (and rare) compatibility problems.

 

[DrMrLordX]

I think the OP was asking about the X2 hitting 2.8 ghz.

The X2 can go as high as it wants regardless of the memory really, since you can use ratios. Realistically speaking, you would want some cheap DDR2-800 that can do 5-5-5-12 or 4-4-4-12 at that speed, and that will be "enough" memory bandwidth for you all the way up to 400 HTT, theoretically.

As far as the Epox board, read this OP:

http://enthusiast.hardocp.com/article.html?art=MTExNyw2LCxoZW50aHVzaWFzdA==

Looks like you would be able to do 2.75 ghz at best with the 3800+, and that would be after some tweaking of voltages. I've heard good things about this board here:

http://www.abit-usa.com/products/mb/techspec.php?categories=1&model=327

Not sure if it's in your price range, but it seems to go for around $90. You might be able to find something cheaper that will do 280 mhz HTT easily. However, to get your X2 to 2.8 ghz, you will probably need some decent aftermarket cooling.