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E6400 or E6600?

James Bond

James Bond

Diamond Member
I'm building a new gaming box:

E6400 or E6600?

Which video card? X1950XTX?

2GB of RAM.. What RAM?

Trying to spend 600-800.
 
If you don't like your current gaming performance, I would keep your present system, but upgrade to an X1900XT. Later you can move to the Core archetecture when Qaud Core arrives and memory prices fall. I don't think this is really the best time to buy otherwise.
 
My current set up is AGP though, no PCI-E.

Is there a large gaming difference between the E6400 and E6600? I plan on overclocking whichever I get in the 3.xGHZ range.

I also plan on getting a new video card in 6 months or so, for DX10, so the one I get now doesn't need to be "Amazing".

Any more thoughts?
 
well... lets look at ballpark prices (+/- $50):

* E6400: $210
* decent s775 mobo: $120
* 2gb of decent RAM (for OCing): $250

you are at $580 w/o the vid card, which, assuming you want strong performance (you mentioned the x1950xtx), will be the most expensive component. you could probably squeeze under $800 (assuming you don't need a new PSU, case, sound card, etc) if you buy an x1900xt or x1950pro, but it would be tight.

because of the astronomical RAM prices and a lack of decent value boards for s775, it's not a good time to upgrade. consider lowering your requirements (E6300, mid-range RAM or only 1gb, mid-range video card) or wait for price drops.
 
E6300
Gigabyte S3
Crucial 10th anniversary DDR2-667 2 GB kit (D9 chips, cheap, & OCs extremely well)
X1900XT 256 MB/X1950 Pro

Then later upgrade to G80 or ATi's future card.
 
The AGP does complicate the situation, but I think you're just going to have the bite the bullet and wait, even if that meens living with less than top performance for a bit. Memory prices are too high, quad-core is too close, and the next gen in GPU's are arriving too soon to upgrade with a strict budget. You will be able to do much more with your $600 in the near future, so I would wait.
 
I got a Frys combo with an E6300 and a ECS P4800pro-m motherboard. The good thing, is youcould use your DDR and your AGP card with a C2D. The bad part is the motherboard doesn't OC for crap. It would be a throw-away just to keep your memory and video card for a while, but you have to live with almost stock speed, and at 2 ghz a 6300 would compare to your current setup except in multi-threaded apps.

Just a thought.
 
I dont think you should wait. You will be waiting for quite some time if you do. Even when all these new technologies roll around, you still need to wait things out a bit. Do you really want to wait around 8 months?

Id definately get the E6400, no doubt there. You can OC it to 3.2Ghz without much trouble. You should be able to spend $550 and get your cpu,mem and board with shipping incl. EX. ASUS P5B-E , Crucial Ballistix 1GB DDR2-800 DC. Then get a decent nvidia card like the XFX 7900GT for $250. Puts you at $800 and gives you a great system.

You will beat out systems with 2GB of RAM and an E6600. I've seen what my system can do and I have done comparisons.

Even when things progress over the next year, you wont have regreted your purchase

Good Luck!
 
Originally posted by: joebjoe
I dont think you should wait.
Click to expand...

That's the answer I want to hear! I definitely don't want to wait 8 months. When he said I should wait, I thought he meant a month or two :/

Originally posted by: joebjoeId definately get the E6400, no doubt there. You can OC it to 3.2Ghz without much trouble. You should be able to spend $550 and get your cpu,mem and board with shipping incl. EX. ASUS P5B-E , Crucial Ballistix 1GB DDR2-800 DC. Then get a decent nvidia card like the XFX 7900GT for $250. Puts you at $800 and gives you a great system.
Click to expand...

E6400 - 220.00 [Is the 6600 worth another hundred?]
Asus P5B-E - 154.00 [Whats the difference between the P5B, P5B-E, and P5B Deluxe?]
Crucial Ballstix 1GB - 119.00 [I have already got 1GB of Corsair Value PC3200 RAM, should I use it for now and get better RAM later?]

 
Originally posted by: Tizyler
Originally posted by: joebjoe
I dont think you should wait.
Click to expand...

That's the answer I want to hear! I definitely don't want to wait 8 months. When he said I should wait, I thought he meant a month or two :/

Originally posted by: joebjoeId definately get the E6400, no doubt there. You can OC it to 3.2Ghz without much trouble. You should be able to spend $550 and get your cpu,mem and board with shipping incl. EX. ASUS P5B-E , Crucial Ballistix 1GB DDR2-800 DC. Then get a decent nvidia card like the XFX 7900GT for $250. Puts you at $800 and gives you a great system.
Click to expand...

E6400 - 220.00 [Is the 6600 worth another hundred?]
Asus P5B-E - 154.00 [Whats the difference between the P5B, P5B-E, and P5B Deluxe?]
Crucial Ballstix 1GB - 119.00 [I have already got 1GB of Corsair Value PC3200 RAM, should I use it for now and get better RAM later?]
Click to expand...
If you want to re-use your DDR ram and AGP card you won't be able to use most boards that work with the C2D.

You could go with the ASRock 775-DualVSTA motherboard (I am using one) which works great with the Core 2 Duo but they don't overclock very well.

This motherboard can use DDR or DDR2 and AGP or PCI-E which makes it a nice and cheap transitional board. I am waiting for DDR2 prices to go down and the newer DX10 videocards before I purchase a new motherboard. In the mean time, a C2D running at stock(or slightly overclocked) with DDR and an AGP card is still an amazingly good system. 😉

And as far as whether the E6600 is worth the extra hundred or so... I'm not sure. I have the E6400 and like it a lot but I keep thinking maybe I should've just spent another hundred to have the 4mb L2 cache. 😛 Oh well, you gotta draw a line somewhere, lol.
 
Yeah.. but where do I draw the line!

That board you mentioned sounds like a really cool option Beachboy. I didn't know they even made boards which had both AGP and PCIe. I think that if I spent a *little* extra money though, I could end up getting a decent PCIe video card (to hold me over until DX10), and put it on a motherboard that would overclock like crazy. If that motherboard that you mentioned could overclock I would definitely jump on it.. but a big reason I'm getting the 6400 in the first place is to put it in the 3.5GHz range.

What I was asking about earlier though was, will my current RAM be ok if I get a new motherboard, CPU, video card? For a little while at least?
Current RAM: 1GB Corsair Value Ram PC3200
Want to get:
ASUS P5B-E
C2D E6400
Some video card.. ? X1950PRO ? Recommendations?
 
Originally posted by: Tizyler

What I was asking about earlier though was, will my current RAM be ok if I get a new motherboard, CPU, video card? For a little while at least?
Current RAM: 1GB Corsair Value Ram PC3200
Want to get:
ASUS P5B-E
C2D E6400
Some video card.. ? X1950PRO ? Recommendations?
Click to expand...

No, your RAM won't work in a new C2D motherboard. You're using old 184 pin DDR RAM, the new C2D motherboards use 240 pin DDR2 RAM. That's why someone above suggested that Asrock mobo which has slots for DDR as well as DDR2 RAM, they didn't suggest it because of the AGP/PCI-E video card slots.
 
Originally posted by: Tizyler
Yeah.. but where do I draw the line!

That board you mentioned sounds like a really cool option Beachboy. I didn't know they even made boards which had both AGP and PCIe. I think that if I spent a *little* extra money though, I could end up getting a decent PCIe video card (to hold me over until DX10), and put it on a motherboard that would overclock like crazy. If that motherboard that you mentioned could overclock I would definitely jump on it.. but a big reason I'm getting the 6400 in the first place is to put it in the 3.5GHz range.

What I was asking about earlier though was, will my current RAM be ok if I get a new motherboard, CPU, video card? For a little while at least?
Current RAM: 1GB Corsair Value Ram PC3200
Want to get:
ASUS P5B-E
C2D E6400
Some video card.. ? X1950PRO ? Recommendations?
Click to expand...
Nope, that PC3200 isn't gonna work on an ASUS P5B-E. You will need to get DDR2 RAM... preferably some
DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) if you want to overclock.

 
Heres the comparison between the P5B boards from Asus
Board Comparison

I think its a matter of options. The P5B-E is a great overclocker as Im sure the others are as well. I would look them over and think about which options you want.

The Deluxes are like $40 more than the P5B-E and IMHO not worth it. I didnt find them having anything else that I needed.

For the memory, heres the link to the Ballistix. you cannot beat that price.
Ballistix

Newegg is even about $30 more. And if you take advantage of the rebate, your talking about $60 less than Newegg.

If you read My Rig comments, you will see what kind of scores I get with my setup. and look at pics.. you can see the memory and motherboard

Good Luck Man.
 
On ZZF, I show the crucial being $144.99, and no rebates. On NewEgg, it is listed at $117.99. ?

Each of those is for 2x512
 
Just upgrade your system now, and then resell the old parts to make up the cost of the upgrade. You can't just keep waiting, I am thinking as long as you make the best choice during the time when you buy the stuff, that's all it matters.
 
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