E7200 w/Xfire Mobo vs. E8400 w/out Xfire

[ccubed]

In a battle between a combination of:
Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 and a Gigabyte GA-EP35-DS3L mobo
vs.
Intel Core 2 Duo E7200 and an Asus P5Q LGA 775 P45 mobo

Which would be the better choice in the long run (meaning 2+ years with more or less the same system) if they can both be had at the same basic price?

I like the mobo features of the Asus, especially since I'd be putting an HD 4850 vid card in there (which could eventually turn into a Crossfire system.) But I wonder about the longterm overclocking benefits I might squeeze out of the E8400.
From what I've read, I can easily get both to 3.6 ghz without much trouble, but I think I might have issues down the line with RAM speeds since I'll be using 800's.

With all that in mind, which would be the best long term choice?

 

[Extelleron]

I myself went with an E8400 + P35 board, but there are certainly advantages to the P45.

X-Fire capability is not a big deal IMO.... especially since on P45 it is x8/x8 and not the full x16 Crossfire like on the X38/X48 boards. And generally multi-GPU isn't the best upgrade option.... down the road you'll probably be better of picking up a new card than adding another HD 4850. But PCI-e x16 2.0 is nice, even if it makes no real difference now. If it matters to you, that P45 board also has a firewire port while the D3SL does not.

The E8400 definitely oc's better on average... almost every E8400 (even crappy ones like mine) will hit 4GHz. With the E7200... 4GHz is possible but it's more of an exclusive club. At the very least it will take more voltage than with the E8400. Whether or not that matters is up to you. An E7200 @ 3.6GHz is more than enough CPU power for any game out there today and will not bottleneck any video card.

 

[Shimmishim]

The extra 3MB cache of the 8400 doesn't give it a huge performance edge of the 8400.

Also with the 7200 you have a 9.5x multiplier.

My vote is for the 7200 + P5Q combo.

 

[BTRY B 529th FA BN]

8400 & P45

 

[GundamF91]

Go with 8400. As for board, get P45, it's better for 45nm CPU. Also the Xfire is not worth it unless you need Xfire RIGHT NOW. If you only have single card, and intend to use Xfire 2yr down the road, then the single card in 2yrs would've more than doubled your current GPU power, so your Xfire using the current card would be pointless. Until they put multicore on GPU card, Xfire is only temporary and inefficient solution.

 

[ccubed]

What about RAM speeds with the two CPUs and overclocking? It seems like with the higher multiplier on the E7200 you can use slower ram (I'm new to OCing so I could be all wrong.) Would I need DDR2 1000+ RAM to effectively overclock the E8400?

 

[imported_Woody]

Since you'll probably get roughly the same overall system performance out of either setup after overclocking using DDR 800 you may as well go with the P45 and the cheaper CPU. You'll have the features you want and you can upgrade to a QX quad core in a year or two (when they will be cheap) if you choose. Just my opinion.

Most good DDR2 800 will easily run at 1000 speeds with relaxed timings so it's not likely to be an issue. My DDR2 tops out stable at around 1050 at 2.1Volts and 5-5-5-12 but I run it at 900 and 1.95V (see my sig). You're more likely to be limited with the P35 FSB on that budget board. My MSI P35 Platinum starts to have stability problems around 480MHz anyway with stock voltage and won't go above 490 with tweaked voltage. The ASUS board you listed looks like it would be a better overclocker than the Gigabyte but if I were buying a P35 board I wouldn't get that one anyway, there are better options out there. Again...IMHO.