Which Core 2 Duo?

I'm looking at buying a Dell Dimension 9200. The big question is which processor to get. I basically use my PC for word processing, strategy games and sometimes a first-person-shooter (nothing much heavier than America's Army or Battlefield 2). Will the 1.86Ghz E6300 with 2MB be sufficient, or would I get noticeably better performance from the 4MB E6600?

Also, is 1GB of RAM sufficient for this type of system?

Sky

IMO for now, C2D E6300 would be sufficient, but of course E6600 will get you better results, with a bit xtra cash to burn though...

As for ram, IMO 2gigs is better (faster loads etc.)


BTW, i got no idea what gfx card you are gettin, but you might want to use higher performance card, or you buy cheap one now and wait till DX10 cards released

What he said, no really. Don't bother with the Dell. I regret mine to this day. Yeah, their base models are good value. Then you add some decent parts, and boom, you're overpaying like a mofo. Their base warranty now sucks. And when it's over, that's it. If you need to upgrade/replace a part through Dell (most of the time, you will), they will charge you through the enamel. I had my fan and hard drive go out at almost the same time. They sent me a refurb HDD replacement. Now it is singing a swan song. And the fan? You guessed it.. dying (it's proprietary, btw.. mofos!). As for the PSU.. wow what a mistake. It's proprietary and underpowered. GL upgrading your graphics in the future. You're shanked in the mobo dept. as well. And if you add any 3rd party parts, ie. RAM, expect to get no support from Dell if there is a problem (I speak from experience). Well, enough ranting.

You only need an E6300. Actually, you don't even need that. But get it since it's a nice and cushy multicore chip and the price is rather tantelizing. Heed the 2GB advice. You'll need it to be buttery smooth in the Vista/DX10 era.

$190 for an extra 1GB, you are being ripped off if you pay that

Build your own if you can.

E6300 should be fine.

So me being somewhat of a gamer, should I go ahead and get the 6600? Is there enough of a performance gain between the 6400 & 6600 to justify $100?

i was and am planning to upgrade to e6600 & Asrock Dual 775 VSTA, but still unable to decide to buy or wait for windows vista. i'm just curious and want to hear from people who is using the cpu and pcb, then decide it to upgrade or wait for next couple months.

is it worth for the money? are you satisfied? is the temperature cool (below 38 celcius degree perhaps)? is it fast and furious?

No problem.

Its currently 25-28C here and my E6600 is running at about 38C so +10-12 Ambient with stock HSF at idle. At full dual prime load it'll hit 45 which is what I have set the fan to ramp up at, this will drop the temp to 38, and it'll ramp again. It takes about 2-3 mins to get back up to hot temp again. I can adjust the 45C to 60C I think in Bios. Temps taken with Speedfan 4.29 which seem to match with the BIOS.

Playing BF2 (1280x1024 med settings) it doesn't trigger fan speed rise, it gets to about 43C and stays there, with ultra high sound settings which were unplayable before.

With regards to benchmarking, i get exactly the same score in 3dmark06 that I did with my XP3200+, but that is because I am greatly GPU limited (6600GT), so I'm not too concerned about that. Haven't been able to complete a PCmark test, its missing something (video compression?) and so won't give me a result. However trying to convert a 4Gb 2hour DVD (from the TV) down to 2Gb took 16 minutes in total using DVDshrink.

I ran all of the Sisoft benches last night, on all CPU tests I match (slightly exceed 1-2%) the std E6600 on a 'proper' board. On the RAM latency tests I am 123ns Vs 92ns for aE6700 on PC2-5200 and a speed factor of 90.2 vs 79 (whatever that means) lower is better though. On bandwitdh tests I am showing about 66% of the bandwidth of PC2-5200 which is to be expected.

If you look at the reports (3 I think) on anandtech they have compared FPS at various RAM speeds, and there is not much difference 3-5%.

However I bought this in the knowledge that it would help me convert to PCI-E, DDR2 and SATA without having to buy everything all at once. And so I am perfectly satisfied with its performance. I suspect I'll get a new Mobo when I have to change graphics card as the PCI-E is only 4x (which is lower bandwidth than AGPx8), although I might live with that for a while too, i know I'll get some benefit and would probably be ok up to at 7600GT Given that the 7800+ (a 7900GT really)from gainward was looking to be saturating AGPx8.

With regards to overclocking, I've done a little, not sure of real world effect given the RAM and 6600GT so stopped trying.

If you want me to run anything specific let me know.

I've also replied to the PM. Reply to the PM from now on, I've replied to here in case anyone else was interested. If anyone is interested, start a thread, or continue mine of 'conroe build and all is well' and PM me to let me know that I should have a look at it.

Thanks, glad to be able to help.

Trying not to Hijack the thread, apologies to the OP.

Funny, I can run BF2 at the same settings on my S754 1.8Ghz Athlon 64 with 1GB RAM and an X800 XL just fine.

What video card were you using w/ that setup?