Re: Get up and running with Dual Core for around £155inc
 

And if your leaving it stock where ya go then ;) id advise 6400 min for the none over clocker

Re: Get up and running with Dual Core for around £155inc
 

Ahh you got me there I guess so but these chips overclock so wonderfully you'd be mad not to be tempted.

Take it easy bruv :

PS for the non overclocker I'd prolly say the 6600 :p

Re: Get up and running with Dual Core for around £155inc
 

Im easy matey easy like a sunday morning ;)

Re: Get up and running with Dual Core for around £155inc
 

Thanks guys I think I'll get the E6400 but I might change me mind when I get there (and get the 6600).

Used to be indecisive but now I'm not so sure.

Re: Get up and running with Dual Core for around £155inc
 

I'd go for the 6600, just for the extra 2 meg cache, apparently it overclocks like a dream too.

If you can stretch to it anyway.

Otherwise, just get the 6300, save yourself the money and clock the ass off it, it goes as far as the 6400 anyway in overclocking terms.

Re: Get up and running with Dual Core for around £155inc
 

you dont need super fast ram thats just a myth, most boards have the dividers to slow your ram speed down, but ddr800 (pc6400) is more than sufficent.

I'm using a e6700, its clocked to 3.7GHz (370 fsb) and my ram is matched 1:1 with that (anymore and its no faster can even be slower) at 740mhz.
because my ram is underclocked i can run it at lower latencies (they're cas 5 chips and im running cas 4) so get better performance that way.

Re: Get up and running with Dual Core for around £155inc
 

I got the E6400 and decided to get some new memory and a HDD as well (I was still on IDE). Perhaps I should have got the 6600 but it was 60 quid more. I'm not short, just a tightwad ;) Mind you, anything would be an improvement over an XP2200 at this point.

Re: Get up and running with Dual Core for around £155inc
 

Nice 1 you'll find your new machine around 3x faster than you're old one based on cpu benches. (no windows wont load 3 times faster btw)

In the real world if you can RAID0 a couple of SATA drives you'll really notice an additional big performance gain making your new machine very fluid.

Re: Get up and running with Dual Core for around £155inc
 

Heres a bootchart of my E6400 @ stock

33 seconds to boot into kubuntu obviously windows will be slower (anyone know if theres something similar to bootchart for windows)

Also note boot time is enchanced for me a bit due to the use of the RAID0 which peaks at 78MB/s (single file transactions are around 100MB/s).

Re: Get up and running with Dual Core for around £155inc
 

Cheers! I shall look foward to the performance jump. I have toyed with the idea of raid0 but I'll probably hang fire until Vista is sorted gaming-wise. I'm used to XP taking an age to boot anyway as the DSP software for my audio card seems to be powered by hamster when it initialises :D

Re: Get up and running with Dual Core for around £155inc
 

Huh noticed I posted one of these before when I first installed the machine :

Only 21seconds to boot here from the same machine :
http://www.cableforum.co.uk/board/at...2&d=1164738544

I guess I had better go away and tune my boot startup - maybe ;)

---------- Post added at 15:27 ---------- Previous post was at 15:24 ----------

Good idea if you do go RAID0 then just make sure back up the machine regularly.

Re: Get up and running with Dual Core for around £155inc
 

Well I'm in the middle of OS patching at the moment and everything went in generally well. My only criticisms are:

I used the stock cooler that came with the CPU and we had a bit of a falling out. The push down clips don't seem particularly well made (I did twist before pushing yes :) ) so in hindsight I should really have invested in a better quality one.

There is only one chassis fan header on the Asrock and I would have liked that to be at the back of the motherboard where I need to plug in the exhaust fan although I don't really need it atm with running stock.

Re: Get up and running with Dual Core for around £155inc
 

you cant have it all ways lol :)

Re: Get up and running with Dual Core for around £155inc
 

Well at least the motherboard is more reliable than one of the matched sticks of TwinX that I bought that's causing the thing to fall over left, right and centre :mad:

Re: Get up and running with Dual Core for around £155inc
 

I stopped using corsair ram as ive had a load fall over