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

[The Jackal]

Dont throw away your old DDR and AGP card just yet.....

If like me all your machines are dated like Socket A / AGP and plain old DDR then this could a big hit without shelling out a fortune buying PCI Express graphics cards / DDR2 memory.

Yes this is not pretty and chipset mixing will lose u a little performance /zero overclocking potential but is certainly something you could do if you're on a budget or just want to test the Dual Core Platform.

Prices off ebuyer...

E6300 - £117.50 inc (Good overclocker which you can keep for later when you get proper hardware)
E6400 - £153.94 inc
http://www.legitreviews.com/article/377/14/
ASRock 775DUAL-VSTA SKT 775 - £38.58 inc (it doesnt have firewire though ) but a good search around will prolly reap a good few better boards in the pricerange or maybe even at the £30 mark

[The Jackal]

I just decided to do this :

I should have a kick a$$ new machine for just £270 (price inflated by the need to have a couple of SATAs in RAID0).

The E6400 is only 143 squid on microdirect....

Intel Core 2 Duo E6400 2.13GHz 1066FSB LGA775 2MB cache Retail inc.Fan (3yr Manufacturers Warranty) 1 121.99 121.99
DELIVERY 1 8.49 8.49
Asrock 775DUAL-VSTA motherboard skt775 VIA PT880 1066FSB PCI-E AGP 8x SATA RAID LAN ATX (Dual core & compatible) 1 31.45 31.45
160 GB Samsung HD160JJ SATA2 7200rpm 8mb cache oem 2 34.40 68.80

Total VAT £ 40.38
Total Price Excluding VAT £ 230.73
Total Price Including VAT @ 17.5% £ 271.11

Ive used that board in fact Bopdude has a machine built by me on that board and ive touted it for ages

I know not of any other boards with agp/pci-e and DDR and DDRII
The 805 clocks to over 3 gig on it btw

[The Jackal]

*PANTS*

Just realized that the missus is coming over 2morrow - will have to explain what this stuff is for ........ hmmmmm excuses coming up........

Machine in DC is bust need parts hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

Oh well

Im sure you will think of something

[The Jackal]

Originally Posted by zinglebarb

Ive used that board in fact Bopdude has a machine built by me on that board and ive touted it for ages

I know not of any other boards with agp/pci-e and DDR and DDRII
The 805 clocks to over 3 gig on it btw

SWEET I know its a good clocker for the ol Pentium Ds but I really want a Dual Core for multitasking they are in a league of their own.

I'm expecting average to slight loss performance with this kit : Will get a decent mobo and *PHAT* cooler in the new year.

---------- Post added at 10:30 ---------- Previous post was at 10:25 ----------

Originally Posted by zinglebarb

I know not of any other boards with agp/pci-e and DDR and DDRII
The 805 clocks to over 3 gig on it btw

I think Asus p5..... vm or somthing is the other board that can support DDR1 I was reading on some of the o/c forums but I went with this one as I can see all their settings on the forums LOL they've done all the hard work for me :

No fapping around with Vcores n memory timings heh. Anyway I wont be able to oc much on this board anyway so no worries.

[Stuart]

Originally Posted by CrC-3rr0r

Dont throw away your old DDR and AGP card just yet.....

If like me all your machines are dated like Socket A / AGP and plain old DDR then this could a big hit without shelling out a fortune buying PCI Express graphics cards / DDR2 memory.

Yes this is not pretty and chipset mixing will lose u a little performance /zero overclocking potential but is certainly something you could do if you're on a budget or just want to test the Dual Core Platform.

Prices off ebuyer...

E6300 - £117.50 inc (Good overclocker which you can keep for later when you get proper hardware)
E6400 - £153.94 inc
http://www.legitreviews.com/article/377/14/
ASRock 775DUAL-VSTA SKT 775 - £38.58 inc (it doesnt have firewire though ) but a good search around will prolly reap a good few better boards in the pricerange or maybe even at the £30 mark

I got one of those boards on Saturday, with a E6600. I currently have 1 Gig DDR (PC400) RAM, and a GForce 6600 AGP. I'll be replacing the Memory when I get some more money, but the Graphics Card will have to wait until DX10 cards come down to a reasonable price.

I'm pretty sure I am not getting the best performance I could for games, but that's probably due to my card being AGP. I have to admit, while good performance in Games is nice, it's not a major point for me, as I tend to use the Xbox 360 for games anyway.

But, for DVD and Video work, it rocks. Nero was encoding a DVD at almost 400 frames a second!

Your preaching to the already converted there dude

[The Jackal]

Originally Posted by Stuart C

I got one of those boards on Saturday, with a E6600. I currently have 1 Gig DDR (PC400) RAM, and a GForce 6600 AGP. I'll be replacing the Memory when I get some more money, but the Graphics Card will have to wait until DX10 cards come down to a reasonable price.

I'm pretty sure I am not getting the best performance I could for games, but that's probably due to my card being AGP. I have to admit, while good performance in Games is nice, it's not a major point for me, as I tend to use the Xbox 360 for games anyway.

But, for DVD and Video work, it rocks. Nero was encoding a DVD at almost 400 frames a second!

Yeh I think granted we will prolly lose around 5~10% but hell we've saved well over £300 by recycling memory and grahics... I'm looking at this as a bit of a testbed to see how I get on... Just can't wait for it to come through the door lets just hope I dont get too excited like when I got my first barton.... mounted fan crack - core - shesh luckily I had bought 2 at the same time then

I will try doing some DV capture/encoding (purpose of the upgrade) when I get the board trouble is I'll have to use an old firewire card as this board doesn't come with IEEE1394.

[TheBlueRaja]

Out of the Dual core range - whats the best bang for buck? Is it worth shelling out for the E6600 for the 4meg cache?

yes

[The Jackal]

Originally Posted by zinglebarb

Your preaching to the already converted there dude

Mate I read the reviews about the E6xxx ages back and was just gob smacked !

I had already converted when I read the reviews ! Now I'm jsut getting the hardware

PS Quad core review ? Overkill maybe think a bump in speed would have been nicer than going quad core.

just reading this at the moment

http://tomshardware.co.uk/2006/09/10..._uk/index.html

---------- Post added at 11:46 ---------- Previous post was at 11:44 ----------

Originally Posted by TheBlueRaja

Out of the Dual core range - whats the best bang for buck? Is it worth shelling out for the E6600 for the 4meg cache?

I think so if you're gonna being doing some heavy encoding / CAD etc AND ESPECIALLY IF YOU'RE GONNA BE USING THAT PIECE OF JUNK CALLED WINDOWS

BTW E6600 was my first choice many months back

Only over kill cuz its 700 quid lol

[The Jackal]

Originally Posted by zinglebarb

Only over kill cuz its 700 quid lol

Yeh but my point is that it'll be tricky to max out all 4 cores in everyday use and even if you do wheres the bandwidth going to go ? Surely the harddisk wont be able to take it hence becoming a system bottleneck.

Anyone know if the filesystem can handle a dual core unraring on 1 core and unziping on the other core simultaneously.

I mean how does the filesystem react to that ?

[TheBlueRaja]

Originally Posted by CrC-3rr0r

snippy..

I think so if you're gonna being doing some heavy encoding / CAD etc AND ESPECIALLY IF YOU'RE GONNA BE USING THAT PIECE OF JUNK CALLED WINDOWS

BTW E6600 was my first choice many months back

At least WPA works though eh!