Dont buy Intel/AMD chips/systems right now.

[epicstruggle]

It looks like price of CPUs for both Intel and AMD are being cut this month. From the looks of it, its going to save you some serious cash.
http://www.crn.com/hardware/198700718
For the Intel folks:

Another source familiar with the companies' plans said Intel plans price cuts on its Core 2 Duo E6300, E6400, E6420, E6000 and E6700 processors, and the reducaions will range from 20 percent on the low end to 40 percent on the high end. There's also a 40 percent reduction planned for the Q6600 processor.

And for those who like AMD:

AMD on April 9 is expected to announce big discounts across its entire Athlon 64+ product line and its lower-end processors, several sources said. Some of the reductions will be as high as 30 percent, but like Intel, AMD is leaving some of its popular processors unaffected, such as the 4200+, sources said.

Personally the AMD chips offer greater performance/dollar.

 

[The_Wolf_Who_Cried_Boy]

Rather than start a seperate thread I'll pose the question here as the price cuts are serving as the motivation.

We are all aware of benchmarks showing C2D 15-20% faster per clock than an X2-Athlon, but, does this actually translate into a genuinely perceivable real world difference?

Assuming both an E6600/6700 and an X2-6000 are pushed to 3.2GHz (which seems very attainable for both) and running home-user light-multitasking type applications, IE web browsing, word/excel, paint, media player and games, with antivirus/antispy/firewall running in the background, could a blindfolded user actually tell one system from another? Expanding upon game performance, I'm currently running a 21" CRT at 1600*1200 and am looking to a 24" widescreen as an upgrade path, fed by either an R600 XT/GF800 ultra level card (single card only). The point being gaming will be GPU limited.

For clarity, I'm not interested in overlcocking either to within an inch of their lives, obviously the C2D has more headroom but 3.2 GHz seems a nice and realistic number to settle on. Likewise, relative to my current 1.2GHz Athlon, either would be close to an order of magnetude gain in performance. I have no interest in folding at home and little in media transcoding, the C2D's apparent main areas of superiority.

Again, could I genuinely perceive a difference in actual use between setups? I'm most interested in response from people who have used system running at close to the cited 3.2GHz clock, it's pointless comparing a 3.5GHz C2D vs an early model X2 maxed at 2.5GHz. Thnakyou in advance for any replies.

 

[Skrying]

In every day applications? No. In games? Yes, especially so depending on the game, as believe it or not there are a number of games that are also CPU dependent also.

In single thread games my Core 2 Duo at either 1.86Ghz or 2.4Ghz easily beat out my A64 at the same clock speeds.

 

[The_Wolf_Who_Cried_Boy]

Thanks for the response.

In every day applications? No. In games? Yes, especially so depending on the game, as believe it or not there are a number of games that are also CPU dependent also.

In single thread games my Core 2 Duo at either 1.86Ghz or 2.4Ghz easily beat out my A64 at the same clock speeds.

The reason such a thought is in my head at all were several gaming based CPU scaling reviews I've read last year showing very minimal returns going above ~2.4GHz for the X2, likewise 1920 x 1200 GPU benchmarking shows very little CPU based variance.

 

[22psi]

It looks like price of CPUs for both Intel and AMD are being cut this month. From the looks of it, its going to save you some serious cash.
http://www.crn.com/hardware/198700718
For the Intel folks:

And for those who like AMD:

Personally the AMD chips offer greater performance/dollar.

I just got a new dell pc and went with the low end E6400 for this reason alone, will upgrade later this year to a quad core unit

 

[Frank]

I don't notice much, if any, difference between the cheapest models and the high end ones. But then again, I use a tv (1360 * 768) as monitor, like AA, and am not a fps whore.

And for anything but games every processor is fast enough, even a VIA C3. Although a dual core is much more responsive.

Further, the increase in price is bigger than the increase in performance. So, for most purposes, the cheapest dual core processor would be best at the moment. And you should look at the price of the MB and RAM as well.

 

[Skrying]

And for anything but games every processor is fast enough, even a VIA C3. Although a dual core is much more responsive.

A VIA C3 is not usable, I'm sorry. I actually had a laptop come in with a VIA CPU recently, not sure if it was a C3 or maybe higher, whatever. Either way it was NOT fast enough to run Windows XP comfortably. The Pentium 3 laptop right by it felt far more responsive and the VIA had 1GB of RAM where as the P3 was living with 512MB. Both had 4200RPM hard drives.

 

[Frank]

A VIA C3 is not usable, I'm sorry. I actually had a laptop come in with a VIA CPU recently, not sure if it was a C3 or maybe higher, whatever. Either way it was NOT fast enough to run Windows XP comfortably. The Pentium 3 laptop right by it felt far more responsive and the VIA had 1GB of RAM where as the P3 was living with 512MB. Both had 4200RPM hard drives.

Slower, compared to the one right next to it doesn't mean unusable. It doesn't even mean "too slow". Just "slower".

 

[Skrying]

Slower, compared to the one right next to it doesn't mean unusable. It doesn't even mean "too slow". Just "slower".

It means tons of wasted time, it means being frustrated. If I had to use a VIA C3 to do every day applications I would likely spend twice the amount of time looking at a screen that I do not want to be looking at. That I deem is to slow.

 

[digitalwanderer]

Damn it, I hate reading threads like this when I'm agonizing over if I should grab a 939 3800x2 since there is one on Newegg for under $100.

 

[Frank]

Well, you have "good enough", and you have "That's what I want!". Simply don't look at the value for money when you're in the second group.

 

[AlNom]

I wish they just stuck to 939 65nm . I don't see the point in adjusting to DDR2 until a newer architecture or just skipping to DDR3. I refuse AM2!

 

[epicstruggle]

looks like AMD's price cuts have come in:
http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=6848

Of note, X2 6000+ went from $464 to $241

Intel's cuts will happen within the next 2 weeks or so.

 

[nutball]

Hehe, I've been itching to upgrade my processor for the past three weeks since I first saw news of the price cuts on The Inq. The X2 5000 (65nm Brisbane no less) dropped from £154 to £109 over the weekend. That'll do me for now

 

[epicstruggle]

It looks like AMD will very well be offering their X2 6000+ (and lower) CPUs for under $100 before the end of the year.

 

[poopypoo]

*just bought an Opteron 165 recently*

*wants to shoot self*

still... i like overclocking this little beast ^^;

 

[bdotobdot2]

Damn it, I hate reading threads like this when I'm agonizing over if I should grab a 939 3800x2 since there is one on Newegg for under $100.

Sadly, 939's will get harder to find, ala socket 754. Do it!! I dropped the Opty 144 in my server rig for the 3800+ x2 and its MUCH NICER!!