Building a nice OC system.

[XSlingerX]

Hello, I have had an Athlon 64 3700 for a while, and I've been looking into getting a dual core. It seems that the Core 2 Duos outperform the Athlon X2's, but I don't know which motherboard or chip to get. I'm an overclocker and want to get the best performance per buck. I was looking into the quad cores but they are too expensive for me.

This is what I'm thinking so far:

E6600 or E6700
2 GB OCZ DDR2-800

Could I get advice on:

Motherboard (Good for overclocking)
Power Supply (I just have a 500W no-name)
Cooler
Thermal Grease

I currently have a 60 GB 7200 RPM hard drive. Would a 10,000 RPM make a big difference?

I already have an ATI X1900XTX so I don't think I need a new GPU.

My budget is about $1500 CAD, but I'm willing to go higher.

Thanks ,
Slinger

[sdjenkyn]

Hello, I have had an Athlon 64 3700 for a while, and I've been looking into getting a dual core. It seems that the Core 2 Duos outperform the Athlon X2's, but I don't know which motherboard or chip to get. I'm an overclocker and want to get the best performance per buck. I was looking into the quad cores but they are too expensive for me.

This is what I'm thinking so far:

E6600 or E6700
2 GB OCZ DDR2-800

Could I get advice on:

Motherboard (Good for overclocking)
Power Supply (I just have a 500W no-name)
Cooler
Thermal Grease

I currently have a 60 GB 7200 RPM hard drive. Would a 10,000 RPM make a big difference?

I already have an ATI X1900XTX so I don't think I need a new GPU.

My budget is about $1500 CAD, but I'm willing to go higher.

Thanks ,
Slinger

My understanding is the e6600 may be the best for ocing as higher fsb potential then anything amd offers....gigabyte has some great boards for ocing with the pentium chips. OCZ ram may have compatibility issues with that combo but just go with corsair instead no performance loss.Zalman possibly makes the best fans for cooling in case and on chip (copper pipe fans) or on your budget you could probably do water cooling. Antec 900 case is my recommendation ,plenty of room and 3 massive fans. 550+ PSU if you go to an sli configured board or you will need to find a crossfire board for your ati ( is it a pci card or agp ?) Buy a sound card if you have the change. Audigy 2's are cheap and well worth the additional hardware.http://www.tomshardware.com/2007/01/...t_2/page2.html

[Erik]

E4xxx series is better for over-clocking than E6xxx series because they have high multipliers (E4400 has a multiplier of 10, which is the highest of any C2D except for the extreme series) and less cache which means less heat production.

Gigabyte GA965P-DS3 has great over-clocking potential, but if you go for a CPU with a high multiplier (minimum 8) then any DDR2-800 board with access to over-clocking settings should do.

I currently have a 60 GB 7200 RPM hard drive. Would a 10,000 RPM make a big difference?

Yes, but at a very high cost.

You'll get even better performance from two 7200 RPM disks in a RAID 0 setup.
That's what I have now and the difference with my old 7200 RPM IDE disk is staggering.
In office applications the speed of your hard disk is probably the single most important factor in performance.
RAID 0 is a lot cheaper than a single 10,000 disk too, and you'll get a lot more storage space.

Only downside to RAID 0 is the chance of loosing your data when something goes wrong (check my thread about my recent problems).
RAID 1 is a solution to that problem, but you'll get only half the storage space and far worst write speeds.
For the price of a single 10.000 rpm disk you can buy three or four regular hard disks so you could even look into RAID 5, 10 or 01.

[XSlingerX]

is it a pci card or agp ?

My video card is PCI-E

Ok, this is what I pulled up from NCIX, what do you think?

Motherboard:
Gigabyte GA-965P-DS3 $166.75
ASUS P5B Deluxe $253.08

CPU:
Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 $289.99

Case:
Antec Nine Hundred $122.87

Heatsink:
Zalman CNPS9700NT $80.74 (Comes with thermal grease)

Power Supply:
OCZ GameXStream 600W $129.59

Ram:
Unsure, what should I get?

Total: $789.94 (Gigabyte) or $875.27 (Asus)
Note: This is NOT including RAM.

What do you guys think? Am I missing anything?

[sdjenkyn]

Take Eriks advice on chip type since thats who I probably read first about differences. Get the gigabyte board as long as it has everything you want. Gigabyte builds in some nice ocing features. Go with the corsair ddr2-800 as that should eliminate any compatibility issues that I heard about. I would still look at the raptor hard drives and maybe 2 if you can afford it and then run them without the benefit of raid for the safety of your data....see Eriks thread. Soundcard? Also does your VC work on these Motherboards (agp or pci-e)?

[Erik]

Go with the corsair ddr2-800 as that should eliminate any compatibility issues that I heard about.

AFAIK all compatibility issues were caused by RAM that ran on higher voltages.
I think some MoBo's defaulted to 1.8V instead of the voltage set in the SPD.
RAM that runs standard on 1.8V should always work.

I would still look at the raptor hard drives and maybe 2 if you can afford it and then run them without the benefit of raid for the safety of your data.

Two Raptors but not in RAID doesn't make much sense to me.

You only really need a fast disk for the operating system and your most popular applications and games.
One 150GB Raptor should be enough for that.

User data (movies, photo's etc.) is stored safer (Raptors break down far more often than regular disks) and cheaper on a 7200rpm disk or RAID 1.

[Incinerate_IV]

E4xxx series is better for over-clocking than E6xxx series because they have high multipliers (E4400 has a multiplier of 10, which is the highest of any C2D except for the extreme series) and less cache which means less heat production.

The E4xxx series is good for cheap overclocking, but if you are not on a tight budget the E6xxx series is the way to go. The E6xxx series is much more overclockable. Most E4xxx series have trouble going past 3 Ghz, even on watercooling.

[Erik]

The E6xxx series is much more overclockable. Most E4xxx series have trouble going past 3 Ghz, even on watercooling.

Are you sure? I've heard the exact opposite:
E6xxx struggeling to go past 3GHz.
E4xxx reaching 3.5 GHz quite easily.

This makes more sense because E4xxx has less cache, which means less heat production.
And E4xxx has higher multipliers, which means less strain on the FSB and RAM.
Fianlly Alandale is newer than Conroe, which usually means better optimalizations (although I don;t think intel has done a lot of tweaking, just cutting off 2MB of cache).
I can't think of a single reason why E4xxx's would perform worst than E6xxx's.

King Edward I pushed his E4300 to 3.82Ghz, which is very impressive and I haven't seen any E6600's reach such clocks.
http://twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=32928

[Incinerate_IV]

Are you sure? I've heard the exact opposite:
E6xxx struggeling to go past 3GHz.
E4xxx reaching 3.5 GHz quite easily.

This makes more sense because E4xxx has less cache, which means less heat production.
And E4xxx has higher multipliers, which means less strain on the FSB and RAM.
Fianlly Alandale is newer than Conroe, which usually means better optimalizations (although I don;t think intel has done a lot of tweaking, just cutting off 2MB of cache).
I can't think of a single reason why E4xxx's would perform worst than E6xxx's.

The first few E4xxx's, mainly the ones sent to reviewers, are pretty good overclockers, but right now most E4300 won't overclock as well as E6300. The E6xxx series seems to be of much higher quality than the E4xxx series.

King Edward I pushed his E4300 to 3.82Ghz, which is very impressive and I haven't seen any E6600's reach such clocks.
http://twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=32928

He also has phase. Some E6600s have reached over 5Ghz on phase.

[XSlingerX]

He also has phase. Some E6600s have reached over 5Ghz on phase.

What is phase?

I checked out directcanada.com for the same parts and they are a little cheaper than NCIX, by $20-$30.

Does anyone know any other good Canadian sites? Tiger Direct is overpriced, and NCIX is decent.

[sdjenkyn]

I see. I had not heard anything about reliability on Raptors. Only performance being superior to other disks. Must of misread the ram issue as I recall someone stating it had to do with OCZ brand on gigabyte board with pentium chips , if what you say is right then I would clearly recommend OCZ ram in this config as I havent had any issues on my gig board. @xslingerx....you can also go with one Raptor and just pick up a Seagate external for back-up and storage thats what I've done to avoid data loss and avoid messing with raid configs.

[XSlingerX]

So Erik, are you saying that if I bought an E4xxx, I would be able to attain a higher clock speed than an overclocked E6xxx? Even if the E4xxx does have a higher clock speed, does that necessarily mean its faster than an overclocked E6xxx?

If say an E6600 or E6700 would perform better, I have no problem spending a little extra cash.

Also, why should I go with the Gigabyte motherboard rather than the Asus one I pointed out?

Is that also a good power supply and heatsink I picked?

BTW, thanks for advice on the hard drives, but I think I will stick to what I have for now as I don't think it will make as significant of a difference as other parts.

Thanks for your help as always ,
Slinger

[Erik]

So Erik, are you saying that if I bought an E4xxx, I would be able to attain a higher clock speed than an overclocked E6xxx?

Yes.

Even if the E4xxx does have a higher clock speed, does that necessarily mean its faster than an overclocked E6xxx?

No, because E6xxx has more L2 cache (4MB vs 2MB), except for the E6300 and E6400.
In some applications cache size is more important than clock speed, but in other applications clock speed is more important.

I would not dare to say which chip is the best overall, but I think it's close and depending on the application.

If say an E6600 or E6700 would perform better, I have no problem spending a little extra cash.

The most cache dependent applications show gains of about 15% with 4MB vs 2MB.
But some applications don't show any gains from the larger cache.
On average the gains are just a few percent.

It's your money, but I don't think spending an extra $300 is worth a 5% gain in performance.
I would rather spend the money on a second video card (8800 SLI?).

Also, why should I go with the Gigabyte motherboard rather than the Asus one I pointed out?

Because it can reach higher FSB speeds, and it's cheaper.
But I both MoBo's are very good, so if you prefer the ASUS for it's featues/brand-name it's still a good pick.

Is that also a good power supply and heatsink I picked?

I think so.

I also heard great things about the "tunic tower 120"
I think it's noisier than the Zalman, but more efficient at cooling (mainly because it's big...very, very big).

BTW, thanks for advice on the hard drives, but I think I will stick to what I have for now as I don't think it will make as significant of a difference as other parts.

A faster hard disk makes a huge difference in windows, and when loading games/levels.
But once you are in the game it doesn't make much of a difference, no.

Although for a game like Oblivion, where you have to load new areas all the time I think it makes a big difference.

[Valerius Maximus]

i recently bought a new system with an e6600 and gigabyte 965-ds3 mobo, also 2 gig of OCZ ddr2-800mhz ram...

i wanna have a go at oc'ing it and noticed that the mobo comes with easytune. Is using easytune a decent way of overclocking or am i better off doing it myself in the BIOS?

[Erik]

Is using easytune a decent way of overclocking or am i better off doing it myself in the BIOS?

Before you start overclocking you'll probably want to change memory latency timings and disable some features, which can only be done in BIOS.
NOTE: To access memory latencies (and some other "advanced" features) you'll need to press crtl+F1 in the BIOS main screen...took me some while before I figured that out so I thought I'd tell you.

The actual increasing of the FSB can be done both ways.
Easytunes has the advantage that you don't have to restart your computer after each step, which saves a lot of time.
Plus: with easy tunes you can run stress tests in the background while you OC, and keep a close eye on the temperature gages.

But BIOS gives you more control.
I only really used easytunes to do some testing, the eventual OC'ing I did in BIOS.