Is this the best processor?

[Jago_0108]

Intel Core 2 Duo Extreme

[AJLynn]

That and the 3GHz Xeon 5100 series CPU (don't remember the exact number) are the fastest ones out there - they're about the same speed. Expensive though. You can overclock a Core 2 Duo E6400 to about the same speed as the Extreme for a lot less money, if you have a good MB, RAM and power supply.

[Jago_0108]

Ok Andrew thanks a lot, now, what Motherboard would you recommend, I already have 4 Gb RAM. What about the Videocard

[AJLynn]

For the motherboard, I've got an MSI 975X, Greg's got an Intel "Badaxe", but everybody else seems to be in love with the Asus P5B Deluxe. I can't strongly recommend the MSI - it's good, but there are some things missing like a really good hardware monitoring program (which my previous MSI board for Athlon64 had).

 

For the RAM, if you want to overclock, the amount is less important than the type - I recommend PC6400 RAM. This is because the CPU multiplier is locked - e.g., on the E6400 the CPU is 8x the speed of the RAM. You overclock the CPU by overclocking the RAM. So the RAM needs to be able to work with a higher clock speed - default is 266MHz, but to get 2.8GHz the RAM needs to run at 350. I like the "headroom" you get from RAM that specs at 400.

 

Get a good CPU cooler - one of the big ones with a bunch of copper fins and heat pipes and a giant fan. I have a Freezer 7 Pro and it works well.

 

Video card... doesn't matter, as far as CPU is concerned. I've got one box with a FireGL v5100, one at work with a Quadro 1500, and a laptop with a Radeon x1600 softmodded to FireGL v5200, and they're all good.

[Greg Hess]

Unless you plan on overclocking heavily, the Extreme Edition processors are never a good price/performance ratio. You're paying almost 2x the amount of the next grade down, for only about 10-15% performance increase.

 

Best bang for the buck is the E6600, which is right around 315 USD right now (newegg). If you have some extra cash, the E6700 is nice...though you could also wait till nov, buy a core2quadro extreme for roughly 1200-1400 USD, and get the first quad core proc.