6300, 6400 or 6600?

[womble]

Well heres the spec for a machine i should be ordering soon;

 

Intel Core 2 Duo 6300, 6400 or 6600

Asus P5b Deluxe

ATI Radeon x1600 Pro (to Softmod to a 5100)

250Gb Western Digital HD

80GB Western Digital HD

2x 1gb Kingston 667Mhz RAM

Samsung DVD-RW

525W Maxsilent PSU

 

 

I just have a few questions regarding this setup.

 

1) I Can upgrade the 6300 to a 6400 for £32, or the 6600 for £102. Now neither of these would neceserally blow my budget, but would they really be worth it for the price hike?

2) Is there a discernable difference between the ASUS P5B Deluxe Wifi 965 and the ASUS P5B Intel? I've budgeted for the Deluxe, but if im not going to notice a difference I can cut £40 out of my cost (which could then go towards the 6600 for example).

3) Should I go for the x1600 Pro, or spend an extra £30 and go for the x1600 XT. Will I notice a difference when using Max/Compositing programmes? Am I right in thinking that I can Softmod these cards up to a FireGL 5100 or something? I can't say I really understand the process but from what I hear it'll make the card better for framerates in max?

 

Thanks guys, I appreciate any help.

[Greg Hess]

E6300 = 1.86 ghz

E6400 = 2.13 ghz

E6600 = 2.40 ghz

 

I'd go for the 2.4 personally...or you could just wait till next year, and put that money towards a quad core processor. (Unless you want to shell out a thousand or so right now).

 

The P5B Deluxe is the "tweaking" board. Standard P5B doesn't get many accolades. Most IT/oc'ers say to go for the P5B-E or the Deluxe.

 

Don't know much about ATI cards, cause I've never quite liked them.

[lambros]

I got a Core 2 Duo 6400 with the P5B deluxe wifi and had memory problems as you can read in the "4GB revisited" thread. No other problems with the mobo, you can go for it. Note that the documentation for the dual channel memory setting is wrong: the two memory sticks should be inserted in same color slots to get them working in dual channel mode (the manual states that they should be put in adjacent slots - which is wrong).

The 6400 is very very fast, but unfortunately I cannot tell whether the extra cash for the 6600 will be worth it. I chose 6400 as it seems to offer the best value for money. Try to check it on tomshardware comparative tests, you should work it out.

Finally, i would not rely on softmodding, you should really find out it if it is possible for the particular model, and note that in some cases it may not work for the particular card that you get your hands onto. Also, softmodding (if possible) will unlock some features (as antialiasing) but won't make drastic speed changes. If you are uncertain about trying the softmod, or are not a technical minded person, you should not bother trying the mod (it will also render invalid your guarantee). I would go for an ATI 1900 instead, or a Gforce 7900 to get a really good value for money, and get some really good speed

[azizmorgan]

Hi,

 

I got the E6600 2.4 Ghz

with a Gigabyte GA-945P-S3

2x1 gb spectek 667 Mhz RAM

ATI Radeon x300 Pro

 

and it work very well for me , of course the ATI x300 is not a great card but I use this machine for render only so if you want to make a machine to be as a workstation so get a good card but i do not know about ATI x1600 Pro.

[Macer]

QX6700 (four cores) was released yesterday. It costs around $999, but it is almost twice as fast as E6700 in Max at least.

 

There is a cheaper lower clocked version out in January, Q6600, if you can wait until then?

 

http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=2866