Mark’s Site

It was a very hard decision, but I couldn’t justify the extra $$ for a quad core. I took a long hard look at the applications that I use (development applications like Visual Studio, SQL Server, Zend, and so on), but in the end I would only have been purchasing a quad core for Far Cry 2, which is coming out late this year and supposedly takes full advantage of multiple cores (demos were done with 2 quad cores, yes 8 cores!). And that really wasn’t a good enough reason for me to go quad core, considering there is no hard proof yet that Far Cry 2 will in fact run a lot better on quad core versus dual cores.

I did however, purchase a new CPU today, as I was noticing lag on my e4300 in the everyday tasks that I do. Something had to be done. The slowness could not stand! So I did LOADS of research into core 2 quads and standard core 2 duos (over a week in fact at a couple of hours a night), and made my choice for a processor that I could overclock to high heaven, and, if I had any troubles with overclocking, would still be happy with both the price and processor stock speed. The answer in the end was the e8200. Stock speed of 2.66Ghz, and a whole page dedicated to how easy the CPU is to overclock (http://www.utheguru.com/overclocking-an-intel-e8200-core-2-duo-processor-2M), I just couldn’t resist.

So I saved $150 as I was looking very closely at the q9300 (quad core), but I just couldn’t see the use of the additional cores for the cost. Sure, in a year or two, more applications will be released that will GREATLY take advantage of quad core, but by then DDR2 will be something to laugh about and Front Side Buses of 1333 will be a joke also, as I’m sure everything will have tripled in power by then, so I’ll be upgrading my whole computer I’m sure in another 2-3 years.

For now, with the current state of the application and games industry. I believe a good core 2 duo is still the way to go. Vista is blisteringly fast with this new CPU running at 3.6Ghz. (Yes, I got a stable, happy temperature overclock from 2.66 to 3.6Ghz - HOW INSANE IS THAT!?)

Here’s my CPU frequency settings from CPUZ (note, my e4300 at stock got a 1M reading of 31 seconds, and my 3Ghz P4 got 1M in just over 2 minutes, so 12 seconds is brilliant for this new 45nm breed processor):

And here’s my memory frequency readings from CPUZ (note: that’s standard Geil DDR800):

Here’s temp readings from Coretemp:

And I should also mention my SuperPI readings …of 12-13 seconds over 1M!!! :-)))

Here’s my SuperPI output:

So if, like me, you are mildly confident about overclocking, you can get a base version for around $200, and overclock it to speeds of $400+ models (you’ll need a non-stock cooler though, and a motherboard which allows overclocking, which you need to know all about before deciding anything).

I must say I got lucky when I purchased a new motherboard for our HTTP server a few months ago. It was better than my existing board! So I did the ol’ switch this weekend and put my old motherboard (which was still a very good board: Gigabyte 965PDS3 rev 3.3 solid capacitor, 1333FSB etc etc.) in favour of the new Gigabyte P35-DS3, which has a higher FSB, the latest and greatest of everything, and support for quad cores and the new 45nm Intel processors (which the old board did not have, unless you used a beta BIOS version which I wasn’t too happy about trying).

So yea, a good weekend, as I got a newer, more powerful motherboard, a new cpu which I overclocked EASILY and I even managed to overclock my 800 rated ram to 900, and all is running brilliantly! My first ever overclock where I haven’t had issues. I’m happily surprised. Thanks Intel, and a special thanks to the above mentioned article on e8200 processors, which without this I would have spent an extra $150 on a q9300, for (I believe) nothing!