gator skywalker

I am in the process of purchasing a new chip and motherboard and I need to know what I should get. I have a budget of $300 to $400, but I am a teacher so less is best. I will be gaming, obviously, and most of that gaming will be done on POE2.
I have been hearing forever that core2duo beats the AMD's hands down, but I have done a little research and it looks like they are pretty close in terms of real world gaming tests. Plus the cost of the AMD X2's seem to be a lot lower. E.G. AMD Athlon 64 X2 6000+ 3.0GHz = $170 vs. Intel Core 2 Duo E6550 Conroe 2.33GHz = $185. Yes, the Intel has 4mb cache vs 2mb for the AMD, but the processor is alot slower.
If anyone has real world experience with either or just has an opinion, I would appreciate it very much.

Tempus

I have an Opteron 185 (dual-core 2.6GHz). My bottleneck is my videocard. A BF2 game like PoE2 will never use half of the CPU's processing power.

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You can't compare processor speeds anymore. They're all different because they'll each do a certain amount of work per clock cycle. The E6550 may be slower but it'll do much more work per clock cycle. That's why it's priced close to the X2 6000+.

I have a E6400 @ 3.0Ghz and it's great. The Core 2 chips are very OC friendly and give much better overclocked performance compared to an overclocked X2. However, the X2 chips are really cheap and you can probably find a cheaper motherboard that has similar features for an Intel chip.

It's really up to whatever you feel like. Both are good processors.

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Zoopy

The E6750 2.6GHz is only $190 and is much better then the X2 6000+. But it's 1333FSB so you'll need a Motherboard that can handle it.

But the 6000 is better then the E6650 ...

JAMerica

IMHO any Intel Core2Duo processors or their AMD equivalents will run BF2 and associated mods with ease (I have an E6300 and run these games fine). Get the base model and splurge on a graphics card and make sure you have 2+ GB of RAM.

*Edit* LOL, should have read Tempus's post....what he said

HTH

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jaymind

As everyone is saying, get a cheaper $150 Core 2 Duo + a decent $130 P35 motherboard and overclock it a bit and your right up there with intels most expensive chips.

If you do get a P35 motherboard, get a DDR2 model, not the DDR3 model (DDR3 memory is 3x the price of DDR2 right now with no advantages to those that don't go into wild overclocks.).

Buckets

The Core2 duos give you much more potential for overclocking and a better upgrade path in the future. If you're not going to overclock, the AMD64 X2 chips give better performance for the price. Frankly, your best bet is to do what others here have said: save a bit of money on the CPU and buy a better graphics card.

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Iamthefallen

^^^ Truth.

Get a low-mid range Core 2 and the most awesomestest video card you can afford (Assuming you have a largish monitor, if you're on a 17" or some such, you can probably run max settings with a mid-range card)

Like I said in game and someone posted above, Ghz is an essentially useless metric now. It only matters within the same CPU family. CPU comparison chart.

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msdz

I was going to do a new build a while back using Intels E4300 and Asus cheapy MB. I have had friends tell me they can be overclocked outrageously and still remain cool and stable and be equivalent to an Intel Q6700 in perfermance after OC'ing it.
ATM moment I have an AMD older processor, it has served me well, but I also think that AMD is slowly falling behind Intel for now anyway. I never did do that build I wanted to, Now I want to do a build using the Q6600 quad-core processor, prices have dropped and check Newegg.com out to see the new prices http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16819115017 You could try getting this and a cheap Asus MB to run it? You may need to spend just a tad more for memory, processor, and MB to get going if you do not already have the memory though.
Still a quad-core at this price, WOW!!! A cheap Asus MB IMO is better than some other cheap board you may get but I am sure you can find a cheaper MB than even Asus and also can probably search around and find a cheaper price on the Q6600 processor also, I seen it for $285 at some other web sire, can;t remember the name though. I used pricewatch.com to search for cheaper prices. I am sure some other people could find other sites where they may be cheaper yet.
Still I think Intel is the way to go as of now, at least till AMD starts showing some major improvements. needing to use two(2) dual-core processors to make a quad-core is not cheap and shows me they don;t have the smarts yet to make a single quad-core processor as Intel has done and now Intel is talking about eight cores?!?! But also usinf two(2) quad-core processors to do this.

Remember, if you buy a cheap MB you can always upgrade at a later date, same with processor but chose something that will be around for a little while and not change so you need a whole new set up again. I think the LGA Socket 775 will be around and supported for a while.

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Iamthefallen

Gator, check out this thread.

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