Core Duo/MB question

deniewibly

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Hi all

I'm going to replace my current MB/CPU with a Core Duo 2.40Ghz 1066 FSB and an Asus P5B. Can anyone give me some good recommendations on what RAM to get (2Gb).

I'm replacing a P4 2.4ghz, will I notice a massive increase in speed? I mainly work with Adobe Premiere and Adobe After Effects and they are very CPU intensive apps so am looking for a big performance boost.

Thanks

Dene
 
You should notice a pretty decent increase in speed with that upgrade.

As far as RAM is concerned, it depends what you want to do and spend really.
If you don't want to overclock or anything like that then a couple of 1GB sticks of PC2-5300 DDR2 memory will do you fine.
If you want to overclock or perhaps future proof to certain extent (maybe) then go for PC2-6400.

There are plenty of memory manufacturers supplying 2GB "kits" at the moment but I would recommend buying from Corsair, Geil, Crucial, or G-Skill. It might be worth a visit to the Asus website and checking if there are any makes that have been tested and approved for the P5B motherboard.
 
as somebodys already said, what you intend to get from the system is what you need to ask yourself. if your going to stick to the stock speed, then go for pc5300 (667mhz), and I would get 2GB if you deal with large files. rather get more ram than waisting your money on expensive stuff.

I would recommend http://www.a2bit.co.uk/scripts/prodView.asp?idproduct=363

I've used more of this than I've had hot dinners, and never had any problems.
 
Thanks guys. As I said, I mainly use this for video work but as I will have all that power under the hood I might just have to invest in a new graphics card. Do you know if I can get a decent card for sub-£100?

cheers

Dene
 
Ensure that you get a P5B with the latest firmware as the orginal frimware doesn't support the Core 2 Duo CPUs.

Have just brought a P5B (From Scan, who say theirs have the updated firmware) i've also been doing a lot of reading and found that this board is very picky with RAM, ASUS have also this week removed the Qualified Vendors List for this board, hopefully to update it with RAM that can be found in the UK. Corsair claim their RAM is compatable however i've yet to find out as it looks like my mobo is faulty.
 
Thanks for that. I'll also be buying from Scan. Which CPU did you buy? I want the E6600 but Scan are currently out of stock. Please let me know how you get on as i'm not planning to buy the kit until I get back from my hols towards the end of September.

Dene
 
deniewibly said:
Thanks for that. I'll also be buying from Scan. Which CPU did you buy? I want the E6600 but Scan are currently out of stock. Please let me know how you get on as i'm not planning to buy the kit until I get back from my hols towards the end of September.

Dene

I went for the E6300 Conroe Core... the Mobo, CPU and RAM have gone back for testing... I'll let you know what happens.
 
Spoonboy90 said:
Ensure that you get a P5B with the latest firmware as the orginal frimware doesn't support the Core 2 Duo CPUs.

Have just brought a P5B (From Scan, who say theirs have the updated firmware) i've also been doing a lot of reading and found that this board is very picky with RAM, ASUS have also this week removed the Qualified Vendors List for this board, hopefully to update it with RAM that can be found in the UK. Corsair claim their RAM is compatable however i've yet to find out as it looks like my mobo is faulty.



I've just had a similar experience with an Asrock Conroe945-DVI and E6300.

Bought a 1GB dual channel OCZ Value Pro kit (2x512MB) - the MBD would not even get to the BIOS screen with this RAM. Strangely, if I then also put a generic 1GB stick of DDR533 in slot1, then the MBD would see the OCZ memory fine (now in slots 2+4). Take the generic stick out - back to no output. Tried every combination, cleared CMOS etc etc, changed timings etc etc - all to no avail.
Also, the OCZ memory worked fine on a Gigabyte GA-81945PL-G motherboard running a Pentium D930.

Swapped the OCZ memory for Corsair XMS5400, and everything is fine - all works no problem.
Never had an issue with OCZ memory before - looks like this motherboard may also be a bit picky with RAM - wonder if it uses the same memory controller (AFAIK, Asrock is a budget offshoot of ASUS).
 
It seems to be the OCZ RAM people have been having issue with on the P5B but there were a few other brands that I can't remember where people have reported problems.

Scan have tested and found a fault with my mobo, they have also checked the RAM and CPU with the new P5B mobo they are sending and all is working fine so Corsair RAM seems a safe bet and the CPU/BIOS should also be a non-issue. So good luck deniewibly
 
I've looked on 'Toms Hardware' but I can't find a comparison guide for the Core Duo chips against the P4D.

Can someone tell me how much faster an E6300 would be compared to my present P4D 920?
 
Stiggy said:
I've looked on 'Toms Hardware' but I can't find a comparison guide for the Core Duo chips against the P4D.

Can someone tell me how much faster an E6300 would be compared to my present P4D 920?

E6300 is on par if not better than the 940, but comes close to the 965 in some benchmarks. the E6600 wipes all the other competetor chips away...
 
Can someone tell me how much faster an E6300 would be compared to my present P4D 920?


On average, an E6300 would be about 1.3x faster than a D920 - probably roughly equivalent to a D960.

The E6300 is definitely the best value out of the Core2Duo CPUs, although the E6400 isn't far behind in the price/performance stakes.
It's just whether you feel £120odd is worth it for a c.30% CPU performance gain (assuming your current motherboard can take a Core2Duo CPU).
You could sell the 920 though I suppose - if you stuck it on Ebay, you'd probably get someone to buy it for £100 :) :)



On a side note, it seems that from the benchmark figures on Tomshardware, the performance of the Core2Duo chips seems to follow the clock speed pretty accurately - there doesn't seem to be any performance jump when you go from the 2MB cache Allendale cored E6400 (2.13GHz) to the 4MB cache Conroe cored E6600 (2.4GHz), which isn't attributable solely to the increased clock speed.
For example the H264 test

E6400 (2134MHz) - 285
E6600 (2400MHz) - 254

That 254 secs for the E6600, is what you'd expect to get if you clocked the E6400 at 2400MHz (285 x 2134/2400=253.4).
It's pretty much the same story on many of the other tests too.
The test systems are identical apart from the CPU.

I would have expected the E6600 to have a c.12.5% performance boost over the E6400 just from it's higher clock speed - but I also expected to see a bigger jump than that due to the increased cache.
Are the tests flawed, or are current systems/apps unable to take advantage of the larger cache size? Have results for some models been extrapolated based on clock speeds? Hmmmmm.......


Anyway, one thing is certain - the E6300 (at stock speed) is around 3x faster than an AthlonXP 2400+ when encoding in x264 :D :D
 
deniewibly said:
Thanks guys. As I said, I mainly use this for video work but as I will have all that power under the hood I might just have to invest in a new graphics card. Do you know if I can get a decent card for sub-£100?

cheers

Dene
Have you thought about the XFX Geforce 7300GT 512mb PCI-E Graphics Card @ £79.99 Delivered. It's a great graphics card for the money. ;)
 

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