[ale] Mobo + Intel chip recommendations, please

[Jamey Owens]

I'm pretty scatterbrained so let me know if I miss anything.  It's painfully 
easy to get lost in all the different chips out right now.  It seems like 
sometime in the last couple of years the gigahertz war went stale and the 
two giants are trying to push more speed from the same frequency and shrink 
die sizes.  This is definately a good thing, but makes it tough to figure 
out what's what.

Currently one of the hot buzzwords when buy/selling processors is the 
fabrication process used.  Basically it is just the gate-length or size of 
the transistors used in a chip.  For a slightly more well-explained answer 
check out http://www.edn.com/article/CA6493083.html  The benefit seen by 
going to a smaller fab process is one of the key-points you were asking for 
in the original post.  Smaller transistors take less power each so results 
less power the chip will require.  In reality though you're looking at just 
about the same consumption between the conroe and wolfdale processors thanks 
to the cache being increased to something like 12MB.

On that note, the 12MB L2 is pretty much the only compelling reason I've 
seen to move to the wolfdale.  At equivalent frequencies the wolfdale chips 
are pulling an average of 6% increases across benchmarks in xbitlabs.com 
reviews.

My pick right now for balancing budget/performance might be the Q6600 which 
you can pick up for about $200 at Microcenter here in Marietta.  Quad core 
chip running 2.4Ghz.  It is only 4MB of L2 cache and 65nm process which 
seems to have taken a big chunk out of it's price point.

The $20 buck difference idea can lead you up a chain to the top pretty 
quickly, their marketing folks are sneaky. ;)  Here is a selection of chips 
from newegg for quick comparison:

Conroe:
$170  2.33Ghz
$185  2.66 Ghz
$270  3.0Ghz
Wolfdale:
$179  2.66Ghz
$209  3.0Ghz

All that rambling aside, from what you've said, for the price you really 
can't go wrong with the P35 and whatever chip you decide to stick on it.


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Jim Popovitch" <yahoo at jimpop.com>
To: <ale at ale.org>
Sent: Sunday, April 06, 2008 11:49 PM
Subject: Re: [ale] Mobo + Intel chip recommendations, please


> On Sun, Apr 6, 2008 at 11:17 PM, Jamey Owens <vindir at comcast.net> wrote:
>> Any idea what kind of price range you're looking to fit into?
>
> The less, the better.  :-)
>
>>  There aren't a whole lot of chips out from intel right now at or above 
>> 3Ghz
>>  so you're looking at either the Conroe E6850 or Wolfdale E8400/E8500.
>
> What's comparable in the 2GHx - 3Ghz range?   I don't know that I need
> 3Ghz, at present (until today) 2.2Ghz did fine.   If 3Ghz is $20 more
> than a 2.7GHz, then it's an easy decision, I just am not sure of what
> the sane price/Mhz range is these days.
>
>>  One of the better choices out right now is something the Asus P5K line 
>> for
>>  around $120-$160 if you want to go P35 chipset with the Conroe.  65nm 
>> chip
>>  but the boards should support 45nm if you decide to move up in the 
>> future.
>
> I'm not sure that I understand that... P35 chipset seems to be in my
> price range and seems to fit what I need.   What is 65nm chip and
> 45nm?
>
>>  Alternately if you run with the gigabyte recommendation they have the
>>  GIGABYTE GA-P35-DS3L for around 90 and a couple other choices around 
>> that
>>  range, less options in setup but not bad boards.
>>
>>  If you're looking at the wolfdales might as well go for the X38 or X48
>>  chipsets now.  Haven't used any of them to give comment but liked the 
>> looks
>>  of the Asus P5E.
>
> Thx!
>
> -Jim P.
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