First of all - I'm an AMD fanboy. DO NOT talk about the Conroes here, I DO NOT CARE. Big deal, so some overclocked E6300 can beat the fx-62. I'm sure soon AMD will come out on top, as always. I'm not sure why people never consider the Athlon64 X2 3800+ [Windsor]. I've seen people saying stuff like "I would never really consider the 3800+, the 4200+ is where you should start", and I don't understand why. Anyways, the X2 3800+ is a GREAT value. For $135, you can't really go wrong with a dual-core Athlon64. Out of the box it is extremely slick and fast, perfect for most people on a budget. [/average_consumer] Anyways, I've had some really nice fun with this processor. Coupled it with a Freezer 64 Pro and a Foxconn NF590 SLI (or, of course, a budget DFI that also overclocks like crazy: here), and started with the overclocking. Here's what it looked like in the end (don't forget the AS5 [grin]): First I went to 2.6GHz on stock volts. Was good for normal programs, but not Orthos stable. Started bumping up the voltage by 0.025 until I got it stable. Then I went up. 2645MHz, 1.45V. 2721MHz, 1.475V. 2751MHz, 1.475V. This is where I hit a roadblock - my cooling is not sufficient =). No worries - I'm ording a (few) Vantec Tornados - 119CMF for each fan. Quite better than all of my stock fans =). Ok, so now I'm at 2.75GHz. Higher than an fx-60, 0.05GHz slower than an fx-62. Only other difference is that it has half the cache. Load Temp: Orthos (dual Prime95): 53C (remember, this is without the tornados yet...) FEAR: 51C 3DMark2001SE: 47C 3DMark2005: 49C Idle Temp: 32C Not bad... So right now I have a processor for 135$ at the speeds of an fx-62, and it never goes over 53C. But how does it perform? Well, for one, it went from a 47 second Super-PI (1M) run to a 33 second one. For another, in 3DMark2001SE it went for 24,000 3DMarks to over 26,000 (and even over 27,000 when I closed practically everything and ran only 13 processes). And yet another, FEAR now lags less when I detonate over 500 bombs at once. Look: 3DMark2001SE and CPU-Z. Note: CPU-Z reports the volts incorrectly, only Nvidia's NMonitor application reports BIOS-like values. Super-PI and CPU-Z again. In conclusion, this little CPU is awesome. I plan it taking it up to 2.8GHz and beyond once I get the tornados (it was stable, but temps but in the high 50's). Once the 6000+ comes out (stock 3GHz) I'm getting that and going to overclock. Yumm, 4.0GHz dual-core Athlon64... [wink] Anyone wanna compare to a Pentium D at 4GHz [grin] [lol]? So, yeah. Don't underestimate the lower CPU's, just like you intel fanboys don't underestimate the E6300. On a different note, I have the Windsor version [sad]. The Manchester version supposedly overlocks to over 3.5GHz. Oh well, the Windsor was the only one available to me.

Quote: Original post by gumpy macdrunken

Excuse my extremely bad comprehension of images (and/or sophisticated expressions/jokes), but what is the above supposed to mean?

Question: Is that an anti static bag you have your system sitting ON?

Thats not actually a very good idea, seeing as the whole antistatic thing doesn't work on the outside, and can actually build up a nice charge.

Quote: Original post by Talroth
Question: Is that an anti static bag you have your system sitting ON?

Thats not actually a very good idea, seeing as the whole antistatic thing doesn't work on the outside, and can actually build up a nice charge.

No, I believe I had the thing the motherboard sits on sit on the antistatic bag thingy.

EDIT: Looking at the picture some more, it seems you're right! Good thing I didn't actually fry my board [embarrass]. Usually I put it on the black thingy that the motherboard sits on when in the antistatic bag. Lesson learned, though - instead of forgetting and putting my stuff in bad places, I'm off to get an antistatic mat [wink]

Pretty good, I think AMD will come back as well. I've only got a 3200+ @ 2.4Ghz in my rig. BTW, I'm also an AMD fanboy as well as an nVIDIA one.

Quote: Original post by teh_programerer
Pretty good, I think AMD will come back as well. I've only got a 3200+ @ 2.4Ghz in my rig. BTW, I'm also an AMD fanboy as well as an nVIDIA one.

What's its core, Venice? You should be able to easily overclock more than that. My X2 3800+ is basically 2 single-core 3200+ chips in one.

Yeah, it's a Venice, I used to have it @ 2.6Ghz and have set it back to that now anyway.