Upgraded Intel Budget Platform
| Upgraded Budget Intel Core 2 Duo System |
| Hardware |
Component |
Price |
| Processor |
Intel Core 2 Duo E6300 - 1.86GHz 1066FSB 2MB |
$183 |
| Motherboard |
Foxconn P9657AA-8KS2H - Intel P965 775 |
$106 |
| Memory |
PQI POWER Series 2GB (2 x 1GB)
DDR2-533 4-4-4-12 |
$195 |
| Video Card |
XFX PVT73GUGF3 - GeForce 7600GT 256MB |
$146 |
| Hard Drive |
Samsung SpinPoint P 250GB
SATA3.0Gbps 250GB 8MB 7200RPM |
$76 |
| Optical Drive |
LG GSA-H10N 16X DVD+/-RW (12X DVD-RAM) |
$36 |
| System Total |
$742 |
| Complete Package |
$1028 - $1300 |
At the top of the performance tower in this budget guide, Core 2 Duo once again reigns supreme. And once again, it does so at a slightly higher cost. We are more than willing to pay the price premium, and the
amount of overclocking you can get out of these chips is almost criminal. Sadly, reaching the highest overclocks often requires memory that is exorbitantly expensive, but even with DDR2-800 memory you should be able to reach performance levels that are out of reach of the fastest current AMD processors. If someone were to ask any of us right now what the best overall value is in the CPU world, it would undoubtedly fall to the Core 2 Duo E6300.
As with the AMD upgraded configuration, we chose the cheapest Core 2 Duo processor. The E6300 comes with a default clock speed of 1.86GHz along with a 7X multiplier. At stock speeds, it will be moderately faster than the X2 3800+, while even
moderate overclocking quickly catapults it up the performance ladder. Of course, that's provided you are doing tasks that benefit from additional CPU speed, rather than something that is already bottlenecked by another component. Do you want better gaming performance? A faster graphics card will do far more than an overclocked CPU right now. We still like dual core CPUs for the reasons we mentioned on the previous page, and more and more applications are becoming optimized for multiple processors support. Given that the future appears to be moving towards even more processing cores rather than faster individual cores, such optimizations can't come soon enough.
Having settled on the Core 2 Duo E6300, we still need an appropriate motherboard. We recently published our
first roundup of P965 motherboards, which focused primarily on midrange offerings. While we haven't formally reviewed the Foxconn P965 motherboard we've selected yet, the choice was made with the input of our motherboard reviewers. Foxconn has been working on improving their image in the enthusiast community, and their top-end AMD AM2 nForce 590 SLI motherboard really impressed us. Their P965 motherboard isn't quite at that level, but it still offers good performance and should overclock to 400FSB. That is definitely lower than what can be achieved on many other P965 motherboards, but as you will need better memory anyway to get beyond 400FSB, the price and features of the Foxconn make for a great upper-budget recommendation.
Our storage choices haven't changed much, other than adding a larger hard drive and a minor upgrade to the DVD+/-RW. The LG GSA-H10N offers slightly better performance and media compatibility, along with faster DVD-RAM support (12X DVD-RAM versus 5X on most other DVDRs). For the hard drive, 250GB-320GB tends to be the best value in terms of price/GB, and with this being a budget guide we stayed on the low end of the capacity range. The Samsung SpinPoint 250GB costs $0.31/GB versus $0.38/GB on the Hitachi 160GB model. Samsung also makes what are currently the quietest hard drives we have tested, although most hard drives are now at the point where system fan noise is far more audible.
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JarredWalton - Wednesday, October 25, 2006 - link
I did add a mention of the overclocking limitations of the board, which are mostly caused by the lack of voltage adjustments. Gary has it for review and hasn't had any problems with memory incompatibility. If you're after great overclocking, uATX and IGP solutions are rarely a good way to go. True, they could be made to overclock better than most do, but enthusiasts looking at overclocking generally don't want uATX systems -- or at least that's the general attitude of the motherboard manufacturers.I've got the 939 ASUS board and it overclocks to the maximum BIOS limit of 240 HTT bus without too much trouble. I'm using it in my HTPC system and have been for a while. There are always going to be compromises made in budget systems. We chose to downplay overclocking support in order to get a DVI port and decent IGP. You could go with something like the DFI board and a 7300TC card for $30 more and get much better overclocking. You could spend $10 more on the Abit board and get better (but not great) overclocking. However, there are a ton of people out there that don't want to overclock. Just because a board has poor overclocking support doesn't mean a lot of people won't like the other features. That's my take anyway.
--Jarred
bzo - Wednesday, October 25, 2006 - link
Jarred,one more thing. If you guys have this board for review, PLEASE bring to ASUS's attention the lack of the HTT multipler in the BIOS and the voltage incompatibility with DDR2-800. Just being able to overclock at all would be great! Queries to ASUS support have gone nowhere.
JarredWalton - Wednesday, October 25, 2006 - link
Gary is working on a review. I initially screwed up on my overclock percentage and said 20%. Gary says he topped out currently at around 225 MHz HTT, which is 12.5%, and I changed the text to ~10%. I agree that the Abit board looks to be a better overclocker (performance at stock levels is going to be about the same), but at that point you're looking at a $100 "budget" motherboard and the $70 options begin to gain my interest. I think the Biostar TForce 6100 might overclock a bit better than the ASUS, so I would be more inclined to go down to that and lose the DVI port rather than spend any more on the motherboard.bzo - Thursday, October 26, 2006 - link
great, look forward to seeing the review. That's the best overclock I've heard about for this board. Do you guys have access to an unreleased BIOS or something? Or maybe Gary has some tweaks or tips for getting there?Here's a recent review where the reviewer gets to 213Mhz, which is more typical in my experience.
http://www.tweaktown.com/reviews/966/5/page_5_bios...">Tweaktown review
JarredWalton - Thursday, October 26, 2006 - link
Gary tends to work magic with overclocking, so hopefully he can shed some light on the matter. I'm pretty sure he's using a public BIOS, though... maybe just better RAM and other components are playing a role?bzo - Wednesday, October 25, 2006 - link
Hi Jarred, granted the focus of this budget build is not overclocking, but it doesn't sound like you have hands on use with the AM2 M2NPV. You mention a potential 20% overclock, where it's actually closer to 5%. As far as I know, the 939 version does let you change the HTT mulitiplier which is why you can get to 240fsb. The AM2 BIOS is missing this adjustment. As we all know, the HTT bus not take to running over spec well, which is the biggest limitation of this board, not the voltage adjustments. Most people can not get this board past 210fsb.If you don't believe the problems with this board, just check out the reviews at Newegg or the user forums at asus.com.
Also, while the Abit is not as good an overclocker as say my Lanparty NF4-Ultra, it sure looks like a pretty good performer to me. People successfully running > 300fsb, CPU voltage to 2.0v, ram voltage to 2.5v, and many of the obscure adjustments I see on my DFI. Well worth an extra $10. Heck, the silent heatpipe chipset cooler on the abit is worth the extra $ alone.
BladeVenom - Wednesday, October 25, 2006 - link
There really is no price difference between the upgraded budget system and the midrange system. I think it would be more useful to keep a clear price divide between the different categories. Otherwise you might as well just call them the same thing and save yourself half an article.KAZANI - Wednesday, October 25, 2006 - link
Agreed. The upgraded recommendation is totally redundant.JarredWalton - Wednesday, October 25, 2006 - link
The idea is to purchase the upgrades you want/need. I don't think you need every more expensive option, so maybe just the CPU, mobo, and GPU. We do feel moving towards midrange will get you a better overall config, and part of the problem is that there really isn't much of a difference between an upgraded budget setup and a midrange computer. If we left off the upgrades altogether, though, I don't think people would like that.stmok - Wednesday, October 25, 2006 - link
...On Page 6, under the Budget Case and Accessories package, you have Linux and OpenOffice in the package.Shouldn't you include MS Office under the Windows XP Budget Case and Accessories package?
Its not exactly a "fair comparison" to have one solution include an office suite, but the other without.
The rest of the article seems fine. Interestingly, I'm also considering the ASUS M2NPV-VM for a budget setup. :) (But with a cheap as Sempron for now).
I noticed in the Upgraded Budget AMD Athlon X2 AM2 System on page 4, you suggested a X2 3800+...I'm assuming that's the regular 89W ones, right? How much are the 65W versions? (Reason I'm asking because down here in Australia, the price difference is about AUD$5 to AUD$7).