ur new cpu must increase ur fps but ur graphic card will stop u somehow.
u will enjoy the speed of ur new core2duo but if u really what to upgrade ur pc . it's better to upgrade ur mobo and graphic card and............too.
u know waht i mean cos it won't cost play game such as 40$ or less just like ffx
and pay alot unless u really upgarde.
by the way it's better to upgarde ur psu too.

 

Get a better motherboard for future overclocking. Also, the E6400 at stock speed... i don't think it's that great which is why MOST Conroe/Allendale owner tend to overclocked ther cpu, especially those that buy the Allendale cpu (E6300 and E6400) tend to want to reach 3.0ghz or higher on their Allendale cpu.

 

tuanming: The idea is I want a quick-fix for the next year or so (I don't intend to keep this mobo/cpu longer then that), in August+ 2007 I'll be spending to get a real QUAD with new motherboard, Ram, Video, etc... problem is right now I can't afford it ... and if I change to a different motherboard (unless there are other such as the P4M800PRO-M) I would also need to buy new RAM ($200+) and a new Video Card ($200+) - something I am not prepared to do.... (that is what makes this mobo special, that and it is dirt cheap).

As for the E6400 - thing is I can it at cheap (like $130CDN) as opposed to the E660 ($350CDN) and up from there ... it seems like the best bang-for-the-buck in my situation - do you not think it will be good enough to make an improvement over my current system?

I just want to gain that edge to move into the 40fps range (if possible) so I can fully enjoy FFX (and other games as the emulator progress, etc...).

 

I'd say go for it. You'd probably pay ~$300 CDN for the same components brand-new, so you'd be getting a significant upgrade at a $100 discount. Seems good to me.

The key to C2Ds is to overclock them. The cheap mobo and RAM may hold you back a bit, but you can always upgrade those again later.

 

But the main idea is to provide an increase to the FPS emulator speeds, hopefully to render it more fluid/playable (not to say it is not perfectly playable, not diss'ing the emulator in anyway as it is amazing - but my system is not)...

Will this change actually bring me some additional performance?

Also note, I will be going from DUAL-Channel DDR1 to SINGLE-Channel DDR1...
Will that cause a huge downgrade for my day-to-day PC operations? Other PC games? Is this a wise decision?

Thanks,

 

please know that u can't reach 40 fps if u just buy the e6300.
i'm sure.

 

I don't think the VIA P4M800 Pro chipset supports Core 2 Duo processors.

 

I'd suggest this board if you want to use your new Conroe with your current RAM/gfx card. It's gotten good reviews running Conroe's with DDR1 type RAM, and it's also what I'm starting out with as well.

 

wlee15: Pretty sure it does, but I scrapped that idea anyways after reading some reviews - looking into either getting the ASUS P5PE-VM or Asrock 775i65G (anyone have any preferences).

amirtycoon2000: Are you serious? Just for my own sanity, to make the game more fluid I would need to reach around 40 FPS right? Using the E6400 will at least increase the overall speed to around 30 FPS no? I mean if I am going to gain 1-2 FPS max then this is obviouslly not worth it ...

General Plot: You prefer that board over the ASUS P5PE-VM? They are comparably the same price (~ $20 CDN difference), the ASUS has a gigbit lan - and it is Asus (mind you I have not yet read reviews on this)...

I like Asrock dual-functionality (DDR1/DDR2, AGP/PCIe) but sometimes that scares me - too many features and funky stuff and they start to get the basics wrong ...

I guess I have some more reading to do
I did some reading on the ECS - wow I am happy I didn't buy that one ...

 

you'd probably be better getting a 7800GS+ and you would most likely reach 40 FPS unless you have a PCI-E slot. I dont know anything about that motherboard so I dunno

 

look at my specs, I'm getting 70 ( or something like that ) FPS in intro which is one of slowest parts in FFX ( I don't know if I had AA enabled as it seems to slow things down a lot in some areas for me )
graphics card don't matter that much ( ok, it should have PS3 ) unless you want to enable all that eye candy, I have 9800pro and it will slow things down a lot in FFX even without AA and BF.
Deal for that allendale looks nice, It depends how that mobo will allow you to OC. without OC you will help yourself by around 5-15% ( probably ).

 

General Plot: You prefer that board over the ASUS P5PE-VM? They are comparably the same price (~ $20 CDN difference), the ASUS has a gigbit lan - and it is Asus (mind you I have not yet read reviews on this)...

I like Asrock dual-functionality (DDR1/DDR2, AGP/PCIe) but sometimes that scares me - too many features and funky stuff and they start to get the basics wrong ...

I guess I have some more reading to do
I did some reading on the ECS - wow I am happy I didn't buy that one ...

Being I'm doing this upgrade with a limited amount of money to play with, I had a choice: Either find a motherboard that would allow me to use most of my current components, or not be able to upgrade. In the end, I decided to go for it. I'll replace each individually, starting with new RAM, then concentrate on the video card. Maybe by that time, DFI will have a nice NF6 LANParty for us Conroe owners.

lDeal for that allendale looks nice

Actually, it's a Conroe, Allendale won't be released till Q1 2007.

 

Actually, it's a Conroe, Allendale won't be released till Q1 2007.

Thanks for correcting me, actually up to now I thought E6300/E6400 are allendale and E6600+ are conroe, seems like I was mistaken for long time. ( I'm learning new thinks everyday, the main problem is I forget them even more often )

 

Thanks for correcting me, actually up to now I thought E6300/E6400 are allendale and E6600+ are conroe, seems like I was mistaken for long time. ( I'm learning new thinks everyday, the main problem is I forget them even more often )

It's a common misconception, with most blame laying on the market. If you need reassurance, there's this article posted at The Tech Report which states:

The first of our two contestants is the Core 2 Duo E6300, the humblest of Intel's new Core 2 processors. Unlike its fancier big brothers, the E6300 has only 2MB of L2 cache to share between its two execution cores. You'll find plenty of sources that will tell you the code name for these 2MB Core 2 Duo processors is "Allendale," but Intel says otherwise. These CPUs are still code-named "Conroe," which makes sense since they're the same physical chips with half of their L2 cache disabled. Intel may well be cooking up a chip code-named Allendale with 2MB of L2 cache natively, but this is not that chip.

And if that's not convincing enough, there's also this link to Intel's CPU Pricing Guide which is on Intel's website.

 

that's a waste of money if you are just going to keep it ghetto.

If you spend $500 you can get a real nice setup.
e6300, 1gb ddr2 800mhz dc(2x512), geforce pcie, overclockable mb.

 

Nope that was not mean that way you are probably thinking by your last post, I just googled five minutes and found you're correct. It's just I read these thinks mostly in my born language and with 12-15milion ppl speaking this language you don't get much experts ( not saying that czech biggest hardware review site is lame )

 

that's good Plot that you are going to upgrade.
Now you'll have to correct your sig.
I'll get a e6600 conroe with an asus p5b on january.

 

Eric-1987: The problem with getting the 7800GS+ is again more $$$, if I had the $$$ to buy a new video card also I wouldn't be going this route at all... Anyways isn't that card around $300CDN?

thc: thats for the uplift not a lost cause ... Ya I am looking between the "ASUS P5PE-VM" and the "Asrock 775i65G", they both seem pretty good - leaning towards the Asrock atm (need to read more reviews).

General Plot: Exact same situation as me ... And the Asrocks allows for such an hardware upgrade path which is great... I just hope the motherboard holds

sleekgeek: I don't see how those numbers work, even if US (I am CDN)... the e6300=$240CDN+tax in itself so... (forget getting all the rest like the ram itself which is probably around $150CDN+tax if not more)... I can't see myself getting away with a new system under $800CDN and that is pushing it - in the meantime this kit (mobo and ec6400) will cost me around $200CDN ... Still think it is a waste?

Silenus: was thinking of going straight to the e6600 but price wise it is still way to up there, hopefully it will drop dramatically by Jan but I doubt it ... might as well content myself with the e6400 for now Can always upgrade later (in stages).

Thanks for all the feedback and help guys - still havn't made up my mind (but this is typical for me - takes me ages to decide).
One last thought - thc mentioned that I will "probably" only see an upgrade of 5-15%, would this be an ACCURATE estimation? If I do the math (assume I get ~20fps now) that means this will bring me to around ~22fps (10% increase avg) ... This probably won't even make any "visual" difference to me at all... Therefore is this really worth it at all?
I recall reading people saying that going Dual-Core could give 30%-70% increases - I guess I am not going far enough in my upgrade to attain anywhere near that kind of increase ... so upgrading to DDR2

 

Allendale

For a very long time, it was considered that stripped down versions of the Conroe processors were code-named Allendale. In actuality, Allendale is a code-name for a different processor. Many suggest that E6300 and E6400 are actually code-named Allendale, however, the E6300 (1.86 GHz) and E6400 (2.13 GHz) processors are not code-named Allendale because they physically have 4 MB cache, same as their big brothers E6600 and E6700 - it is just that half of their physical memory is disabled. Traditionally, CPUs of the same family with less cache simply have the unavailable cache disabled (this allows parts that fail quality control to be sold at a lower rating). The fact that E6300 and E6400 are not code-named Allendale and actually code-named Conroe has been confirmed by Intel themselves.

Quoted from TechReport:

You'll find plenty of sources that will tell you the code name for these 2 MB Core 2 Duo processors is "Allendale," but Intel says otherwise. These CPUs are still code-named "Conroe," which makes sense since they're the same physical chips with half of their L2 cache disabled. Intel may well be cooking up a chip code-named Allendale with 2 MB of L2 cache natively, but this is not that chip.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Core_2#Allendale

All these time i thought i was so dead right on with the code names for the Core2Duo cpu (Coroe & Allendale). I looked up Wikipedia and got some good infos on what is really going on. It seems that Intel doesn't like people to view E6300 and E6400 as Allendale because both of these cpu actually have a physically 4 MB cache!!! Yeah, it surprise me too but half of their physical memory is disabled!

 

@Shaitan,

You're making it too difficult now. Either take the original offer and make do for the time being, or don't buy anything and save your money for a real machine later. You're just going to waste money buying a Mobo that supports AGP, so you might as well get the cheapest crap you can find, or none at all.

An E6400, overclocked, will definitely get you to 40FPS. However, from experiences on this forum you will probably need to re-install Windows to get the full performance.

 

Well laddie i just upgraded my comp about 2 months ago.
My new comp runs pretty sweetly. I got it with a rare agp/pci mboard.
Currently using kingdom hearts as an example i get about 40-55fps, sometimes dipping to 17fps in the blurry special background effect scenes, sometimes goin really fast about 60-70fps.
The blurry special effect just down to the emulator and not your set-up

 

that's a waste of money if you are just going to keep it ghetto.

If you spend $500 you can get a real nice setup.
e6300, 1gb ddr2 800mhz dc(2x512), geforce pcie, overclockable mb.

Being I had $300 available to get started with, I did the best I could. And I don't see how it's a waste. My performance should boost ALOT, and as I've already said, I plan to replace components as well, just not right away.

General Plot: Exact same situation as me ... And the Asrocks allows for such an hardware upgrade path which is great... I just hope the motherboard holds

I've done my research, and reviews of the ASRock board running Core 2 Duo's was not bad at all. See this article which had this to say about running Conroe's on DDR1 type RAM on that same motherboard:

However, the biggest surprise was the overall performance of the ASRock 775i65G board as it was just as competitive with the other chipsets in our testing and proved to be extremely stable with every benchmark or application we threw at it. Who knew that AGP 8x and DDR would still be this competitive after a myriad of chipset, memory, CPU, and GPU enhancements over the last three years?

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Core_2#Allendale

All these time i thought i was so dead right on with the code names for the Core2Duo cpu (Coroe & Allendale). I looked up Wikipedia and got some good infos on what is really going on. It seems that Intel doesn't like people to view E6300 and E6400 as Allendale because both of these cpu actually have a physically 4 MB cache!!! Yeah, it surprise me too but half of their physical memory is disabled!

I had seen it on Wiki already, but I wanted a more reliable source, and it doesn't get any more reliable than Intel's own web site.

 

OK, once again I'm in hurry to correct myself.
I thought ( thought != know as I now know ) that gfx will be limiting factor ( I know I just written without OCing ), and not having PS3 will slow you down. Well once again I was wrong.
PS3 NoAA AA4
stock 136 112
-20% 134 90

WTF??? ( same image quality and higher speed with lower PS version, maybe that PS programs need a little bit tunning for ATI )
PS2a NOAA AA4
stock 144 130
-20% 140 102

So as you may see gfx is limiting factor only when AA is used, 9800pro is about 2.8times slower by 3Dmark03 scores ( 3Dmark03 used PS2 don't it ??? ) and you will have around 50% slower CPU than I ( without OC ), so I guess you will get even with that 9800pro around 25-40% of my speed. as I said intro 75+fps calc your increase percents by yourself ( as I don't know your intro speed )

 

General Plot: Quick question (not sure if you know) but both the Asrocks and Asus state the following:
<<Supports FSB 1066** MHz for external graphics (by overclocking) and FSB 800/533 MHz for Internal graphics, EM64T CPU and H-T Technology>>

Does this really mean that without OC we cannot get to a FSB of 1066?
Is this normal? Risky? Expected? Anyways I just found it odd and thought I would post it and see what people say. Maybe someone can explain exactly what it means?
Thanks,

 

1066Mhz FSB == 533mhz DDR , which is all that is