Intel Core 2 Duo E2160/E6750

M

mut

Geek Trainee
I'm planning on building a new system soon. I have a budget of around £500. I want to build a Vista System which is capable of doing a lot of gaming (I'm planning on an 8800GT purchase).

I am having some trouble choosing a processor, I'm currently on a Pentium D 805 system and at times it can be a bit sluggish with its processing. I'd like to be able to use Vista with all the nice looking features and also play games at high, if not full settings. The games to keep in mind are Crysis and Call of Duty 4.
I have not used a desktop version of the Core 2 Duo before, so I'm not familiar with exactly how fast these chips are. And I'm not sure whether I should opt for the cheaper and very overclockable E2140/E2160/E2180 range or go for the E6550/E6750 to save the hassle and enjoy higher performance, but at a higher cost.
The E2140 is available for £40.70 with the E2160 and E2180 priced at £46.95 and £52.35 respectively. I noticed these have a 1MB L2 cache and an 800MHz FSB.

The E6550 is costs £101.89 (more than double the price of the E2140) and the E6750 is currently £114.56. These have a 4MB L2 cache and 1333MHz FSB.

The E6750 is very appealing and I am tempted to choose this processor, but first I wanted to know if I overclocked an E2160 to 3.00GHz would I be seeing similar performance to the E6750? Or would it lack in some areas due to the lower cache? I don't fully understand the benefits of overclocking, though I have overclocked my Pentium D 805 to 4.00GHz and found it to rip through everything (and get very hot!).

Which should I go for?
And could someone answer the questions about overclocking and cache size?

Thank you.
 
Personally, I'd go with the E2160. It will overclock to the same speed and have the same exact processing power as the C2Duo counterpart. Literally the only difference is the lower cache size. The only place that cache size will affect you will be in gaming. The cache basically stores commonly used info in its L2. That more cache the less it has to go search for that info. However, the performance difference betweem the 2160 and 6750 would only be about 3-5%. Figure you are running Crysis at real high resolutions with graphics high and are getting 20 - 40 fps (depending on your rig.) The difference you would see with a 2160 would be 19 - 38 fps. It really matters that little. So save yourself $100-150USD and get the 2160.
 
Alright thanks for the advice gazaway. Are you talking about both processors at stock speed when you speak of the 3-5% difference, or when the E2160 is overclocked?
What about navigating around windows vista? Is it really not going to make much of a difference?

Im also not sure about my choice of motherboard, its the Gigabyte GA-P35C-DS3R OR ASUS P5K (slightly cheaper)
As far as overclocking is concerned, which will be better?
 
I'm talkin both overclocked to the same speed, 3GHz or so. As far as the mobo question goes, that one's easy. Gigabyte. The gigabyte boards with the p35 chipset are the best overclocking boards to date. They use only solid capacitors which last I checked ASUS didn't.
 
it depends do you want the higher L2 and FSB or not. L2 cache helps in gaming so the higher the better, but you can get away with that. So save some money and go the e2160 and if you get a mobo with a p35 chipset like gazaway said you can overclock it to around 3ghz
 
You most definitely can, just make sure you get a good heatsink/fan, I got the Arctic freezer 7. I'm at 2.8ghz right now. Slowly pushing for 3.0ghz.
 
I can recommend the E2160 i got this great processor and i overclocked it to 3GHz has the same performance as the rest of C2D but only difference is it has 1MB L2 Cache where as top C2D have i think 4MB L2 cache. Don't think the cache difference is going to make a huge impact on performance so you should get the E2160 its well cheap and overclocks well.
 
I would say both are great chips, go with what will fit your budget. if you get an E21XX be sure it is an MO steeping, some places still have some of the old ones left over.

you may want to consider an E4500 C2D with a 2M cache they are guaranteed MO steeping, 124.00USD
 
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