drifterlee opened this issue on May 20, 2007 · 21 posts
svdl posted Mon, 21 May 2007 at 12:33 PM
I just bit the bullet - my Asus K8N SLI Premium mainboard died, taking the Athlon64x2 4200 with it. I ordered an Intel Core 2 Duo Q6600 - the slowest of the three quad core Intels (and by far the least expensive), € 540, an MSI Neo 2 FI Platinum (Intel 965 based mainboard, capable of holding 8 GB of DDR2-533 or DDR2-667) € 105 plus 8 GB of DDR2-667) € 478. It'll run Windows XP 64 bit.
In fact, the Q6600 CPU is like 2 Intel E6600 chips in one package. The E6600 beats the pants off any AMD CPU right now, including the 6000.
Based on the Vue 6 Infinte tests by louguet I expect the new machine to render about three times as fast as my current setup (luckily my Athlon64x2 4400+ system, 4GB RAM is still working).
When the new machine comes in, I'll transfer the nVidia 7800GTX to the new rig, and put the 7900 GS (which survived the mainboard crash of my other machine) in the Athlon4400.
If you're looking for a CPU around $200, you might want to take a look at this article: http://www.tomshardware.com/2007/05/04/which_is_the_best_mainstream_cpu/index.html
Intel Core 2 Duo E6400 vs AMD Athlon64x2 5600+
The pen is mightier than the sword. But if you literally want to have some impact, use a typewriter