AsRock 775Dual-VSTA with C2D E6300 or E6600?

[ghostwalker]

Current system:

CPU - P4 2.8GHz
M/B - MSI 648Max
PSU - Enermax 350W
RAM - 1.5Gb DDR
GC - 7600GT AGP

I'm looking to upgrade my system in the coming weeks but want to do it incrementally as money is tight. I recently bought a Geforce 7600 GT AGP Graphics Card and so don't really want to replace it just yet. Having said that I want to upgrade my system to C2D and so want a M/B capable of AGP and PCIe so I've chosen the AsRock 775Dual-VSTA (ok choice?).

My question is; shall I go with the E6300 or fork out a bit more for the E6600. I've seen on other posts that the E6600 works nicely with this board as it's 4MB cache makes up for some for the board’s discrepancies. But will this difference be noticeable bearing in mind that I'll still be using the same PSU, RAM and GC? Basically I'm worried about bottlenecking and such.

Eventually, when I have more money, I will update the rest of the components, buying DDR2 RAM, a PCIe GC, a better M/B and probably a new PSU. But for now, what are people's thoughts on my build idea. Shall I go for E6300 or E6600? Or should I do something completely different?

AsRock 775Dual-VSTA with C2D E6300 - £160
AsRock 775Dual-VSTA with C2D E6600 - £235

I use my computer from most tasks; Office, surfing the web but mostly for gaming (FPS, RPG and Strategy).

Thanks.

 

[evongugg]

The motherboard is okay.
Check that your power supply has 17-19 amps on the 12v rails. Look at the lables on the PSU. If it does it will work for the new computer.
If you want to overclock the 6300 is great.
Otherwise I would choose the 6600.

 

[ghostwalker]

The motherboard is okay.
Check that your power supply has 17-19 amps on the 12v rails. Look at the lables on the PSU. If it does it will work for the new computer.
If you want to overclock the 6300 is great.
Otherwise I would choose the 6600.

Am I reading it right from the website when I say it has 26A on the +12V rail: http://www.enermax.com.tw/english/product_Display1.asp?PrID=29

It's the EG365AX-VE(G) model. That should be fine then yes?

Thanks for the reply.

 

[ZimboBEAR]

do not get the Asrock 775 Dual VSTA with a E6300 if you are planning to overclock, the board does not overclock very well, in fact the most you can push the FSB on this board is between 300 - 305 after that you will most definetly start running into stability problems.

If you get a E6600 then at least you will get a 300mhz increase if you manage to attain a 300 FSB, as it has x9 multiplier and starts off with 2.4ghz so effectively you will endup with 2.7ghz in the end.

In comparison the e6300 will not even get you to the e6600 speeds with the 300FSB due to the lower multiplier x7 i believe.

I have a e6600 with this board and it works perfectly, recently upgraded the BIOS to 2.4 and overclocked to 2.7ghz, before instability kicked in at 305, i dropped it to 300, and it works fine...

 

[ghostwalker]

do not get the Asrock 775 Dual VSTA with a E6300 if you are planning to overclock, the board does not overclock very well, in fact the most you can push the FSB on this board is between 300 - 305 after that you will most definetly start running into stability problems.

If you get a E6600 then at least you will get a 300mhz increase if you manage to attain a 300 FSB, as it has x9 multiplier and starts off with 2.4ghz so effectively you will endup with 2.7ghz in the end.

In comparison the e6300 will not even get you to the e6600 speeds with the 300FSB due to the lower multiplier x7 i believe.

I have a e6600 with this board and it works perfectly, recently upgraded the BIOS to 2.4 and overclocked to 2.7ghz, before instability kicked in at 305, i dropped it to 300, and it works fine...

And if I do go for the E6600, I won't get bottlenecking issues with the Graphics Card and/or RAM?

 

[pmr]

The poster above you is right. But beware of further gfx card upgrade with that mobo. It only has pci-e 4X. If upgrading (hypothetically), you'd be better with an x1950 pro agp, than with the pci-e version

What setup of ram do you have? 3x512, 2x1gb+512? Because it only supports 2 sticks of each (2 slots are for ddr and 2 for ddr2)

 

[ghostwalker]

The poster above you is right. But beware of further gfx card upgrade with that mobo. It only has pci-e 4X. If upgrading (hypothetically), you'd be better with an x1950 pro agp, than with the pci-e version

What setup of ram do you have? 3x512, 2x1gb+512? Because it only supports 2 sticks of each (2 slots are for ddr and 2 for ddr2)

I think I have 1x1GB and 1x512MB. So it should be ok.

 

[ZimboBEAR]

I bought this board for the same reasons you did, to get the core 2 duo without having to upgrade anything else...

I am using a 6800GT AGP with this board with a E6600, I play most of my games at 1024x768 and have no problems running most games at max settings at 2x anti aliasing and 4x ansiotropic filtering... i would expect your 7600 to be better than my card as it is a newer generation.

I upgraded from an AMD64 3000+ (Venice) overclocked to 2.6ghz, and i used to get around 48000 in aquamark for the athlon PC, i now get 70500 for my aquamark score... quite a significant rise...

to be honest i don't think you will be disappointed with that cpu...

Oh and I am still using DDR400 ram (2 x 512mb) so 1GB of ram only, the performance of the e6600 does not seem to be affected that much by the type of RAM that you use, take a look at this...

http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.aspx?i=2810&p=1

and if you are worried about the performance of upgrading to a PCI express graphics card in the future then read this

http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.aspx?i=2814&p=1

 

[pmr]

Yes, you really can't see much difference between low/mid-end cards, until you throw a greater gfx card. and there 10% may be the difference needed to jump from 25fps to 30

 

[evongugg]

The power supply you have is fine.

 

[jaq78]

I just bought a used e6700 on ebay and have only been successful at overclocking it to 271. 275 allows it to boot and load windows, but then hangs up and reboots; a window says that the computer has recently recovered from a critical error.

I was told that I should reach 285 from some reports to 297 for most others, to over 300, but I am no where near that. Can anyone tell me what the problem is? Here are my specs. I would greatly appreciate it!

-ASRock 775Dual-VSTA LGA 775 VIA PT880 PRO ATX Intel Motherboard
-Version 2.40
-Intel Pentium Core 2 Duo E6700 2.66 Ghz (Overclocked to 2.71 Ghz)
- Patriot 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 667 (PC2 5300) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory 4-4-4-12 Low Latency
- Leadtek WinFast PX7900GS TDH 256MB GeForce 7900GS 256MB 256-bit GDDR3 PCI Express x16 HDCP Ready SLI Supported Video Card(Max 8800GTX)
-HITACHI Deskstar T7K250 HDT722525DLAT80 (0A31611) 250GB 7200 RPM IDE Ultra ATA133 Hard Drive (SATA 3.0 Max Hard Drive)
-M-AUDIO Revolution 5.1 5.1 Channels PCI Interface High-Definition Sound Card
-Sony Optiarc Black IDE DVD-ROM Drive Model DDU1615/B2s
-Rosewill RE502-SLV 500W ATX12V v2.03 Aluminum Power Supply
-APEVIA X-CRUISER-AL Silver Steel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case
-CHIMEI CMV 937A Silver-Black 19" 8ms Widescreen LCD Monitor(Digital Max)
- ARCTIC COOLING Freezer 7 Pro 92mm CPU Cooler