Best Low to High end Socket AM2 or 775.

MJuric

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Feb 12, 2006
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I'm looking to put together a cheap workstation for fairly infrequent office non intensive usuage. However I hate to buy something that I can't do anything with in 6 months.

So any advice on the longest lasting socket from cheapest/slow to fastest. In short which socket has the longest staying power and widest range. Right now I'm looking at the 775 as it seems to have the highest end right now and the prices on the low end CPU's are very comparable.

~Matt
 

Talon

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Apr 13, 2004
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You'd be very safe to go with the 775 socket right now. Intel already has quad cores on that socket so if you buy an inexpensive pentium D for that socket or better yet an E6300 if you can put $180 on the cpu alone and you're set for a while with plenty of upgrade room for the forseeable future.

Choose a mobo thats known to be stable and few problems, MSI, gigabyte etc. if you're mainly going for business use or just want stablility. If you ever plan to game or even overclock in the future (the E6300 is very OC friendly with decent Ram) then go for a gigabyte, Abit, or Asus mobo with 965 chipset that fits your budget.

If you never plan on gaming or going crazy with OCing then several 945 boards have gotten good reviews and are stable boards. Even several ECS boards got good "stable" reviews but keep in mind the ECS don't overclock for crap if thats in your future :)
 

evilr00t

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Aug 15, 2006
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I'm looking to put together a cheap workstation for fairly infrequent office non intensive usuage. However I hate to buy something that I can't do anything with in 6 months.

So any advice on the longest lasting socket from cheapest/slow to fastest. In short which socket has the longest staying power and widest range. Right now I'm looking at the 775 as it seems to have the highest end right now and the prices on the low end CPU's are very comparable.

~Matt

If you're going to go so low end that the Intel Core 2 Duo CPUs aren't possible, I would recommend you get an Athlon X2 3800+ with a motherboard with integrated graphics. Otherwise, pick up a Intel E6300 / E4300 (if you can wait) and a G965 chipset board. If you need more speed, you can always overclock.
 

MJuric

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Sounds about what I had in mind. Probably go even lower than a Pentium D as it's replacing an old AMD 90MHtz machine and even a P4 is overkill for what it's doing.

No gaming, simple office stuff. If for some reason, like a few others have, this one ends up at my house in 2-3 years, or we convert to a CAM machine I can get a Video card and upgrade the CPU.

~Matt
 

Talon

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Sounds good to me. The AMD suggested above wouldn't be a bad thing. However if like you say it may end up at your home one day I have a little more faith in the 775 socket having a more viable solution in a year or 3 when that might happen for you. There are celerons for that socket as low as $45 but if you can stretch it to $89 you can have a dual core that overclocked might still be pretty viable in a couple years when you use it at home. Or just get the cheaper since it looks like it will handle what you need it for and when the time comes pop a C2D or even quad in there in 2 years for your personal use. Its honestly hard to go wrong either way.

Not knocking the AMD idea at all, its personal opinion based off AMDs recent actions that make me think the 775 will just last a little longer. Ultimately the decision is yours and weigh everyones suggestions :)
 

zjohnr

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Aug 19, 2006
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There are celerons for that socket as low as $45 but if you can stretch it to $89 you can have a dual core that overclocked might still be pretty viable in a couple years when you use it at home.
If you're thinking of Celeron to carry you over for a bit, the 65nm Cedar Mill version might be worth the extra $15 based on current newegg.com pricing. Or if you can go with OEM you can get one for $34 from this ClubIT place. (Don't know anything about how reliable or not ClubIT might be though).

(I keep having an internal debate about waiting until end of Q2 to buy a Core 2 CPU when prices are supposed to drop somewhat. Would a Cedar Mill Celeron still be faster than what I'm currently using?)

-john