Core E4300 or a X2 3600?

The_YongGrand

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Hi there guys,

I'm a hard-core Half-Life series gamer, including mapmaking, so I might need some more power out of it without hurting my wallet too much.

I've been checking the E6300 and the E4300 benchmarks, but most of the tech sites never show me the actual maximum framerates of HL2, and not even one comparison between single-and-dual core.

Since I've a Pentium 4 3.06GHz (775), which one actually worth the upgrade, the AMD's 3600 or the E4300? I know the E4300 could be a little bit more than the 3800, but which one has better overall?

And, not thinking of any overclocks. Just want my HL2 to load faster, compared to my current's 30 seconds, and run in more framerates. My current framerates are 46FPS for your info.

Any ideas? 8)
 

epsilon84

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The E4300 would be ~20% faster than the X2 3600+ in most tasks. Of course it costs more as well. If you are willing to overclock it then I'd say go the E4300, but at stock speeds theres not a huge difference between them.

If you get the X2 3600+, make sure to use DDR2-800 RAM, if you use DDR2-533 (I'm assuming your current system has some?) it may not end up much faster than your old P4. ;)

Oh, and HL2 is quite CPU bound, but it's not multithreaded at this point. Episode 2 may change that however.
 
Hi there guys,

I'm a hard-core Half-Life series gamer, including mapmaking, so I might need some more power out of it without hurting my wallet too much.

I've been checking the E6300 and the E4300 benchmarks, but most of the tech sites never show me the actual maximum framerates of HL2, and not even one comparison between single-and-dual core.

Since I've a Pentium 4 3.06GHz (775), which one actually worth the upgrade, the AMD's 3600 or the E4300? I know the E4300 could be a little bit more than the 3800, but which one has better overall?

And, not thinking of any overclocks. Just want my HL2 to load faster, compared to my current's 30 seconds, and run in more framerates. My current framerates are 46FPS for your info.

Any ideas? 8)
At high resolutions the E4300 will only give a few extra frames per second. The E4300 is over 2 times the cost of the X2 3600 and if playing was all you were doing I would go for the X2 3600. Map editing on the other hand is going to benafit a good deal from the E4300. The E4300 gets done with maps about %30 faster than the X2 3600.

It really comes down to how much map editing you do.
 

epsilon84

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Well the 3600+ is obviously the best buy for the money. $59, $69 retail now at newegg I think, and everyone is overclocking them to 3ghz.

'Everyone'? How many people are running an X2 3600+ @ 3GHz in these forums, the highest I've seen is 2.8GHz. Sure, *some* people are getting 3GHz on other forums, but that is the upper limit more than the norm.

An E4300 is ~$115 retail and should overclock to 3GHz easily, 3.5GHz if you have good cooling. At such speeds it would blow away any overclocked X2. You'd need an X2 @ 4.2GHz to compete... which ain't gonna happen short of LN2.

Overall platform cost would be about $50 - $100 higher for the E4300 depending on the mobo, but don't act as if the X2 3600+ has an edge in overclocking, because it will utterly get spanked by the E4300.

As an owner of an E6300 @ 3.2GHz, you should probably know that already. If the X2 3600+ is such a great overclocker why don't you just replace your current system with one then? :lol: :wink:
 
Well the 3600+ is obviously the best buy for the money. $59, $69 retail now at newegg I think, and everyone is overclocking them to 3ghz.
True but at the same time both e4300 and x2 3600 are good OCers. Both OC'ed end at about the same performance to price.
 

epsilon84

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If you're having frame rate troubles, your best bet is to upgrade your RAM and GFX card.

I've played HL2 on my old P4 rig and the framerate can dip quite low in some areas, it's quite a CPU bound game once you have a semi decent GPU.

http://anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=2330&p=2

As you can see in the last test framerates drop down to the 50s on the P4s, and thats AVG framerate. MIN framerates would be far worse, I can assure you. :wink:
 

zenmaster

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It all depends on how you look at it.

The X2 3600 is 1/2 the cost of the E4300.
Yes the E4300 will not yield a computer twice as fast.

So logically from a price/performance ratio the X2 would win?

Well, may be not.

If the system price for one is $1000 and the other is $1100 due to CPU/MB price differences, then we are talking about a %10 difference in cost. In this case the E4300 would be the best choice since it easily beats the X2 3600 on a clock for clock basis and can clock higher to boot.

In the end, the E4300 is hands down better but will cost u a bit more.
If u can afford the xtra $75-$100, go for it. If not, the X2 3600 will still get u a good system.
 

epsilon84

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Well the 3600+ is obviously the best buy for the money. $59, $69 retail now at newegg I think, and everyone is overclocking them to 3ghz.

3 GHz on this chip is more an exception than a standard.... most people I see top out at 2.8 GHz, some are even getting stuck at 2.6 GHz.

This is a bit misleading.

What did you expect from Mike, the cold hard truth?! :lol:
 

m25

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Their stock performance is very cloce (with the E4300 winning by small percentages) but the X2 3600+ has a much better price so you'd better go with that for stock operation. When OC-ing, a 2.8-3.0GHz E4300 performs about 20% better than an equally clocked X2 3600+, so the cup here goes to the E4300.
But bare in mind that on singlethreaded apps, without OC-ing, both the E4300 and the X2 3600+ won't give you ANY visible performance increase.
 

TSIMonster

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I have the 3600+ and mostly play Source Engine games. The thing whizzes through them at 1680x1050 all maxed out. I have done any map editing, so I can't comment on that or the e4300. For the price, I think the 3600 is a much better deal. On my cheap ASRock board and stock cooling I got mine to 2.6Ghz stable.

With better cooling, and better motherboard, and a slight bump in vCore I am confident that this CPU can reach 3Ghz (It posts at 3Ghz already and makes it to windows at 2.9)

I love my 3600+ and plan to keep it for a good while...
 

1Tanker

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Well the 3600+ is obviously the best buy for the money. $59, $69 retail now at newegg I think, and everyone is overclocking them to 3ghz.

3 GHz on this chip is more an exception than a standard.... most people I see top out at 2.8 GHz, some are even getting stuck at 2.6 GHz.

This is a bit misleading.At least she/he didn't call anyone..."nerd boy"..this time. :wink:
 
It all depends on how you look at it.

The X2 3600 is 1/2 the cost of the E4300.
Yes the E4300 will not yield a computer twice as fast.

So logically from a price/performance ratio the X2 would win?

Well, may be not.

If the system price for one is $1000 and the other is $1100 due to CPU/MB price differences, then we are talking about a %10 difference in cost. In this case the E4300 would be the best choice since it easily beats the X2 3600 on a clock for clock basis and can clock higher to boot.

In the end, the E4300 is hands down better but will cost u a bit more.
If u can afford the xtra $75-$100, go for it. If not, the X2 3600 will still get u a good system.
Nope at 1600X1200 or higher you want see a %10 increase in FPS OCed or not. Its more about your GPU and memory at the higher resolutions in most all games. Oblivion is really the only 1 ive seen that needs the better CPU. For the prices you stated I could add the extra $100 and get a 8800gts and you a 8600gts so really the GPU is going to kill the CPU here.
 

epsilon84

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It all depends on how you look at it.

The X2 3600 is 1/2 the cost of the E4300.
Yes the E4300 will not yield a computer twice as fast.

So logically from a price/performance ratio the X2 would win?

Well, may be not.

If the system price for one is $1000 and the other is $1100 due to CPU/MB price differences, then we are talking about a %10 difference in cost. In this case the E4300 would be the best choice since it easily beats the X2 3600 on a clock for clock basis and can clock higher to boot.

In the end, the E4300 is hands down better but will cost u a bit more.
If u can afford the xtra $75-$100, go for it. If not, the X2 3600 will still get u a good system.
Nope at 1600X1200 or higher you want see a %10 increase in FPS OCed or not. Its more about your GPU and memory at the higher resolutions in most all games. Oblivion is really the only 1 ive seen that needs the better CPU.

HL2 is a bit more CPU bound than many games, it already shows significant CPU scaling on an X850XT @ 1280x1024... now imagine the scaling on current cards that are 2x - 4x as fast...

http://anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=2330&p=2
http://anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=2330&p=6

I can assure you an overclocked E4300 would be at least 30% faster than an overclocked X2 3600+ with current GPUs, but its quite a moot point since both would be more than fast enough to keep the framerate above 60fps at all times. Once you get past that point it really doesn't matter how high your framerate is.
 
It all depends on how you look at it.

The X2 3600 is 1/2 the cost of the E4300.
Yes the E4300 will not yield a computer twice as fast.

So logically from a price/performance ratio the X2 would win?

Well, may be not.

If the system price for one is $1000 and the other is $1100 due to CPU/MB price differences, then we are talking about a %10 difference in cost. In this case the E4300 would be the best choice since it easily beats the X2 3600 on a clock for clock basis and can clock higher to boot.

In the end, the E4300 is hands down better but will cost u a bit more.
If u can afford the xtra $75-$100, go for it. If not, the X2 3600 will still get u a good system.
Nope at 1600X1200 or higher you want see a %10 increase in FPS OCed or not. Its more about your GPU and memory at the higher resolutions in most all games. Oblivion is really the only 1 ive seen that needs the better CPU.

HL2 is a bit more CPU bound than many games, it already shows significant CPU scaling on an X850XT @ 1280x1024... now imagine the scaling on current cards that are 2x - 4x as fast...

http://anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=2330&p=2
You may want to check pages 6 and 7 of that review as the GPU changes gets more FPS that the CPU change. In some cases above 1400mhz the CPU is flat. LOL
 

epsilon84

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It all depends on how you look at it.

The X2 3600 is 1/2 the cost of the E4300.
Yes the E4300 will not yield a computer twice as fast.

So logically from a price/performance ratio the X2 would win?

Well, may be not.

If the system price for one is $1000 and the other is $1100 due to CPU/MB price differences, then we are talking about a %10 difference in cost. In this case the E4300 would be the best choice since it easily beats the X2 3600 on a clock for clock basis and can clock higher to boot.

In the end, the E4300 is hands down better but will cost u a bit more.
If u can afford the xtra $75-$100, go for it. If not, the X2 3600 will still get u a good system.
Nope at 1600X1200 or higher you want see a %10 increase in FPS OCed or not. Its more about your GPU and memory at the higher resolutions in most all games. Oblivion is really the only 1 ive seen that needs the better CPU.

HL2 is a bit more CPU bound than many games, it already shows significant CPU scaling on an X850XT @ 1280x1024... now imagine the scaling on current cards that are 2x - 4x as fast...

http://anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=2330&p=2
You may want to check pages 6 and 7 of that review as the GPU changes gets more FPS that the CPU change. In some cases above 1400mhz the CPU is flat. LOL

I edited my original post just as you posted. ;)

GPUs are 2x - 4x as fast compared to 2005. CPUs have only advanced about 1.5x in that time. The fastest CPU in the article is a 2.6GHz A64 FX... which even by todays standards is not exactly 'slow' and would put a stock X2 3600+ to shame in single threaded benchmarks, hell it'll even beat low end C2Ds like the E4300.

Like I said in my earlier post, it's really a moot point because the framerate would be so high on both systems (once overclocked of course ;) ) that I doubt anyone would be able to tell the difference.
 

The_YongGrand

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Boys,

Let's not start a huge argument out of it. I just want my HL2 to load quickly, like less than 10 seconds on it. My current rig is like 30 seconds on it and it's quite like forever.

Also, I'm into mapmaking, and maybe I'll be starting to do it again. Been mapmaking since 01 (HL classic) , but stopped because I had a weaker K6-2, and since then I didn't do much mapping as it took too long time to do it.

On top of that, here's my summary:

1.) I have a DDR2-667 RAM. If I plan to save some more dough (C2D is still a little bit too pricey, for even a E4300), is it good to use an X2-3600?

2.) No overclocking is done at all, since this is a central PC at home. Period.

3.) Futureproofing - I wanna play games which have dual-core support. I know the Socket 775 will be still around until next year or whatever it is, so if I buy the E4300 combo, later when these are getting cheaper, a new E6600 will be sittin' on top of it instead. But I know I can't do it on an AM2 since the AMD guys liked changing sockets which is very annoying sometimes. (no, I'm no intel or AMD fanboy - please take note.)

That's all. If loading HL2 cuts the time into half - I'm moving to that particular processor. If that E4300 loads like um... only 5 seconds, I'll pick that for sure. If that X2-3600 squeezes out a 10 second load, I'll choose that.

Opinions?
 

shadowmaster625

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Well the 3600+ is obviously the best buy for the money. $59, $69 retail now at newegg I think, and everyone is overclocking them to 3ghz.

'Everyone'? How many people are running an X2 3600+ @ 3GHz in these forums, the highest I've seen is 2.8GHz. Sure, *some* people are getting 3GHz on other forums, but that is the upper limit more than the norm.

An E4300 is ~$115 retail and should overclock to 3GHz easily, 3.5GHz if you have good cooling. At such speeds it would blow away any overclocked X2. You'd need an X2 @ 4.2GHz to compete... which ain't gonna happen short of LN2.

Overall platform cost would be about $50 - $100 higher for the E4300 depending on the mobo, but don't act as if the X2 3600+ has an edge in overclocking, because it will utterly get spanked by the E4300.

As an owner of an E6300 @ 3.2GHz, you should probably know that already. If the X2 3600+ is such a great overclocker why don't you just replace your current system with one then? :lol: :wink:

My 119 kg daddy can beat up your 59kg daddy!

Ever stop and think how dumb that sounds? probably not...
 
It all depends on how you look at it.

The X2 3600 is 1/2 the cost of the E4300.
Yes the E4300 will not yield a computer twice as fast.

So logically from a price/performance ratio the X2 would win?

Well, may be not.

If the system price for one is $1000 and the other is $1100 due to CPU/MB price differences, then we are talking about a %10 difference in cost. In this case the E4300 would be the best choice since it easily beats the X2 3600 on a clock for clock basis and can clock higher to boot.

In the end, the E4300 is hands down better but will cost u a bit more.
If u can afford the xtra $75-$100, go for it. If not, the X2 3600 will still get u a good system.
Nope at 1600X1200 or higher you want see a %10 increase in FPS OCed or not. Its more about your GPU and memory at the higher resolutions in most all games. Oblivion is really the only 1 ive seen that needs the better CPU.

HL2 is a bit more CPU bound than many games, it already shows significant CPU scaling on an X850XT @ 1280x1024... now imagine the scaling on current cards that are 2x - 4x as fast...

http://anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=2330&p=2
You may want to check pages 6 and 7 of that review as the GPU changes gets more FPS that the CPU change. In some cases above 1400mhz the CPU is flat. LOL

I edited my original post just as you posted. ;)

GPUs are 2x - 4x as fast compared to 2005. CPUs have only advanced about 1.5x in that time. The fastest CPU in the article is a 2.6GHz A64 FX... which even by todays standards is not exactly 'slow' and would put a stock X2 3600+ to shame in single threaded benchmarks, hell it'll even beat low end C2Ds like the E4300.

Like I said in my earlier post, it's really a moot point because the framerate would be so high on both systems (once overclocked of course ;) ) that I doubt anyone would be able to tell the difference.
So I take it your agreeing with me now? GPU's are the better upgrade for gamming and buying the cheapest CPU to get the better GPU is the right choice? CPU's in 2005 are fast enought for todays games but maybe 1 oblivion? In your review the game was CPU bound but only because is running at a low resolution and at 1600X1200 (note page 6) shows that the GPU make the bigger difference.
 

epsilon84

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All I am saying is that HL2 scales more with CPU clockspeed than most games, which are generally more GPU bound.

Do you have hands on experience playing HL2 and it's spinoffs like CS:S? If you did you'll realise how CPU bound it is, especially in multiplayer, where the physics model had to be TONED DOWN by Valve because it was too taxing on CPUs.
 

zenmaster

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No doubt.
But that is why I said if you had the xtra $75-$100.

Most games are more GPU than CPU bound when using current processors and the money should be invested there first.

The same rule applies when looking at an E4300 vs an E6600 or such choices. But in these cases, the E4300 can easily be tweaked to match the power of the higher CPU. This is not the case in the x2 3600 since it's ceiling is much lower than that of the C2D chips.
 

The_YongGrand

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So, uh... which one is value for money?

I know it's difficult to future-proof my PC, but just need to do some transitions so that I can game my HL2 with pleasure. The long load times and map compile times are sometimes annoying, and wish to get ahead.

If I use a cheap 945 (C2D support) board, I can still use it until up to E6700, but for that cheap AM2, I never can do future upgrades.

How true are my statements? Remember, please don't hit me too much, I did my grand research before asking. :D