SO HOW GOOD IS THE CELERON E3300 ?

[brianthesnail]

Hi guys
i recently purchased the celeron E3300 for a spare pc build .... and along with that i used the asrock g41m-gs,500gb sata hdd,XFX GTS250 and a soundblaster x-fi extreme soundcard .....
im cooling the celeron E3300 with the excellent cool it eco alc which keeps it at a chilly 28c stock speed...... however how good is this cut price dual core processor ?
well my wifes triple core phenom 8550 gets 5.5 in the windows experience index.. however the E3300 gets 6.0 which has kind of confused me.... and in terms of gaming it runs anything i care to throw at it..... along with the XFX GTS250 it runs crysis warhead at 25fps on gamer settings... and will even run metro 2033 at normal detail settings and 1920x1080 (28fps)

for a budget gaming or media center build the celeron E3300 is a ideal purchase... at around £39 it represents excellent value and you can in theory get the E3300,a compatible motherboard and 4gb of ram for around £120...... this makes it ideal for anyone moving up from a single core based pc , and they can easily use their existing hard and optical drives along with their psu ( 300w or more )
one point though.... the gts250 isnt the best card for the E3300..... the cpu will max out well before the gts250 will.... and from what ive discovered a ideal graphic card to use with the E3300 is the radeon HD5750.... you can buy these for around £70 online... however the HD5670 would also work well with this cpu
the best thing about the celeron E3300 though is how it overclocks.... by simply changing the fsb from its stock 200mhz to 266mhz will give you a 3.34ghz clock speed.... thats with no voltage adjustments .... and some have even hit 4ghz using air.... and the temps never go over 60c
personally im not a fan of overclocking.. it scares the hell out of me..... however the E3300 would be ideal for playing around with and praticing some overclocking ..... at £39 you can afford to fry it instead of your core i7 !
so let me know your thoughts on this cut price wonder cpu..... is it actually any good ... ?
thanks guys !

 

[walterm]

So get the wife an Athalon II X3 or x4 to compare.

 

[popatim]

An overclocked E3300 would be more powerful than the 8550 but at straight bsae settings the AMD is the winner by a nose provided all else is equal (hdd & ram speed). An Athlon II x3 450 would beat both by a decent margin.

 

[megamanx00]

The 8550 should do better than the E3300 in apps that make use of more than two cores but not by much. Even so the E3300 is the winner when you overclock it. Basically as long as you don't go crazy with the voltage and keep reasonable temps you should be fine for overclocking. Since it's a Wolfdale based CPU 4.0Ghz on air is certainly doable. As you overclock it, you will fine that your single GTS 250 will be the limiting factor in gaming ^_^