The $500 Gaming Machine, 2007 Edition

[zenmaster]

The Conroe-L processors are still available. Here there are at Newegg for $44, $54, $66:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=2+50001157+40000343+1050706981+1051707842&name=LGA+775

darklife, I don't really understand your statement 1 since the Celeron Conroe-L is based on 65nm tech and is on the Core mircroarchitecture and indeed IS a Celeron part (at least by name).

I do agree with you as the small cache (512KB) is a big handicap for the processor.

But, this chip is pretty powerful on a budget. Check out this (very early) review by Xbit:

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/conroe-l-preview_3.html#sect1

You will see that it waxes the fastest Netburst Celeron at stock speed (in a lot of the tests) and on the next page at 3.0 Ghz it can match a stock Pentium D 925 (or best in some tests) and in some tests it even beats a stock E4300.

However, with more programming going the route of multiple threads, this chip will be out dated in the near future and simply will not be able to compete. It is a good buy for the rediculously low price, and can be swapped out for a Q6600 in the future.

Those links do nothing but show me how BAD the Conroe-L is.
When fully OC'd it loses almost all of the tests vs the E4300.

The E4300 is a VERY poor performing chip at STOCK speeds due to the very low FSB.
It gets trounced by the E6300 at stock.

If you OC the E6300 and E4300 both to 3.0Ghz+, then there is little difference as the FSB bottleneck is removed. And Remember, the E2160 is now comparing well to the E6850 not the lowly E4300 at stock.

At these performance levels, you are much better off with the AMD solution. The chips are still about $10-$15 higher but they will be offset by board cost.

The E2160 solution provides a performance level as high or perhaps higher than any AMD solution, even OC'd.

So the extra $30 or so makes sense. If you absolutely dont have that $30, go AMD.

 

[darklife41]

The Conroe-L processors are still available. Here there are at Newegg for $44, $54, $66:.....

I'm in Australia. We get parts directly from Intel distributors. No Celeron, Pentium, or Pentium D is being manufactured by Intel anymore. Newegg is selling off old stock. When it's gone it's gone. I really don't care what reviews said about the Celeron L, from our experience it wasn't that fast and couldn't touch the C2Ds. It also lagged severly when running more than 1 app at a time.

 

[Basalt]

I've built computers since the 8086 days, so I know no two people are going to see eye to eye on the whole component list. So I looked a bit closer at the gigabyte Card, the article states the card as having 256 mb of DDR2 RAM. That hardly makes it a clear winner on price point, but looking the card up it turns out the H2600pro is only offered as a 512 mb RAM card from Gigabyte.

At $88 at Newegg for what it does, with 512 mb ram, it seems a lot more reasonable as a budget card, especially when you try to match it to a Dx9 card with the same memory configuration, now your up against the ATI X1650 or the nVidia 7600GS in price points, cards which this model should beat easily on benchmarks at stock speeds, especially at lower resolutions. Your going to end up almost doubling your money invested to buy a XT1950 and the 7900/7950 series nVidia GPU on a 512 mb card seem to be drying up. So with the key words being budget and current games, the card isn't a bad buy, as long as resolutions are below 1280 x 1024.

However even given that you want future expansion options built and DX10 built in, why would you even bother buying a DX10 card with an XP operating system?

 

[triple000]

hey peoples, im a noob to these forms but i was just woundering if this rig would even be able to touch crysis when it comes out? i meen...would it be able to load the game and play it on low settings at least or would it be worthless?
thanks alot. triple000

 

[triple000]

anyone?

 

[zenmaster]

No, It would not.

If you upgraded the GPU to say a 7900GS which you can find for about $99 last time I looked it may be playable on low settings.

You may want to add another 1gb of RAM.

You can save quite a bit on the GPU which could pay for those upgrades. The ANTEC Earthwatts 430w version can be had for as little as $30 After Rebate last I looked and do nicely.