Given your CPU choices, it is obvious that you are ignoring i7, I
suspect beacise the price.
In that case, I think you should reconsider AMD. I have a couple of
Phenoms, which work really fine with Gentoo.
However, if its lower frequency and smaller cache of 9850 and 9950 is
what bothers you, you should consider Deneb, which is to come out any
day now.
3GHz model should be quite cheap, it has 6MB of L3 which is not far from
Intel's 8Mb and it also allegedly overclocks very well.
People are getting to 4.4GHz on aircooling, which means machine should
behave rock stable at 3.5GHz+ with really good cooler, like Thermalright
IFX-14.
Boards are relatively good and inexpensive, as well as DDR-II RAM is
these days. I have stuffed 8GB in my box for something like €150.
I have Foxcon A7DA-S, but Biostar models seem to be cheaper and record
OC was done on such board ( 6.3 GHz on LN2), so it should perform well.
Also, having a true QC can mean something with optimised multithread code.
Intel's i7 is fine, but quite expensive and its smaller i5 won't be on
the market for some time, and getting old C2D or Q2D seems a bit of
waste these days...
Daniel Iliev wrote:
Hi, guys!
I've decided to get an Intel based box, but I've not been following
closely the hardware development for more than 5 years. Another
trouble is that most of the people I can ask don't use Gentoo and they
miss the point of "much compiling". So, I need your help.
1) CPU:
model,CPU Freq,FSB Freq,cache,technology
E8400, 3.00GHz, 1333MHz, 6MB, 45nm
Q8200, 2.33GHz, 1333MHz, 4MB, 45nm
Q6600, 2.40GHz, 1066MHz, 8MB, 65nm
Which one? (please, consider overclocking).
On the local market those are in the same price range and I'm going to
take Q6600 for the bigger cache (8MB). Is that the correct choice?
2) Main board.
I was advised to get Asus P5K Premium (P35, ICH9) for Q6600. The thing
is there are models from the P5Q series (like P5Q3) which have a newer
chipset (P45, ICH10) but the same price. I can't understand why should
I choose the premium mobo even it's an older model. Please, advise.
3) DDR2
600,800 or 1066? The thing confusing me is that the newer CPUs run at
1333MHz and the older (Q6600) at 1066. So, which DDR2?
4) Overclock
I intend to overclock the system but not extremely. I've been told
Q6600 would go up to 3GHz w/o any trouble. Is that true? How high
would the other two CPUs go w/o additional cooling and compromising
the stability?
Thanks in advance!
--
Best regards,
Daniel
