Intel C2D E6750

[Cheesus]

I was thinking of getting this motherboard for a computer I'm building for a friend. I'm not gonna overclock (He doesn't know how, he has no idea about computers), he probably won't upgrade this thing for another 5 years. He's got a tight budget, and I'm trying to cram as much as I can into this budget pc. In no way is he a hardcore gamer, all he plays is simcity 3000 and similar games, but he wants to multitask quite a bit. Anybody use this motherboard, or have any reviews? Also, is it fully compatable with the E6750 (1333FSB).

[sims]

I think it'll be better if your friend went with a prebuilt system from dell. No offense, but the choices you're putting in his system are rather poor quality and uninformed. If you won't want your friend to call you when one of his usb port stops working, or why he's getting bluescreens, or random restarts, then I suggest you go with a better motherboard brand.

My personal habit has been to always buy quality parts when building computers for people/customers. You don't want a bad reputation or hard feelings because you choose to save them a few buck but ending up costing them more for a replacement.

[Cheesus]

His old computer is an athlon xp, that has 2 usb 1.0 ports... till a month ago he thought it was the best on the market.... i doubt hes gonna care about the motherboard. Motherbboards dont have such a big effect on performance, and it seems to cover the basics adequetly. So im guessin you didnt find a review... k, ill see if i can find a better motherboard. I'll try and find an Asus or an Abit.

Dell rip off people blindly. What I'll build for him will cost bout 700 Euros, and for the same identical build Dell would charge 900-1000 Euros. Its a budget build for a 37 year old guy who browses the web, composes/listens to music, burns cds, and plays the occasional game. Keep that in mind.

[firyace]

Actually, motherboard does affect the system in terms of stability. An example would be my multimedia system with has a microatx gigabyte motherboard which has post-problems, which later i found out that it is a well-known problem on that series of motherboards. The motherboards can either provide you a good computer experience, or it can give you absolute hell.

As for Dell computers, I don't really have problems even though I build all of my desktops right now. But I am typing with my Dell laptop right now and I think it is the best bang for the buck as the specifications are really good considerring the little money that I have to spend. If you at least know how to reinstall windows (which it is essential for dell computers), you wouldn't find Dell so bad...

[Cheesus]

As an overall product Dell arent bad, Im just sayin that, for me, Dell is just too expensive. You're paying alot of money for the name, when you could be spending them on better parts.

Do you know of a stable motherboard, that supports the new 1333fsb C2Ds, and is stable?

[skoreanime]

Asus P5K VM. It's a motherboard lots of overclockers have and it's rock stable for them. If it's rock stable overclocked to the limit, then it'll be rock stable if it's run completely on stock. It's pretty cheap too, around $140 (in Canadian dollar anyways). The non-VM version is about $50 more.

[Cid Highwind]

I think that's a difference between Dell in the US and in Europe, here they're relatively more expensive compared to any other vendor or computer parts retailer.

[Cheesus]

Well I'v been looking around, and the only way for me to get another motherboard other than the above mentioned Asrock, is to order from England, and it won't be cheap.

I'm considering getting an Athlon X2 6000+ instead. In terms of performance the E6750 outperforms it by such a margianal amount that i think the 50Euros saved on the motherboard would be worth it. Any opinions? Remember I'm not going to overclock it, not even a tiny bit. Everything stock. The computer needs to last a long, long time.

[RPGW1ZaRD]

GET the E6750.

Just setup my system with the E6750 and damn at even stock speed 2.66GHz I was getting around 30% faster speed in PCSX2. Yes E6750 2.66GHz with BIOS settings at default, no touched ram settings at all vs AMD dual core @ 2.8GHz and heavily optimized setup in all possible ways, I wasn't even able to tighten 1 ram timing to get unstability, fastest drivers etc and all possible tweaks were done with the AMD setup and STILL I had a ~30% performance or ~35% IPC (instructions per cycle) increase with E6750 @ stock! That means my AMD CPU would have to be running at even ~3.78GHz to achieve same FPS rates as my E6750 @ 2.66GHz!

I honestly had only expected about 10~15% performance increase compared to my AMD system at stock settings, and I also thought Core 2 Duo only had about 25~28% clock for clock advantage but seems it's more like ~35 in the best conditions such as PCSX2 emulator when GPU isn't being the bottleneck. I can overclock this E6750 to at least 3.7GHz, possible slightly more but already at 3.5~3.6GHz I can get like 60% better performance than my maximum overclocked AMD system. Or if you prefer comparing it this way, would need to have around 5GHz AMD cpu to compete with the maximum overclocked E6750 in PCSX2 performance. xD I seriously think the raw performance of the CPU and overclockability easily outweighs the extra 50€ extra cost. And since X2 6000+ draws noticably more power than E6750 at stock speed, you'll sorta get back those money in the eletricity bill sooner or later. E6750 easily win it in performance at least, just not PCSX2, X2 6000+ @ 3GHz should be compared rather to E6600 @ 2.4GHz to get fairly balanced battle but in gaming performance for example the E6600 is usually slightly above X2 6000+.

[sims]

Just wondering, what are you superpi 1m time at stock speed?

I think you should start a new topic since this one doesn't seem to have anything to do with the e6750. It's more about building a cheap stable computer.

Anyway congrats and welcome to the darkside. Now you can help me eliminate the jedi er I mean x2 owners.

Seriously though can't wait to see if you'll be the first to get 60fps consistently in re4 or tekken 4.

[RPGW1ZaRD]

Originally Posted by sims

Seriously though can't wait to see if you'll be the first to get 60fps consistently in re4 or tekken 4.

I think that is no prob but I got GPU limited in RE4 (performance increase was only 20% compared to 30% of the other games at stock settings BUT stock clocks on gfx card was used then) but I think it should be enough for constant 60 fps. :P

Tried running KH1, FFX-2 Grandia 3 etc a bit and these games seems to run more like full speed and above all the time even Grandia 3 and speed seems to avg around 100 FPS (at 3.5GHz or whatever I used) xD.

Yes I will post a new topic later when I've found out my ram limits. But CPU seems to top out at 3.7GHz @ ~1.5v so I consider that as the limit for the CPU. I thought it would go a lot further considering I can run up to 3.36GHz at stock volts, 1.35v set in bios, 1.33v idle and 1.31v load. It doesn't scale very well at all with voltage too bad.

I never checked Pi at stock speed but at current setting (8x463) 3.7GHz and ram at 463 4-4-4-4 etc. it scores around 13.750 secs. the mobo also has been slightly tested for fsb limits and at 6x it ran nicely at 500 and even 515 FSB seems to have worked without even upping mobo volts but unfortunately even getting 3.6GHz with 7x multi, ie 515x7 might be impossible, haven't tried out everything yet but I think 500x7 at least can be made stable fairly easily. That setting would be quite nice spot for optimal performance per clock I think since these ram sticks can do at least 500MHz 4-4-4-4 @ 2.2v stable.

[Cheesus]

@ RPGW1ZaRD congrats on the new CPU. (Dont forget to change your sig )

Ok,so I'll stick with the E6750. Do you think I should stick to the Asrock motherboard, or order one?

Offtopic : AMD were in trouble ever since the C2D came out... but now theyr doomed. They really got to pull off something amazing with their upcoming processors.

[S.SubZero]

For a non-overclocker I recommend home field advantage.. just get an Intel board.
Intel® Desktop Board DP35DP Overview

[firyace]

Order one

And SS, why the Intel motherboards? I don't see what the advantage those Intel has...

[ChrisRay]

If you are into overclocking at all though. I'd get an E6600 and clock the FSB to 1333((333)) which basically any recent intel motherboard can do. ((Or Nvidia motherboard)) While this chip is great stock I just think the intel CPUS with higher multipliars are better values due their ability to clock higher and with cheaper motherboards if your into overclocking.

[RPGW1ZaRD]

Originally Posted by ChrisRay

If you are into overclocking at all though. I'd get an E6600 and clock the FSB to 1333((333)) which basically any recent intel motherboard can do. ((Or Nvidia motherboard)) While this chip is great stock I just think the intel CPUS with higher multipliars are better values due their ability to clock higher and with cheaper motherboards if your into overclocking.

Bah, obviously you're not an extreme overclocker and haven't done your homework lately either. E6600 is like dying now, Intel wants E6300, E6400, E6600 and E6700 out of the door ASAP and they charge retarded prices still for them. Also overclockers doesn't really wanna run their CPUs at a low 333 FSB (400 - 500MHz range is a lot more interesting tho), that's barely considered as an overclock to me. Reason why to pick an E6x50 part today:

1) They are a lot cheaper than the E6x00 parts. E6850 (333x9) 3GHz costs like 250~$260, E6750 (333x8) 2.66GHz is around 190~$200, E6550 is like 170~$180. Now a E6600 2.4GHz costs yet like $220 for example or E6700 a ridiculous $300 for example.

2) E6x50 parts have G0 stepping which is well known among the overclockers due to the nice overclockability in general due to less heat dissipation. Even if they have higher FSB and coupled with one lower multi corresponding to the parts they are replacing, the overclockability makes up for that and a serious overclocker picks a motherboard that is capable of delivering anyways.

3) P35 Intel chipset based motherboards with Penryn support among other things are the hot stuff now, taking overclockability to a new level (especially for quad core CPUs). 500MHz FSB is EASY these days and most decent and even many budget P35 boards reach that so the higher FSB and lower multi from start isn't really that much of an issue, well perhaps with the E6550 (7x333) 2.33GHz part but E6750 doesn't cost much more so I wouldn't recommend E6550 anyways if you plan to do some serious overclocking, otherwise it's fine and very cheap.

4) Non overclockers are just happy getting a better performing CPU for less money. Compare E6700 with E6750 for example, you save like $100 choosing E6750 and on top of that gets around 3~5% better performance and lower heat dissipation.

[Cheesus]

Well, good news, I found another motherboard locally. Looks great for its price. Its an MSI P6N SLI V2. Covers all the basics, and then some. Anyone using this board? Anyone got a review? Any information would be greatly appreciated.

[fried_egg]

The e6x50's are by far the fastest processors out there and the best overclockers. It's really just as common to see people reaching stable 3.9ghz overclocks with them , using good air cooling, as it is to see people get 3.5ish overclocks with the lower end models.

[S.SubZero]

Originally Posted by firyace

And SS, why the Intel motherboards? I don't see what the advantage those Intel has...

Intel boards are known for their stability and reliability.

[skoreanime]

MSI boards are solid, they just suck at overclocking when compared to brands like Asus and Gigabyte. Also, they always tend to perform just a tiny bit worse then the other brands...tiny meaning like a few points here and there in benchmarking.