Longterm PC: e4300 or e6600?

[MuuMuu]

I'm upgrading my PC for the first time in ~2yrs. I don't really plan on upgrading the Mobo/CPU again for quite a while; after reading good things about the e4300 I may have jumped the gun a little too early by ordering one of them for a system I want to have mostly up-to-date for quite a while to come.

Looking at posts of people who got them, the e4300 seems to be able to do 3.0Ghz most of the time w/o problems, whereas the 6600 can do 3200 and (sometimes?) 3600. My question would be, are those numbers from the e6600 something I can "expect" to pull off, or would I need to be somewhat lucky on the chip to be able to achieve those? It'll probably cost me a good extra 200 bucks with the price diff. and restocking fees, but that doesn't bother me too much if it could be considered a reliable option.

I did get DDR800 ram from GSkills, Asus P5B and one of them huge heatsinks from Scythe so components should theoretically be no problems for OC'ing.

 

[Shimmishim]

Since you'll have to pay a restock fee anyway, it might be worth it to give the e4300 a spin before you return it.

There are a few aps where the extra 2M L2 will help out (f@h, superpi, etc) but in general the average pc user won't notice the difference between a e4300 @ 3.0 and a e6600 @ 3.0 or 3.2 for that matter.

I think hitting 3.0-3.2 is pretty much a given with the e6400 and higher... might have to increase stock voltage slightly but should be doable.

Is the $100 price difference worth it to upgrade? That's up to you to decide.

 

[n7]

You're fine.

The E4300 will do about the same as the other C2Ds.

You usually get to around 3.2 GHz on stock voltage (1.35V range), & around 3.3-3.6 GHz if you up vcore to around 1.4-1.5V range (depending on luck).

E6600 does around the same, with a slightly higher ceiling of say 3.7ish if you pour in the vcore...

 

[BlingBlingArsch]

guess how far u can get ur cpu depends on how far u can get the memory, u can do the math
of course only if its still true that 1:1 fsb:memory ratio is the best way to go.

 

[MuuMuu]

Thanks for the replies.

Guess I will try and see how far the e4300 goes; I was ready to plunk down cash for a diff. processor, but I think the anxiety bug's gone away now. Hell, it sounds like you can get lucky with either chip...

 

[coldpower27]

I would probably go with the E4300 now, and then a Quad Core upgrade down the road, but that's me.