New Computer Possibilities - Part Six

Buying a CPU (Part 2):

Digging through the bargain bin

In my previous post, I talked about the Intel quad-core Q6600 and the upcoming Q9450, due in mid-January. Both are processors on the high-end ($275-$350?) of what's realistic to pay (people who buy the EE chips are just obsessed with being first). Well, I need more than just a CPU in my computer so perhaps it's time to look at chips that cost as little as 20% of those heavyweights.

So instead of spending incredible amounts of money at one time, let's look at Intel's bargain bin. I want something which is LGA775 socket so I can keep the same motherboard when I upgrade. I'm also going to bet that a low-end offering would beat out the Athlon XP 2800+ I bought in 2004 (although I sold it so I can't test my theory). My needs are fairly unintensive ~ I just want to be able to compile, run and debug my programs quickly. My gaming needs are light, Warcraft III is about as intensive as it gets. I'm not upgrading to a gaming machine yet so I'm not worried about that, just about hopping on modern technology so I have an upgrade path sooner rather than later.

I am still going to wait until the Penryn/Wolfdale/Yorkfield release in January because I believe it will shake up the market and push prices down on the older models (that, and Christmas is coming up...). I'll look into it more in two months. However, this is what I discovered today.

I was originally looking at the E6xxx series and the Q6600 because they are multi-core (E - Dual, Q - Quad) and support VT-x (hardware virtualization). The cheapest E6xxx is the E6550 for $170. The cheapest E4xxx (no VT-x) is the E4500 for $130.

However, if I'm planning to wait a while to buy the Q6600 or the upcoming Q9450, why spend even that much money on a compromise processor? The Core 2 series has a single-core stepchild which carries the "Celeron" name. Celerons are well-known to be gimped, bottom of the barrel chips for basic computing. Well, they're also dirt cheap. A Core 2-styled Celeron 420 (*giggle*) is a mere $44 in retail packaging. It'd be easy to throw this into a HTPC box when I'm done with it and have replaced it with a $350 quad-core monster in six months or so. This way, I don't spend another $85-$125 just to compromise in the end. The Conroe-L Celerons are also low power (35W), which would be good for an HTPC (not only cheaper bills but less heat to dissipate).

On a slightly higher price-point, the "Pentium" name has been revived. These are dual-core, sub-$100 chips. There are three models currently ~ E2140/2160/2180 selling for $75/$83/$90 on Newegg. Do two cores justify twice the price? Probably, to be honest. With all the compiling and such that I do, I could use a second core. If I'm serious about buying a heavy-weight quad-core in the coming months, should I save the extra $30? I'll have to think about that.

Here is a table of some notable processors representative of different price-points:

Celeron 420	$44
Pentium Dual-Core E2140	$75
Core 2 Duo E4500	$130
Core 2 Duo E6550	$170
Core 2 Quad Q6600	$280
Core 2 Quad Q9450	$350+???

As you can see, I definitely have my range of choices, all which will work on the motherboard I have chosen. Even within those steps are smaller frequency steps for only a few dollars difference. At some point, I guess you just say "here is where I'm going to stop", otherwise you just keep saying, "but for only $15 more..." until you're broke ^-^.

In an ideal world, I'd pick up the Q9450, which seems to be the best balance between price and performance (there more expensive CPUs that I didn't list). It's a very hefty quad core with a massive 12MB of L2 cache (Nehalem will shift a lot of the L2 to L3 though) and is definitely like having four nice computers at your fingertips. On the other hand, I still want to buy a new monitor, which will probably cost around $300 as well as more storage. Of course, I do have expenses that have nothing to do with computing at all which I need to concern myself with eventually! ^-^

I think the E2140 is worth the extra $30 over the Celeron 420 but that the E4500 is not worth another $45 so that's where I should stop for now. The TDP is also something to take into consideration ~ the Celeron 420 is just 35W compared to 65W for the E2140. More energy means a higher bill and more heat, which involves more noise to blow the heat away. Still, 65W is quite minor compared to the P4, which took twice that!