This is the AMD CPU with the unlocked multiplier for easy overclocking. Tom's Hardware got it up to 3.1GHz without changing voltage. Even at stock speeds this seems like a good deal.

Look close to the top

Link

Black Edition review

So you're basically get the ram for $6 more. Nice.

raider73 said:According to tom's hardware, OCing this cpu to 3.1GHZ, it still trailed the Conroe E6600 in performance. With that being said, the E4500 w/ Motherboard at Fry's for $118 is a much better deal to me. Just do a Bsel pin mode and you'll have a 2.9GHZ processor which should still be faster than the E6600 which runs at 2.4GHZ even w/ 2MB less in cache. AMD needs a newer processor line, they were good before w/ the Athlon 64 X2 and the Opteron but now the Intel Core 2 Duo is kicking their ass. Best deal would be to get the E2140 and overclock that cpu since many have gotten that CPU to run easily at 3Ghz on the stock cooler and that's a $75 cpu. I use to buy only AMD cpus but not anymore. They need to get their act together.

QFT

Frys have an ECS mobo (pretty crappy) with a X2 5600 for $129 B&M ton's left ..... way better deal

raider73 said:According to tom's hardware, OCing this cpu to 3.1GHZ, it still trailed the Conroe E6600 in performance. With that being said, the E4500 w/ Motherboard at Fry's for $118 is a much better deal to me. Just do a Bsel pin mode and you'll have a 2.9GHZ processor which should still be faster than the E6600 which runs at 2.4GHZ even w/ 2MB less in cache. AMD needs a newer processor line, they were good before w/ the Athlon 64 X2 and the Opteron but now the Intel Core 2 Duo is kicking their ass. Best deal would be to get the E2140 and overclock that cpu since many have gotten that CPU to run easily at 3Ghz on the stock cooler and that's a $75 cpu. I use to buy only AMD cpus but not anymore. They need to get their act together.

sure if you don't have an investment in AM2 motheboard, by all means go Intel. If you do have AM2 this is a Great deal.

This CPU would be my pick if I was buying AM2. I would pair it with a nVidia 590 for full power and a 690G for mATX. I think the retail box only contains the CPU and no HSF.

I like the Biostar tForce version of the 690G mobo. Open Box

AaronR said:Rebate company is that notorious status-now.com. Still don't know when I am gonna get my geil rebate.

Finally got my 2 Geil rebates. Mailed/received dates of 6/30/07-10/29/07 and 6/30/07-11/5/07. Maybe that'll give you an idea of how long yours will take if it has not been that long yet. I did have to call after 10 weeks and 4 days as well and they then supposedly sent an email to accounting but they finally did show up.

schwoozer said:Socrilles said:Intel chips definitely have the performance crown at the moment, however AMD chips tend to run cooler in my experience (I own 2 e4300's, a celeron 420, Q6600, and a couple AMD dual cores). The real deal here is doing the 4000+ and ram combo (same discount) which will be $72 after rebate. Pair that combo with one of the nice AMD 690G mobos with HDMI and you have the perfect start to an HTPC. No intel setup can touch this for price/performance ratio, as the mobos with built in HDMI for intel are expensive and for the most part are crappier quality. Just my 2 cents.

What I would buy (actually bought):
Select the ram combo listed below

HDMI motherboard (really nice and only $70 AR)

THANKS! This is definitely the better deal. I canceled my Black Edition order and got this instead. Only bummer is that the GA-MA69GM-S2H I had ordered with FS on my previous order no longer has FS I'll wait for FS again (or talk to Newegg CS).

i have the ga-ma69g-s3h, great board but it doesnt have many oc options, no fsb divider which really capped my rig out. I have a 4800 brisbane in it at 2.8ghz stock volts tho, but the fsb cant go higher cuz there is no fsb:ram divider or HTT divider

The only way I was ever able to get Corsair rebates on products bought at Newegg was to contact Newegg and basically threaten
that if they did not honor the rebate, I would come after them. Lo and behold, within a 10 day period, a rebate check that was 5 months overdue showed up in my mailbox. Be careful with Corsair rebates.

raider73 said:According to tom's hardware, OCing this cpu to 3.1GHZ, it still trailed the Conroe E6600 in performance. With that being said, the E4500 w/ Motherboard at Fry's for $118 is a much better deal to me. Just do a Bsel pin mode and you'll have a 2.9GHZ processor which should still be faster than the E6600 which runs at 2.4GHZ even w/ 2MB less in cache. AMD needs a newer processor line, they were good before w/ the Athlon 64 X2 and the Opteron but now the Intel Core 2 Duo is kicking their ass. Best deal would be to get the E2140 and overclock that cpu since many have gotten that CPU to run easily at 3Ghz on the stock cooler and that's a $75 cpu. I use to buy only AMD cpus but not anymore. They need to get their act together.

Intel is only kicking AMD's ass in the "mickey mouse" benchmarks. If you applications that use high levels of system memory like spec.org Unigraphics NX3 or as Tom's found in Solidworks and Catia :
"Specviewperf 9, which focuses on workstation-based computer aided design, offered the most puzzling results of any of our tests. On the whole, the Athlon 64 3800+/7600 GT combo performed quite well compared to the Core2 Duo e6600/8800 GTS combo in many benchmarks, achieving parity on the whole and even beating it in tests. This is certainly the opposite of what we were expecting.

SolidWorks and Catia surprisingly prefer the low-cost system in the professional modeling benchmark set.

Could this benchmark throw a monkey wrench in the final analysis? Is the 8800 driver not yet mature enough for CAD use? We did experience some difficulties when using the Specviewperf benchmark, and there are a host of questions here that we'd like answered, but it will certainly take some more investigation to find out. We don't have the time to investigate for this article, so for now, the Specviewperf results should probably be taken with a grain of salt." Tom's

There is no particular reason for a grain of salt, the difference has been well know for at least 3 years and is subject of numerous papers over in the HPC community. Here are two from Oak Ridge National Lab HPCWire and Sandia National Lab Host Processor Overhead So if you run heavy duty applications that depend on large floating point data sets for accuracy then you won't even consider Intel. If you run everyday apps that are dumbed down to run on the dumbest chip possible then Intel is a superior performer for data requests less than 4k. Above 16k data sets, Intel's MPI creates too much overhead and performance drops way off. That is why in DARPA's World Championship of Super Computing using 4 HPC benchmarks (12 placings) Intel failed to win place or show in ANY category. AMD's Red Storm actually beat IBM's blue Gene L in Fast Fourier Transforms. You had 5 computers finish in the win, place, and show categories 3 IBM and 2 AMD. DARPA HPC Challenge

So who is ahead depends on what application/benchmark you run.