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Ideal Emulation Rigs?
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LeedsFan:
I just had a look at Newegg.ca (though I'm from England and can't buy from there myself).

$120 gets you an i3-540 processor which is 3.09 GHz out of the box. This is easily overclocked to 4.0 GHz and over on the stock cooler.
$82 gets you a Radeon 5570 which is a half decent graphics card. It will play modern games at medium settings and is even available in low profile for a few dollars extra if you are tight on space.

I think you may need to get DDR3 ram for this though (someone can correct me if I'm wrong) which is more expensive.
DillonFoulds:
I think RAM is motherboard dependent. I recall reading somewhere (maybe Tom's Hardware?) that AM3 processors required DDR3 ram to function correctly. Am I mistaken on this one though?


--- Quote from: cotmm68030 on November 09, 2010, 08:46:23 am ---    AMD Athlon II X2 260 Regor 3.2GHz Socket AM3 65W Dual-Core Desktop Processor ADX260OCGMBOX
    Item #: N82E16819103873
    $73.99

--- End quote ---

So basically, this CPU has a higher base frequency, and uses less energy, so in theory it should be an easier OC to keep stable? For 15$ less I'd be getting better single thread performance, it seems...

http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/desktop-cpu-charts-2010/Cinebench-11.5-Single-threaded,2406.html

Hmm... something to think about then...
newmanfamilyvlogs:
AM3 can run on DDR2 or DDR3. Yes, it is motherboard dependent, as the sockets are physically incompatible, however that motherboard that I suggested is a DDR2 board that supports AM3.

The machine I'm running to post this is an AM3 Phenom X4 with 8Gb of DDR2 ram.

Some discussions of overclocking the 260:
http://www.overclock.net/amd-cpus/748936-amd-athlon-ii-x240-athlon-iix260.html
http://www.overclock.net/amd-cpus/587058-official-athlon-ii-x2-regor-series.html
http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=322990
clok:
I must admit I havent been here reading in several months, but.. Will any non -OC'ed machine play the high end stuff. I know there was a huge thread on the E8400's and OC.. it was about the best (bang for buck) processer back then (yes, outdated CPU by hardware standards).But since then I have picked up some the new (ok old now) e6400 and htey OC like mad! seems like a pretty nice chip for $70.

it is hard to beat AMD for bang for buck so if its purely EMU machine it might be way to go.
garwil:
I think the problem with a lot of the games is that they aren't fully working in MAME anyway. You could have a 10Ghz processor and they'd still be choppy/buggy/crashy/freezey! The same goes for a lot of other more recent emus.
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