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How does this sound?
cadmium:
--- Quote from: pcolson on July 29, 2008, 05:37:31 pm ---If you are near a Fry's, they have an e7200 with a cheap ecs mobo for $119. Mine is running hot with the stock heatsink so I am not able to oc it right now, but once I figure that out, this chip clocks to 3.17ghz just by changing FSB to 1333. Mine crashed after 10 minutes of burn in at that speed. I haven't tried MAME on it, I picked up an e8400 combo for $159 for the cab; I'm putting that one together now. You will get a lot more out of a c2d chip than you will with the AMD for MAME, so you might want to look into it. These are the first intel chips I have bought since the P3 first came out; but better performance and similar price was plenty to make me switch back.
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That does sound like a good price, but I don't have a Frys anywhere near here and the normal prices are pushing past my budget.
Edit. I priced out a retail E7200 machine and it came in around $370.
Is there anyway I could get a direct comparison of the performance between the 2 processors to see if it worth the $70 price difference? Also, I don't intend to overclock, mostly do to the confined space of the cabinet, so I won't get as much out of it.
cadmium:
--- Quote from: GinsuVictim on July 29, 2008, 05:01:07 pm ---Go with the cheaper mobo and get separate video and sound cards. Some people have issues with onboard a/v.
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Just posting an update to say I tried the SBLive and it sounded terrible (static), while the onboard chip sounded just fine.
Ginsu Victim:
Results may vary...
massive88:
Unless you are needing full duplex, onboard sound should be just fine in any modern motherboard.
The only problem I have ever encountered is trying to record in fraps while playing. For that I needed to throw in my old SB Live card. Other then that, onboard audio is very adequate for the majority of applications, and most certainly for Mame dedicated boxes.
Personally on your setup above, I would cut the ram to a gig, and get a core 2 duo. The performance is well worth the price difference. And you can save a little on the ram, Mame shouldnt need 2gigs, and you shouldnt be running much overhead either.
cadmium:
--- Quote from: massive88 on August 04, 2008, 11:18:41 am ---Personally on your setup above, I would cut the ram to a gig, and get a core 2 duo. The performance is well worth the price difference. And you can save a little on the ram, Mame shouldnt need 2gigs, and you shouldnt be running much overhead either.
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I appreciate the performance of the core2duo, but it was just out of my budget. For the price, the Athlon64 X2 is plenty for what I want to run.
Besides, I've already built the machine (minus the video card, which arrives today). And yes, 2GB is probably overkill, but it's just so darn cheap. :cheers: