Intel Core 2 Duo (1.80GHz, 800MHz, 2MB)?

Question

I'm looking to buy a pc with the Intel Core 2 Duo (1.80GHz, 800MHz, 2MB) processor

For an extra £30 there is the Intel Core 2 Duo (1.80GHz, 1066MHz, 2MB) processor

For the extra £30 am I really going to notice that much of a difference.?

I'm also thinking long term. Will the slightly faster processor last longer in terms of running future processor hungry applications - future proofing if you want to call it that?

Answer 1

A computer magazine recently (I can't remember which one) did a test report on memory chips ranging in speed from 533MHz to 800Mhz and the difference across the range was barely discernable. Others have said that moving from a 667MHz to an 800Mhz memory gives an noticeable improvement. So take what you like from that.

You might be better off looking at the motherboard chip set. If you're going for an Intel Core 2 Duo CPU then go for a motherboard based on one of the Intel 965 or higher chip sets, or one of the nVidia 600 series.

If you want to go for a higher speed processor it wouldn't be worth going for anything less than a 2.40GHz chip. Even then, the difference will only be noticeable with high end games, image processing, video encoding, number crunching and the like. For word processing, e-mail, web surfing, computer programming, multimedia playback, etc, the 1.83Mhz chip would be more than adequate.

Answer 2

You are on a slippery slope... for an extra £30 you can get the next processor up ... for an extra £70 you can get an even whizzier one... for an extra £100 you can get a bigger disk drive... and so on and so on.

You can't 'future proof' your computer... that's what built-in obsolescence is all about. All you do is get one that is a bit faster and will be trailing edge a bit later, but you are talking months not years, so you won't survive the OS-after-vista.

Buy what will meet your needs this year. Next year the Core-quad 3GHz will be cheap and you can upgrade when you need it. And the year after it will be core-oct processors...

To misquote nemo... just keep shopping, just keep shopping

Answer 3

If you have the extra money, I don't see the harm into upgrading the cpu. however, i would get the core 2 duo 7200 (2.0 ghz) as it has a substantial performance boost over the 1.80 ghz core 2 duo, which i think is the 5 series.

Answer 4

the question is your motherboard support to 1066MHz FSB?
if it doesn't why dont you wasting your money to buy somethink that you don't understand how it compability?
but if your motherboard support 1066 MHz why you don't use it for the best performance of your pc?