Because that is what I have and can recommend from experiance. If I were buying a CPU now, I would take a serious look at the E8200.
My motherboard/cpu combo with an Antec Earthwatts power supply has shown a noticable drop in the electric bill over my P4. And, it is running F@H 24/7. My 'office' is noticably cooler too.
Bozo :joker:
E8400 sells for about the same price as the 8200, less than e8500 buy a good margin, and most likely is a better bet for overclocking.
As to Stereodude, 5yrs and looking for the fastest possible system, for the lowest cost, but he also wants legacy, 5yr hardware I/O support? Nearly impossible to get all of those, a compromise at best, most likely on the cost front, meaning more expensive. Then again, I'm sure SD will look at cost and own personal preferences from which we could never figure ourselves from limited data, and just buy whatever SD wants. Seen that scenario too many times. Poster asks, how can I get faster this or that with Photoshop, and I have such and such system, what parts can I upgrade for the most bang for the buck. Then after all the posters give time and effort to trying to find that magical solution, the OP goes out and spends $$$ getting a much higher performance system, lol.
Why is legacy optical drive important, when dd has show you can get an option drive for $30? Same for parallel/serial i/o (unless you're hooking this up to some really old non-computer like hardware, telescope tracking motor with ancient RS132 port connection, etc)?
If the intended 'new' system is to last as long as the old one (most likely the way technology is moving, that is less likely than ever, USB3.0 or FW3200 coming online by years end, surely by next year, SDD's coming down to kind of reasonable cost for the higher end solution to the biggest data bandwidth bottleneck on current computers), given than in <5yrs, say by 2011 if Intel keeps up with their torrid pace, we'll have 22nm process CPU's.
If it wasn't absolutely necessary to replace this 5yr old system, I'd go for full system replacement (all legacy hardware) and wait until at least June for the Intel Eaglelake chipset, using ICH10 southbridge with 1st chipset I know of that is designed to fully support SSD's, PCI Express 2.0 standardized, DDR3 support standardized, integrated much faster integral GP from Intel that has DVI support, etc.
Both ICH8 & 9 (perhaps newest ICH9 revisions overcome this?) have known flaw that limits SDD thoroughput
, while Nvidia & AMD built MB's do not.
http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=3064
The final HD Tach results showed the NVIDIA 680i generating a sustained transfer rate of 95.1 MB/sec, write speeds of 74.7 MB/sec, and a burst rate of 100.4 MB/sec. The same MTRON drive on the Intel P35/ICH9R boards scored a sustained transfer rate of 79.4 MB/sec, write speeds of 67.2 MB/sec, and a burst rate of 82.7 MB/sec. For those keeping count, the NVIDIA 680i chipset was showing a 17% improvement in sustained transfer rates, 11% improvement in write speeds, and a 21% increase in burst rates. Some of the synthetic benchmarks show improvements up to 88% in certain cases while our current application benchmarks show anywhere from a 1% to 20% gain when using the NVIDIA 680i SLI MCP instead of the Intel ICH9R.
Wait until June, then see what AMD's offering look like, and a number are in the pipeline due out any month now.
http://www.techfuzz.com/roadmaps/2008.aspx
x-bits was disappointed with 3.2GHs at its nominal Vcore setting, e8200 results (see bottom of the page):
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/intel-wolfdale_12.html#sect0
But, guru peeps used expensive 1066Mhz RAM, to get the 8200 up to 3.3
http://www.utheguru.com/overclocking-an-intel-e8200-core-2-duo-processor-2
DRR3 is currently expensive compared to DDR2, and limited to 1G per module.
DDR2 modules are available up to 8GB (albeit for $<2k!), which may work in any current system...at least hynix brand:
Hynix Introduces 2-Rank 8GB DDR2 RDIMM
http://www.legitreviews.com/news/4536/
Tom's hard, OC'd the e8400, but conclusion was to wait for future models in the series:
http://www.tomshardware.com/2008/02/19/wolfdale_on_steroids/page18.html
But see this:
Overclockers report heat problems with E8400
The maximum operating temperature of the Intel(R) Core(TM) 2 Duo processor E8400 is 61.4 degrees Celsius. As long as the processor is operating under this temperature it is operating within specifications.
Quadcore are nice for systems/software
optimized for 4 or 8 core systems, but that won't happen in the main for some time in the future.
Hmmm, and if you could wait another 10 months, instead of until June, the 1st Nehalem are to appear, and then if you can wait until 2009, the 1st 32nm Process Westmere in 2009, Sandy Bridge 2010, 22nm process in 2011, lol...and so on
- Intel Nehalem is expected to be release sometime in Q4 of 2008. Nehalem is both a microprocessor architecture and a CPU. Nehalem will be manufactured using the same 45 nm methods used for Penryn, but it will require a new socket called LGA1366. Nehalem is expected to have between 1 and 8+ cores and integrated memory controllers for DDR2/DDR3. Nehalem will no longer have a front side bus (FSB), it being replaced with the Intel QuickPath Interconnect technology. The amount of cache is expected to be less than Intel Penryn processors, measuring in a 8MB of L3; however all 8MB will be shared between all the cores. The new microprocessor architecture will also include Simultaneous Multi-Treading (SMT) technology which is actually a revival of Hyper-Threading (HT) found in the Pentium IV. With SMT, a Nehalem processor with four physical cores will be detected as eight logical cores. An integrated graphics subsystem off the die might also be included. The high-end, Extreme edition of the chip has been code named Gainstown and is likely to be symmetric multiprocessing (SMP) / dual CPU compatible. The desktop edition has been code named Bloomfield. Lynnfield will be the code name for the performance mainstream processors and Havendale will round out the entry-level to mainstream markets. Total TDP is expected to be around 130 Watts.
- Intel Bloomfield is expected to be released in Q4 2008. Bloomfield will be a quad-core chip for high-end markets based on Nehalem. Bloomfield CPU's will be capable of processing eight simultaneous threads because of the Simultaneous Multi-Threading (SMT) technology include in Nehalem processors. Bloomfield will also support triple-channel DDR3 memory and Intel's Quick Path Interconnect. Bloomfield CPU's will use a LGA 1366 socket.
- Intel Tylersburg-DT chipset is expected sometime in Q4. Tylersburg-DT is a high-end chipset for Nehalem processors and will be based on the Eaglelake chipset. Like Eaglelake, it will include the new ICH10/R southbridge. For this chipset, it is expected that only DDR3 support will be included by dropping DDR2. This DDR3 memory will be clocked at 1333MHz and accessible through 3 channels. It will also come with a pair of x16 PCIe 2.0 slots. The MCH (Memory Controller Hub) will be replaced by the IOH or I/O Hub and will now reside on the CPU.
Can you wait until April 20th?
Intel price drops, e8300 intro @$169
http://www.pureoverclock.com/story1814.html
1066Mhz mem is more expensive.
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/category/category_slc.asp?CatId=2531
Support for DDR2 maybe dropped on some Intel chipsets later this year, in favor of DDR3
