Got me a new CPU today, E7200

[ket]

Thats right, my old dog of an E4400 is aged now and really needed replacing, so the E7200 is its successor. Heres a brief spec list for people;

Socket Type: 775
Core: Wolfdale
Manufacturing process: 45nm (high-k hafnium dielectric and metal gate)
On-board cache: 3MB shared
Default frequency: 2.53GHz
Default multiplier: 9.5x
Default FSB: 266MHz, or 1066MHz quad pumped
T-Junction max: 74.1c
Typical Stepping: M0 SLAVN
Overclockability: Good to V.Good

Current best price: £77 inc. next day shipping available from YoYoTech. This is the OEM version, so no stock HSF, but who cares about that? best saving the money and buying a decent HSF with the saving.

More details will follow tomorrow when my E7200 turns up. But generally, the E7200 is a fantastic little chip thats not unknown to hit 4GHz around 1.38v

[Nightwatch]

Congratulations, it's a very good CPU.

[ket]

I'll only praise it IF it can hit 4GHz

[audioave10]

Just wondering if the E8400 w/6mb cache is too expensive in Britain to consider? It's just $15 more here.
I'm trying to decide between the E8500 or the Q9550. The quad is $80 more here in the US. I would OC either one.

Oops, I was thinking of the E7400. Your chip is $45 less here.

I'm also considering the E8600. With it's best stepping you get 4.1
with no voltage increase on air. The BEST dual...but it's $270.
What do you think KET?

[ket]

It depends on your mobo. If you have a good board even a E7200 you can get some serious performance out of. I'm still not done testing but to date I've had my board running with an FSB of 510MHz. If you want something cheap and cheerful with lots of cache, your best option is the E8200, I don't think I've ever seen a E8200 that hasn't been able to hit 4GHz without a small vcore bump. I would of probably got a E8200 myself, but I work on the ethics of you should not pay more for a tiny bit of sillicon with a lump of metal slapped on it than you did for the mainboard.

[audioave10]

Still to determine what my mobo will be. In the US there are some
serious quality boards from Gigabyte that are less than Asus.

[ket]

I only ever used one Gigabyte board, it was alright but nothing special. Asus may be more expensive, but for the extra price you get a better warrenty (3-5yrs) and from an engineering standpoint Asus boards are much better. Proper phase power design, R68 ferrite chokes, solid state capacitors, etc. Thats all on their cheaper boards too.

[ket]

Ok, I finished playing with finding top frequencies, my E7200 seems to top out around 3.8GHz, stable 3.7. Not the greatest, but alright. Lapping my CPU may help, it appears to be very concave so that will come soon, as will fixing max FSB

[audioave10]

Do you lap your CPU cooler too? I would think that you would do that first.

...and I will look harder at the Asus boards.

[ket]

I don't need to lap my cooler its a Zalman 9500, so the base is perfectly finished as standard

[audioave10]

Good...maybe that means my Zalman 9700 is also nice and flat.
It does look that way but some coolers aren't that well made.
Probably why it cost me twice as much as the others I looked at.

[ket]

Yup, Zalman go overkill on the base finish. It doesn't need to be mirror shiny without even one light machine mark on the base, but it does help.