if your not a big OC person, i would go with AMD. Intel is better for overclocking. right off the bat you can turn up the multiplier, wich is locked on AMD, except in the Black edition AMD cores, wich are usualy not much more expensive. if you are an overclocker, and u wanted to go with amd, i would go with the AMD Athlon 6000+ x2 black edition. even though the black edition is a touch more expensive then other AMD processors, it runs about the same price as opposing intell ones. yes, intell processors can be OCd to 4gb, BUT, you better have a prety good cooling system, otherwise yoru going to fry your processor, and lose time and money. AMD also comes with a handy program called AMD Overdrive, aka AOD, wich can be used to OC from your booted computer, without the hassle of using your bois. AMD overdrive also has a program wich manualy overclocks your system, so if your not very tech smart, you can just run that and get optimal settings for your system. AOD can be downloaded at www.amd.com (duh) some part of choosing a processor is also personal preference. my brother has always went with Intell, i have always used amd. my systems have been cheaper, and ran better. his can just be OC'd easier. the rest i leave up to you
i have a fairly larg CPU heat sink, 800 watt power suply, and 8 systemfans. i installed AMD overdrive, put it on profesional mode, and ran the auto check. it set my HT reference to 223, wich is 3345mhz. i ran my system on that setting for about, 2 weeks, checking the temps while gaming randomly, to make shure it wasent overheating or anything, and it seemed to run fine, i hadent expeirenced any system crashes. but just to be on the safe side, i turned it down to 3300MHZ, (220 HT reference) and you can barely notice the difference, but its much safer. i have ran my system on 230 HT reference wich is 3450MHZ, and i had was playing crysis for 3 hours before it crashed. but im not completly shure it was my CPU and not my ram. i got my system with crappy ram, because it was way to expensive to get ram with the system, rather then buy it seperatly. btw, i play crysis on max graphics, with my ATI HD Radeon 4850 1gb, the processor usualy reads about, 78% while playing crysis on those settings. ram is att 100%... im only running on 2gb, and vista, and its bottlenecking my system. i am considering getting some high end gaming ram, 1066MHZ, non OCd. but right now my system doesent have any fans blowing directly onto the ram, so i will need to set up a fan before i do that, because i know they will be cranking out heat. ANYWAYS, on a system with good cooling, good power, you should be able to OC to about 3300mhz fairlysafely, but then again, all rigs are different. (btw, im running on a MSI K9A2 Platinum motherbord)
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