Upgradation blues - Phenom X2-550 BE or Intel E7400?

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Hi, I live in a small town of Uttaranchal. I was thinking of upgrading my computer and the vendors here have no clue about upgradation options. They simply sell branded PCs. As I am coming to Delhi tomorrow for some work, I thought why not go to Nehru Place and check for VFM upgradation.

Currently I need to upgrade my mobo+processor and my budget is just around 10K. I am not into gaming (very casual). I will be doing video encoding, s/ware development SQL, VB etc, movies, music and I want to run Vista/Ubuntu/Win 7 in its full glory J

Currently I am considering:
FOR AMD
Processor:
Phenom II X2 550 BE @ 5,000 appx.
Motherboard:
BIOSTAR 790GX Chipset TA 790GXB A2+ @ Rs :4678/- OR
BIOSTAR 790GX Chipset TA 790GX 128 A2+ @ Rs :5769/- (whats the diff. Between the two)

FOR INTEL
Motherboard: GIGABYTE GA-P31-ES3G (does it have onboard graphics?) @ 3550/-
Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo E7400 @ 5700/-

I don’t really need seperate GPU at the moment. Good onboard option is required. Considering this, should I go for above-mentioned AMD option?

Please help.

W

And yes, please help me about some good shops in Nehru Place.

Phenom II X2 550 BE easily beat E7400 and you can go for Gigabyte/ASUS's 780G offerings

W

Price/performance-wise, which is the most suitable motherboard for Phenom X2 550 BE among for Biostar/Gigabyte/Asus. Please give mobo's specific model name.

writealexthomas said:
FOR AMD
Motherboard: Phenom II X2 550 BE @ 5,000 appx.
Processor:
BIOSTAR 790GX Chipset TA 790GXB A2+ @ Rs :4678/- OR
BIOSTAR 790GX Chipset TA 790GX 128 A2+ @ Rs :5769/- (whats the diff. Between the two)

Am I seeing correct, phenom II X2 BE motherboard!!!

Ok, bad joke, I know this is just a small mistake. Well I suggest you go for AMD processor, it is faster and would be better value for money, Intel charges too much money for its advertisements. Geeks these days are not a very big fan of Intel, its popular just because it advertises more and thus charges a premium for that.

W

@cool buddy........my mistake

typo corrected !

W

BIOSTAR 790GX Chipset TA 790GXB A2+
BIOSTAR 790GX Chipset TA 790GX 128 A2+

Among these two latter is said to have two graphics slot.... will I really need it for very moderate/casual gaming?

O

Definitely the Phenom II X2 550 BE, which is a much better performer and more easily overclocakble than the E7400. The customer testimonials and discussion on Tom’s Hardware proves the fact. Make your decision after reading this.

You may not game now but it is nice to have two PCI-x slots. Nowadays PCI slots are becoming obsolete and even normal internal cards are coming with the PCI-x interface. Also, in the the future you may decide to put in a discrete card for not just gaming but other crucial tasks which GP(General Purpose) GPUs can perform.

hmm. It's better to have a mobo with rock solid stability and one PCI-E slot than to have a mobo which is bit unstable (when OC is done) and with two PCI-E slots.

anyways, The GPUs are changing so fast these days that king of today is losing its shine inside few weeks.

Def. Phenom II 720 BE.. it has virtualization support which Intel E7400 doesn't have.. besides that, it runs at higher clock speed.. for mother Jetway HA 07 Ultra motherboard is the best choice if you're willing to shell out around 6.5k for it..

@hellknight: seen his budget ? the dude doesn't want to shell out over 10K.

@OP: Obviously AMD Phenom II X2 550 Black Edition is the best choice.

For motherboard, get a cheap Biostar 780G motherboard for 3.2K since paying high for a DDR2 platform now is pointless. Or wait for a few months for AMD 785G with DDR3 support and Radeon HD4200 graphics.

Damn.. i forgot to see his budget.. Biostar TA790GXBE or MSI K9A2GM-FIH - this one is available for as little as 4200 and has AMD 780G chipset...

A

MetalheadGautham said:
@hellknight: seen his budget ? the dude doesn't want to shell out over 10K.

@OP: Obviously AMD Phenom II X2 550 Black Edition is the best choice.

For motherboard, get a cheap Biostar 780G motherboard for 3.2K since paying high for a DDR2 platform now is pointless. Or wait for a few months for AMD 785G with DDR3 support and Radeon HD4200 graphics.

m waiting

hellknight said:
Damn.. i forgot to see his budget.. Biostar TA790GXBE or MSI K9A2GM-FIH - this one is available for as little as 4200 and has AMD 780G chipset...

TA790GXBE is really pointless. I mean all you get is a slightly stronger IGP and ACC. OK ACC is awesome, but when you are saving 1K, and when the build in question is a budget build, I prefer cheaper 3.2K stuff.

Ofcourse, the ideal thing would be to wait for AMD 785G which has ACC, better Graphics (HD4200), DirectX 10.1 support, and most importantly DDR3 support. Its expected to also cost just 4k to start with. And maybe by 5K we can get crossfirex models.

S

Any idea how long AMD 785G is gonna take to come into the indian market? Cause i think i will delay my new comp purchase till it comes out (unless its too far into the future)

785G release date should be August 4th.