The problem is the NON-OPTIONAL! integrated graphics in the dual cores raises the TDP to nearly that of a quad core! It cannot be disabled, it merely idles so if your looking for a serious machine its time to go quad with an i5-750 (2.66GHz - 3.2GHz Turbo) at about £155 in my opinion. Another £130 on an ATI 5770 gets you one hell of a gaming rig..
Or you can have a very nice ATI dual core Athlon II X2 245 (2.9GHz) based system with the CPU costing about £45 and with much more capable integrated graphics, you can also add the same graphics card to make quite a nice gaming rig..
To me this CPU is simply overpriced and comes with something I for one dont want in a CPU as expensive as this.
Also the supplier is mentioned as overclockers.co.uk - I will merely say, DO NOT TOUCH THEM WITH A BARGE POLE! You can get the same goods cheaper elsewhere with MUCH better service. If something you buy from them ever breaks God help you. Anybody I have ever spoken to thats ever had to return something says the same and will not buy from them again either. Just want to warn other TR users of my friends and family's experiences..
Just to balance out the overclockers bashing, I buoght a fullsystem and monitor from them nearly 2 and a half years ago now and have had nothing but perfect service. Delivery was swift, the PC has been phenomenal and I've only had 1 problem which was recified with some of the best customer service I have ever received. My PC was refusing to boot and luckily I lived close to them at the time, I popped it down to them, they diagnosed it as faulty ram, and replaced it and had it ready for me in less than 18 hours. The thing that really impressed me, this was done outside of the warranty period with no cost to me at all.
Its alrigth bashing a company because you know some people who have had bad service, but conversely there will always be people who have had good service, should we all not use Dell? Plenty of people have complained about them.
But yea, back to the CPU it seems a bit daft to me, think the money would be better spent on a standard chip and a GPU
@Xenos: I have heard a lot of horror stories about overclockers but personally I've never had an issue and I've bought from them for years. Also, they've had a bit of a reshuffle recently and we're assured that they're more focussed on customer service now. Obviously we only have their word on that but it's at least a start.
As for the CPU, you're pretty much spot on. However, if you look at the performance figures, it actually holds up surprisingly well, especially if you don't plan to overclock.
@xenos - I thought the integrated GPU was disabled if you put the CPU in a P55 board, since it is obviously not able to use it without the required video outputs? So the TDP would be lower (although I could only see the benefit of this in HTPCs, as they overclock like crazy anyway), but I do agree that the price of over £160 for a dual core is ridiculous, especially when you consider the lower pricing of the i5 750, since 4 physical cores are vastly superior to 2 physical and 2 hyperthreaded cores.
I just bought a new Vaio S laptop (VPCS11V5E) with a Core i5 540M CPU. The first thing that surprises me is how cool it runs! The P8600 Core 2 Due 2.4GHz CPU in my Vaio Z is as hot as the Sun when the machine is just idle!
I agree with xenos! The i5 661 should be at least £40 cheaper to be considered a viable alternative. The i5-750 is a no brainer at its current price of £140 and the icing on the cake is its ability to be overclocked easily to 4Ghz.
Check out the link to see the jump in performance going from a dual core to quad core:
Although they have tested only games, its a good indicator of level of performance as games are still struggling to utilise all that multicore CPU horsepower.
We are at a stage were quad cores should be considered the minimum mid-range CPU's.
@smc8788 - The integrated graphics is of no use as you rightly say, you can't use it because the P55 motherboard has no video outputs, however it still sits there idling away.. They really didn't think about it too much did they? Makes me kind of mad tbh, complete waste of power!
@Binnsy & Ed - If you bought a full system from them you paid too much. If you live near them, great but unfortunately most of us don't and dealing with them on the phone involves a long queue and staff who couldn't care less. They are of the opinion they have done you a favour by selling you something and one of them even tried to tell me that my blue screening graphics card was fine and that some of them are just like that. Unfortunately ones that are "like that" are faulty and need replacement, not shipping back to myself at a cost of £20 with a shitty letter telling me there's nothing wrong with it! They did the exact same thing to my father twice with some RAM that I tested in another PC which was so bad it made it crash on bootup..
There are so many other online retailers out there that you don't need to excuse them, simply go elsewhere. They absolutely do not give a crap! No amount of reshuffling is going to change the opinion of the owners of that company, they set it up bought a boat and F'd off!
@Binnsy - One other thing the RAM would have most likely had a lifetime (10 year) warranty so they weren't really going out of their way. I have heard stories they behave with customers that are local to them but if your in another county its just tough luck.. Consider yourself lucky!!
I've also just (like 10 minutes ago) returned some memory to Play, one menu then a person answered straight away, I have the RMA number and address to send the item to and they were extremely polite! Perfect.. No conversation about who knows more about computers or what constitutes faulty or how he once had this exact same problem but just put up with it..
Here's a list of online retailers I have used enough to warrant giving an honest opinion..
Outstanding service.. Lambda-Tek.com (lighting quick delivery and excellent service), Scan.com (these guys know what they are doing), John Lewis (very professional), Play (outsourced returns phone service but works well), Amazon (pretty straight forward), Dell (again outsourced usually but excellent and polite), Oyyy (they seem to make more mistakes than they should but always very proactive in sorting things, usually a couriers fault to be fair).
Average.. Dabs (good until recently cocked up several orders - bought 4 adsl routers and 4 cable routers arrived, they have listed the product wrong on their site but 1 week later haven't given me an RMA number - they must have sold thousands of these wrongly), Ebuyer (Sometimes poor - paid for next day delivery on a £500 order, all came next day apart from the case, they would only refund the difference in postage cost (£2) rather than the full postage amount), PC World (They will try and sell you crap but do get it done), Apple (More of an annoyance they only offer a 1 year standard warranty but service is otherwise generally excellent), CCL (Had a monitor with pixel check that still had dead pixels, bit of a nightmare as a specific person deals with this, otherwise good).
Poor.. Overclockers.co.uk (yeehaaw - yes that's right, cowboys!), my local 'Laptop Workshop' (Absolutely horrific service, the guy is a complete piece of work and won't support a computer that is 2 hours old, even when there's nobody else in the shop he won't even look at it.)
Take from that what you will!
@Caleb - Dual cores are still plenty fast, its just that Intel in it's horribly annoying way have made it pointless to buy a dual core because they want to shove their integrated graphics down your throat, its anti competitive, there should be models without the integrated GPU.. Also WHERE are the 32nm quad cores? They have held them back on purpose and may never actually release them, instead skipping to 'Sandy Bridge' with its new delayed release of 2011, specifically because AMD haven't fielded and are unlikely to field anything which constitutes a significant threat to Intel. The signs of Intel not playing nicely are all there, save yourself money and buy AMD if you don't need the highest end system and help them to get one up on Intel!!
Overclockers.co.uk did so much for online computer stores when they first emerged. They were the first to truly cater to the enthusiast and had great customer service. They seem to be victims of their own success though and I have to say they are a shadow of their former self. After they messed around a couple of my friends with the return of faulty goods I'd never touch them again. The worst bit is I recommended them and was left feeling a bit sheepish!
"They were the first to truly cater to the enthusiast and had great customer service"
Pffft! "Special Reserve" was the original 'enthusiast' site in the UK. It was a shame when they went down the pan, but they were pretty untouchable from the mid-90's up until 2001/2002.
I actually used to get excited when their catalogue used to drop through the letter box with all the latest components and stuff.
@xenos Well, I still feel that dual core had their time and its time to move on to triple or quad core processors. I agree about the Intel/AMD situation. I've had my eye on the i7 920 from day one and instead of falling in price its gone up. How about that!! We need more competition period!!
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