C2D 6320 vs C2D 6600

[stevek11290]

I'm getting ready to build a new system with ASUS P5B, 2meg Corsair ram, EVGA 7600GT vid card, 500W Xclio PSU, XP Pro, etc., to be used for some photoshop work, some ExCel spreadsheets, none very large just normal around home stuff and NO GAMING OR OVERCLOCKING.

The question. Since there is about a $60 difference between the 2 aforementioned processors, would I see any SIGNIFICANT difference between the 2. I realize that the 6320 would be slower than the 6600, but would it really notice it that much. It's not so much about the money but for the difference and a little more I could get another 2meg of ram for the system.

I know this is a subjective question but I would like for some informed opinions here.

[blue60007]

You won't see any difference in a general office work. I upgraded from a 2.66GHz Pentium D to a 2.4GHz C2D and didn't see any difference in general web surfing, despite seeing twice as fast performance in heavy multimedia (ie, encoding audio/video) and things of that nature. I would say if you are doing heavy PS stuff with large images quite a bit you might see a difference, but I'm not sure how much Photshop waits on the CPU.

[Cricket]

Originally Posted by stevek11290 I'm getting ready to build a new system with ASUS P5B, 2meg Corsair ram, EVGA 7600GT vid card, 500W Xclio PSU, XP Pro, etc., to be used for some photoshop work, some ExCel spreadsheets, none very large just normal around home stuff and NO GAMING OR OVERCLOCKING. The question. Since there is about a $60 difference between the 2 aforementioned processors, would I see any SIGNIFICANT difference between the 2. I realize that the 6320 would be slower than the 6600, but would it really notice it that much. It's not so much about the money but for the difference and a little more I could get another 2meg of ram for the system. I know this is a subjective question but I would like for some informed opinions here.

Do you mean you're getting 2Gigabytes of RAM and are considering getting 2 more gigabytes for a total of 4GB of RAM? You really can't use more than 3.4GB of RAM with 32 bit WinXP Pro.

Since you're doing PhotoShop my suggestion is to go with the E6600 and 2GB of RAM for now and maybe add another gigabyte of RAM later if necessary. For heavy graphics work you want to get the most CPU you can afford. You can always add RAM later.

Originally Posted by blue60007 I upgraded from a 2.66GHz Pentium D to a 2.4GHz C2D and didn't see any difference in general web surfing, despite seeing twice as fast performance in heavy multimedia (ie, encoding audio/video) and things of that nature.

Hey blue, when did you build your C2D rig?

Cricket

[blue60007]

It was built last summer but the C2D was added earlier this year.

[stevek11290]

Thanks for the feedback. Not doing "heavy" photoshop but some files do get fairly large. Am currently using an old build (about 5 years) AMD 1600XP machine with 1gb ram, so most any C2D machine will feel like a Ferrari to me.