Tbred 2700 or Barton?

[Malpine Walis]

After 20 months I am feeling the need to double the speed of my main box. Looking around in here, I see that if I get a Barton it will very likely be locked. However, I can still get a Tbred B 2700 (which should be trivial to unlock from what I see).

So my question would be: Should I take the crap shoot and hope for an older Barton or get the Tbred and have the extra tweaks pretty much in the bag?

[MRip]

that 2700 is going to be unlocked from the getgo. No unlocking required.

[shiyan]

If you have a new motherboard capable of running past 200Mhz FSB, then even a locked 2500+ will get you you quite nice results, the 11x multiplier will leave you at 2.2Ghz with 200FSB, or up to 2.42Ghz with a 220FSB. So if you do, I'd say go for the Barton.

If you go for the Thoroughbred B, there's no need to go for a 2700+, it won't overclock better than a DLT3C 1800+ or 2100+. Also, the Barton 2800+ is only a little more, and with its 12.5x multiplier, you can get nice speeds without going past 200fsb.

[Malpine Walis]

So let me see if I have this right.

If I want to run unlocked I can get any tbred as long as it is a b stepping and it will take me as high as I can go. Although there is not a whole lot of money to save at this point now that Bartons are out.

But then if I have a mobo that can take high FSB (I am thinking ABIT NF2) the locked route will take me just about as high but with one less option for fine tuning my new system?

Assuming that I have that much down, then my chioces would be between extra fine tuning and a double sized cache. So which would you choose and why?