660 or 830 to overclock?

I plan on upgrading my current system to either a 660 or 830. I do plan to overclock, and wanted to know which one of these processors would give me the biggest boost in performance. Would it be better to have a higher clock speed and a single core or twice the cache and slightly lower clock speed. My next system is going to be a gaming/music production machine.

A few variables come into the question here, such as Will you be primary running one application at a time, or multitasking?

The ability for either of those cpu's to overclock does depend to a large extent on the mobo, ram and psu you plan on using.

Each of those cpu's is capable of high overclocks if the right cooling is applied.

If you wait a few weeks, I hear Intel are releasing 661 and 671 cpu's equipped with virtualization technology and probably a few more minor refinements to the core compared to previous 6xx series.

This will mean basically that you can run two operating systems simultaneously.

afaik you can unlock the multi on 660 or 670 cpu to 14x on Asus high end mobos. This will greatly increase high FSB overclocks.

Gigabyte are getting ready to release the 975x chipset mobo which will have special on board cooling systems for chipset and ram + 8 phase cpu power circuitry, greatly assisting dual core overclocks and stabiltiy. This board will be great with single core cpu too. Board also has superior sound chip to anything on the market now and 2 x 16x vga slots.

http://www.giga-byte.com.au/MotherBoard/News/News_619.htm

personally id go 660 hands down

EarlMcFish said:

I plan on upgrading my current system to either a 660 or 830. I do plan to overclock, and wanted to know which one of these processors would give me the biggest boost in performance. Would it be better to have a higher clock speed and a single core or twice the cache and slightly lower clock speed. My next system is going to be a gaming/music production machine.

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Im in the same boat, but i beleive they both have 2mb of cache. The 8xx have 2 1mb's per core i believe.

Id go with a 660, you will probably have a lot more fun with them anyways. They: 1: Run cooler, 10C difference idle / load 2: higher OCs. The 8xx series chips are only fun on WCing / phase change, they are such a hassle to deal with on air.

Although, I agree with Nasgul. I wouldn't drop $300-400 bucks on a brand new CPU when Intel is ready to release their 65nm chips. The Cedarmills are going to clock like crazy, 19% heatdrops = 500-600mhz higher than the opposing 6xx series CPUs. So, do the math . Id get a 661 if I were you (3.6ghz CedarMill).

-X

If you need something now then grab a celeron to use for a month. You will have massive buyers remores if you get a 660 right now. And forget about that 830....you don't need heat problems like that with presler/cedarmill so close.