I bought this a while ago for £160 even at that price it is a bargain and now you can get it £140 a no brainer in my opinion. An extremely powerful processor 2.4Ghz per core adding up to a total of 9.6Ghz. The best thing about this processor for me though is its potential for overclocking, if you get the new G0 stepping which is a must this processor can easily be overclocked to 3.3Ghz just by using a good cooler such as a Scythe Infinity and would probably be able to be overclocked to 3Ghz using the default cooler.
This processor will do it all if you want to encode a video no problem I have encoded a full 90minute film in less than 30minutes and while I was doing that I was also playing a top end game without any lag. Coupled with 2Gb of fast DDR2 memory and a good graphics card such as a 8800GTX your new rig will easily be able run new games and future games for many a year.
The easy installation of the LGA775 socket makes it a breeze to install and extremely fast. TIP: when installing make sure the pins are rotated in the correct direction and try not to use too much force and bend the motherboard as I did.
Although there isnt much software that uses all 4 cores if your a Multi-Tasker and use lots of different software at once such as encoding a video whilst playing a game this is the processor for you. This processor will future proof your computer as more and more software is being created to support more than one core (a lot of new programs now take full advantage of atleast 2 cores).
I have been using Microsofts new Operating System Windows Vista and with this processor Vista takes full advantage and runs extremely smooth and very stable.
A big must when installing this processor is to purchase some good thermal paste instead of the thermal that comes preinstalled this will keep the processor running cool. When idle the temperature of the processor sits at around 35 degrees C and when running at full 100% usage it rarely creeps over 46 degrees C and that is when its overclocked to 3.2Ghz. As you can see this leaves room for even more overclocking tweaking of the voltage and different timings it is possible to get it up to 3.4Ghz giving it a total of 13.6Ghz. For £140 that is a lot of processing power.
The best processor in terms of power to money ratio to come out in a long time definately a must have for any PC enthusiast or Multi-Tasker.
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