Outdated, only two cores. Everyone knows less cores = less performance. Now take the bait...

this thing must get monstrous oc's. at 800fsb, a pin mod to 1066 will give you close to 3ghz on ANY mb. a 3ghz chip for $80? amd's got a huge mountain to climb.

yeah, Hyperthreading is superior, I mean, it would make this a fake 4-core monster!

45nm for $79... this could get interesting...

I ordered one a couple weeks back and built a cheap-o system wiff it. 1066mhz was unstable....

Hmm, no VT support.

Let's be clear, not all 3.0GHz processors are created equal.

Sure, you might OC this E5200 to 3.0GHz, but that's based on a MUCH lesser 240MHz FSB than say, an E8400 based on 333MHz FSB. You can't simply dismiss the difference in FSB, esp. when you realize the higher FSB makes running synchronously w/ high-end memory possible. The best this E5200 @ 3.0GHz can do w/ synchronous memory is a pathetic PC2-3840, it's not even synchronous with something as lowly as PC2-4200! Granted, you can run asynchronously to compensate and more fully exploit higher rated memory, but asynchronous CPU/memory introduces its own inefficiencies.

In a nutshell, OC'ing a low-end CPU always comes at a price. It may be a price worth paying when measuring the price performance ratio, but there's no free lunch. You always sacrifice something.

#2 a BSEL mod would be a waste of time as you could OC higher directly via the bios on a decent board and good ram. Geesh, Still stuck on those E4xxx series mods eh?