Another Quandary

[Smudger]

Recently, I posted a thread asking if my AM2 upgrade sounded OK, it was as follows:

Asus M2N Motherboard
AMD Athlon X2 3800+
1gb Corsair XMS2
Sapphire x1950 Pro Ultimate

The whole lot comes to just under £350

Now, a lot of people seem to be pointing towards the Core2Duo as the chip-du-jour. So I put together a similar spec, as follows:

ASUS P5L-VM Motherboard
Intel e6300
1gb Corsair XMS2
Sapphire x1950 Pro Ultimate

This lot comes to just under £380

What I want to know is, is the extra performance offered worth the extra £30? Is that motherboard (an i945g chipset) going to do the business? I always thought the -VM bit meant a uATX board, but Scan seem to be saying it's full ATX. And is it worth waiting a bit to see what AMD's response to the C2D is?

I'm planning on waiting until March/April time anyway, so what do people think? Also, would it be worth looking at a different GFX card as new DX10 offerings make DX9 cards cheaper?

[Smudger]

Oops, can a moderator move this to the Hardstuff forum?

I didn't realise I was on this board...

[MSIC]

Easy answer - Core 2 Duo is worth the extra £30.

You actually, to be fair, wouldn't get a bad system with AM2 and in games may even possibly not notice, but for general use as well as for the future, go the Intel route.

[Smudger]

Of course, the alternative would be to keep most of my stuff and just upgrade to a PCI-e 939 MB and buy a new graphics card. Any value in this route?

[danroyle]

if its gonna save you some cash go the upgrade route but then at some point you would end up going over

my vote for the upgrade due to good quality memory being stupidly priced as of late