cheap upgrade

right, my DFI board is going in the bin, so i have a few options.

s939 boards are like rocking horse s**t , what i can find is either micro-atx, uber low end, or high end.
update to AM2 (probably 3800 or 4200, some cheap ram, no idea on board though)
update to C2D (no ideas what so ever, but its gonna cost alot more than an AM2 update)

i dont understand the difference between the C2D "2" series and "4" series (can someone explain please) and what difference would it make to me playing WOW?

ideas of whats decent for the money would be appreciated as well. i used to be well up on stuff, but the sheer number of different chipsets (and the different models within them) just confuses me now.

budget = as low as posible.

current system is in my profile

many thanks

A basic C2D board is around £60 - £65 (abit IP-35E..good board ;))

if by 2 and 4 series you mean like 2140/2160 and 4300/4400/4500 they are seperated by their cache size mainly

The 2140/2160 have been called pentiums now.. which is intels new word for celeron lol. However the 1.6ghz can be overclocked 100% to 3.2ghz from reviews i've read and something like 2.8GHz would be very attainable. For £45 you cant really go wrong bangs for buck.

The 4300/4400 can also hit 3.0Ghz + and have the slightly larger cache size. Start at around £70 i think which is pretty good again.

If you are on a really really low budget. i'd do this (assuming you are keeping everything but mobo,cpu and ram)

C2D 2140 = £45
Abit IP-35E = £65
2gb PC5300 / pc6400 RAM = £50 / £60

So you're looking at around £160 / £170 for the cheapest upgrade path.

ASROCK 4 CORE VSTA £40

supports DDR, DDRII, AGP and PCI-E

Add in the £60 E2160 and overclock to 3GHz on stock cooling.

Total £110

[edit to add] I have the ASROCK board with an E4300 at 2.7GHz, 300FSB seems to be the max. I am running DDRII as it was £40 for 2 gigs back when you could do the £10 off google checkout thing, but I started with DDR. However it makes little performance difference, the leap between DDR and DDRII.

agree with the above, but make sure you get a good clocking chipset, the p35 (as in the abit IP-35) is a good option, then an 800fsb high multiplier processor but make it a proper c2d not an E2*** which is pentium dual core architecture. The 4300/4400/4500 are similarly priced, with each one having 1x higher multiplier. In theory the higher one will overclock more easily/successfully as you will have to increase the fsb less to get more mhz out of the cpu. However, if you have the headroom then you will find they probably all top out at about the same place. Wouldn't worry too much which you get but make sure to buy decent ram. Suggest getting good quality cas4 pc6400 as is good value atm and can cut back the ratio and tweak the fsb as high as the board/cpu combo will let you go - probably a long way. Would suggest that if cooling isnt a major issue 3ghz shouldn't be a problem with that setup. In all :-

IP-35 : £63.44 (todayonly)
E4300: £69.97 (todayonly)
RAM: http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Produ...oductID=402849 : £66.96

That's £200 - and you could skimp a bit further on the mobo and ram if you liked...depends what you need. However, scan will have a new mixit tomorrow so might be worth a look for you.

Well instead of the ASRock I'd go for an ASRock 4CoreDual-VSTA which was the updated version, although it's hard to find now.
However as you already have a PCI-e graphics card the only real advantage would be to keep your old memory, which I assume is 2x 512mb and from my experiences of MMOs (although not wow) they are very memory hungery and really benefit from 2gb and that ASRock board only takes 2 sticks of ddr or ddr2 so may as well get new memory as well.

Here's a couple of low cost sugestions I made in another thread
From ebuyer
ASUS P5B £59.75
Corsair XMS2 2GB Kit CL4 £54.99
Intel Core 2 Duo E4300 £76.50
EVGA 7900GS KO Edition 256MB £89.99
or
Sapphire X1950Pro 256MB £90.20

£281

Going through Aria
ASUS P5B 775 Motherboard £56.34 (on SuperSpecial offer)
Patriot 2GB PC2-5300 Extreme Performance (2x1GB) £54.94
Intel Core 2 Duo E4400 £74.61
ATi Radeon X1950 PRO 256MB £82.19 (the card is from PowerColor)
or
EVGA GeForce 7900GS KO 256MB £76.32 (on SuperSpecial offer)

£269 or £263

Granted if you don't need the graphics cards you can skip them.


Looking at Scan
Abit AB9 i965 £67.43
Intel Core 2 Duo E4400 £76.25
2X1GB Corsair TwinX XMS2 PC5400 CAS4 £57.03
Total £200.71
The PC5400 runs at 333mhz so you should be able to hit an overclock of 300mhz fsb with ease giveing you 3.0Ghz and a potential 3.33ghz max without over clocking the memory at a ratio of 1:1.
(The e4400 is x10 multiplier so I have got thoes numbers correct haven't I?)

While all thoes motherboards are now yesterdays 965 chipset, it is still a good choise and will support up to an e6700 and PC8500 DDR2 memory.

Probably want to slap on a better HS&F like the Scythe Mine £24.17 or Arctic freezer7 pro £15.85
just noticed what looks like a freezer 7 pro copy from Akasa Akasa AK-965 £12.33

how would the bundle below compare to an athlon XP3700??

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showpr...339&subcat=791

Well the e2xxx isn't great because of the low cashe memory
The IL9 is the intell 945p (scan have it for £48)
The memory looks ok but only 1gb

And I hate ocuk after they ****** me around on an RMA.

I take it you mean an Athlon 64 3700+ (I didn't think that the XP went as high as 3700+)
Looking at the numbers
Athlon 64 3700+ - 2.4 GHz - 128 KB L1 cache - 1 MB L2 cache
Intel Core Duo E2140 - 1.6ghz - 64k+64k L1 Cache - 1mb L2 cache
Both are 64bit, the intel with dual cores and overclock potential should have the edge on speed, not sure what effect the lower cache sizes will have.
Going by tomshardware cpu charts it's a bit faster but not by much.
http://www23.tomshardware.com/cpu_20...=884&chart=418

EDIT: missed your inital question about the 4 vs 2
Think of the 2 as the celeron, they took the 4 series reduced the cache which in turn lets them strip out transistors simplifing the chip and lowering the manufactoring costs, next clock it as slow as possible to work within lower tolerences thurther reduceing costs and Presto one cheap budget chip.
Don't expect much out of it