Quad Core Upgrade - Barebones £200(ish)

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

IGP means Integrated Graphics Processor,ie,integrated graphics. The HD4250 IGP would be fine for non-gaming use IMHO and save some money too. The HD4250 is similar in performance to an HD3450 IIRC.

[tiggerai]

Already got a GFX card so not an issue anyway - but I've learnt something

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

This motherboard looks interesting:

http://www.cclonline.com/product-inf...914&tid=frooct

It has the SB850 southbridge which has SATA 3.0 and other motherboards around this price tend to have the older SB710 or SB750 southbridges.

[pp05]

Do AMD based boards support ACHI mode?

[Pob255]

Do AMD based boards support ACHI mode?

yes they do


@Tiggerai
The older socket 775 core2 is still a solid cpu, however the core2quad's new are over priced, the pentium dual cores are a sane price, but more for a basic office/internet pc.
And overclocking is rather limited on current new cheap motherboards.
I've been doing a similar repair job on a pc at work, replacing a P4 and dead motherboard with a gigabyte GA-G41MT-D3 (slightly more than the one you listed but the all solid caps version) and a Pentium Dual-Core E5400
I had a play around at over clocking it, but cannot get the fsb past 225mhz stable (base is 200mhz) so from 2.7ghz to 3ghz, I'm sure the cpu could do more but board and BIOS is just too limited.

I think a AthlonII x4 or PhenomII x4 would be a better bet, actually an AthlonII x3 would probably be better than an AthlonII x4 as the x3 tend to have a higher clock speed

[Queelis]

I think a AthlonII x4 or PhenomII x4 would be a better bet, actually an AthlonII x3 would probably be better than an AthlonII x4 as the x3 tend to have a higher clock speed

X3s top out at 3.3GHz, the 955 is 3.2Ghz I believe (965 is 3.4, 970 is 3.5). So unless budget is very tight (which isn't really the case here, as I see it), the 955 should be quite a lot more potent.

[Pob255]

actually an AthlonII x3 would probably be better than an AthlonII x4 as the x3 tend to have a higher clock speed

That said the current AthlonII x4 have got faster clock speeds (I'm a bit behind here, I was thinking of the 2.6ghz 620 and 2.8ghz 630) the AthlonII x4 (645) @ 3.1ghz would be a good option for around £87

Of course the PhenomII x4 would be better but they push the cost to over £100 for the 955

EDIT: arrgh you're right about the budget, a phenomII fits, I keep forgetting the DDR3 has taken a big plunge in cost over the last two months.
Probably blotting it out as I spent over £50 on 2x2gb back at the start of November and that was the very cheapest I could find.
I'd been holding out for over a year waiting for the prices and they finally do after I cave