Conroe Upgrade Decisions

[Chimpanzee]

My spec is as listed at the moment yet i would like to build a new allendale based p.c, yet i dont know weather to pillage my old system using one of those asrock dual vista boards & most of my current p.c or just spand more & get a proper C2D board.

Cheap Upgrade,
Asrock 4CoreDual-VSTA VIA PT880 Ultra, S775, AGP / PCI-E, DDR ** Please see Tech specs ** £39.12

C2D e4300 £109.94

So £150 and I'll Still have 2gb Ram, yet a savaged a64.

Expensive upgrade,
C2D e6300 £116.01
Gigabyte Ds3 £71.36 ( suggest a better clocker if there is one please)
ATI Original Radeon X850 XT DDR3 256MB PCIE £68 ish
2 * 512MiB pc5400 - Free ish as i have a £70 Cex.co.uk voucher and there £35 each also i can cherry pick the modules.

So £260 ish for the performance route, could sell the athlon but there must be a billion about now and it's still pretty quick & rock solid at said settings.

Any input appreciated apart from get an 8800gtx i'm poor ( relative )

Peace

[shaithis]

There is no easy route for you I am afraid.....I have been down this road myself and with friends who have asked the same.

One of them has even taken the DUAL-VSTA route and its working out fine for him but that was for a HTPC and therefore, was not being overclocked and he was happy to run his E6400 @ default speed.

If you feel you want/need to overclock, then there is no "cheap" route. If you can afford the more expensive route and feel that you would benefit from it, then that is what you should do, IMO.

The Gigabyte boards have a mixed bag of responses, if you do go with that route I would suggest the P5B Deluxe WiFi.....VERY nice board indeed. I would also look for a 2nd hand 7600/7800/7900/X1800/X1900/X1950 card to pop in it.

What exactly do you intend to use the system for?

[Chimpanzee]

Surely a 7600 would be slower than a X850 xt, but if the other cards could come in at the £100 mark i could stretch to that.

Dual Vista & a e6600 springs to mind too.

But i do kinda need 2 p.c's just got a new t.v with a nice DVI connection so will be gaming at 1366*768 for the t.v and 1280*1024 on the monitor. so LOADS of graphic horsepower isn't essential.

Apart from gaming the system is used for bit torrent & always has several app's loaded, also i'm extremely impatient when it comes to using p.c's.

Do you think the x850 xt is a bad card, i'm also thinking there may be some O/C headroom in the vista using the 800fsb allendale.

[shaithis]

x800 series dont support shader 3.0

I wouldn't buy one this late in the day.

[Chimpanzee]

Sorry for the messy C&P but what do you think of this, total £300 excluding the cex ram.
Which i think may hold me back hence the choice of the 800fsb allendale.

Thoughts?

LN15070
Gigabyte GA 965P-DS3 iP965, S775, PCI-E (x16), DDR2 533/667/800, SATA II, SATA RAID, ATX £60.73 £71.36
LN17304
Intel Core 2 Duo E4300, Socket 775, 1.86 GHz, 800MHz FSB, Allendale Core, 2MB Cache, Retail £93.57 £109.94

LN16176
256MB Sapphire Radeon X1950Pro, PCI-E(x16), Mem 1400MHz GDDR3, GPU 580MHz, 36Pipes, Dual DVI, TV-Out £100.70 £118.32

[shaithis]

Good CPU, good GPU and a good motherboard chipset.

The only question is of the build quality of the Gigabyte.....Maybe someone who has owned it could give you an idea of what its like......as I said earlier, I have heard a lot of mixed reactions about it and never owned it myself.

[Clunk]

I think the DS3 needs a bios update before it will work with an E4300, so you would have to either ask the place that you buy it from to pre flash it for you, or you could borrow another socket 775 cpu to do the flash.

Personally, I hated the DS3. For me, it had no redeeming features, a bit like the Nissan Sunny of the motherboard world.

There has been a few bios revisions since, and some of the bugs have been ironed out, and I hear that it overclocks well, but it wasnt for me.

[Chimpanzee]

It's mainly budget constraints that are pushing me ds3 ward's.
Hopefully someone will tell.

Thanks for the advice.

[BUFF]

also look at the Asus P5N-E SLI - should be similar price.

[Chimpanzee]

Is the Asus board known as a good clocker?