Right. I'm split between 2 motherboards. The Asus P5B Deluxe Intel 965 chipset or the Asus P5W Digital Home Intel 975 chipset. They both are highly capable boards and both would do me very well. Now the P5W has had a price drop they are pretty similar in price too. Only thing I've noticed so far is that the P5W has 2 PCI-Express 1x slots should I ever need 2. Both have 2 PCI-Express 16x slots. Anyone got any suggestions either way?

CPU wise. I'm quite tempted to get the new Core Duo 2 E4300 and just clock the shit out of it. That or the E6300 and clock that up a bit. Although I could wait a month til the E6320 is released with a 4meg L2 cache rather than 2meg. But I could do with this system being built quite soonish (but I could stick in a cheapo Celeron D in the meantime.... hahaha).

Memory - If I get the E4300 I'll get 2x 1GB 800mhz sticks. If I get the E6320 then I'll get 2x 1GB 1066mhz sticks. Least I think that should work ok... its getting more complicated what matches up with what these days.

Graphics - Just gonna go the whole fucking hog and get a GeForce 8800 GTS. :p

Everything else will be salvaged from my other 2 systems. Still gonna run my 2 160GB drives in RAID 0 as system drive. Reckon that'd be quicker than getting a single 10'000rpm Raptor... and cheaper too! Though this time I think I'll run RAID with a backup option as well in case anything goes wrong.

Ah... haven't had a good geek in a while. :D

Re: New system time!

Get the E6600 Core 2 duo, it eats the quad core and OCs like a cheap date willing to try anything

Re: New system time!

Nice analogy. :lol: Its an extra ?80 for the 6600 vs the 6300. Which is a cost I didn't want to pay if I can get the same performance out of its smaller sibling.

Think I'm leaning towards the P5W DH motherboard as well. Just seems to have the slight edge on features plus the very nice Digital Home remote thing. Which would be quite handy.

Re: New system time!

While I personally am a fan of Asus as well, I would recommend looking at the Evga n60i based motherboards. Folks who used them along with the E6600 have reported some phenomenal OC gains, great stability and lower than anticipated heat signatures.

Re: New system time!

I'm not planning to go nuts with overclocking. Just gonna give it a slight boost. Seems to me, once the E6320/E6420 is out there would be little point spending the extra on the 6600

Re: New system time!

from newegg

[QUOTE][B]Pros:[/B] 3.2GHz from 2.66Ghz hehe big leap from a lil guy aint it? :) max OC'd but unstable @ 3.9Ghz. Probably I don't have a WATER COOLED UNIT. I have a AIR COOLED only. Don't wanna risk it haha

[B]Cons:[/B] nada!!! hmm thinking of getting the QUAD right now. but is it worth it or stick with this guy for awhile? i got it like 1 month ago :)

[B]Other Thoughts:[/B] EVGA 680i-A1 MOBO, 2x1G 8500C5 XMS Dominator, 10K RPM WD HHD 74GB, 2x 7800 GTX 256 Vid Card. 2x1G of Dominator is coming tomorrow. I wanna rock my system up lol[/QUOTE]

Re: New system time!

wait! intel just releashed new vers of the 4 cores. more coming. plus within the quarter some other new chips are coming. i can not keep up.

Re: New system time!

[quote=asdf_admin;460963]wait! [/quote]

Thats the one word you should never use in the PC game. Everytime you wait for one thing, another advancement comes along in another. So you wait for that, then you hear of new advancements. So you wait for those as well. Then the price is a bit too high, so you wait for them to come down a bit. As they do, yet more new advancements are announced...

waiting... never do it. Just go for what you can afford at the time.

Re: New system time!

well in the old times i.e. pre-multi core processor era, it wasn't worth waiting because 2.4ghz P4 with 512 kb cache vs. 2.8ghz P4 with 512 kb cache wasnt gonna put you in light speed mode,

but with the technology now leaping with quad cores being implemented and L2 and L3 caches DOUBLING in sizes, it might not be as bad an idea to wait just a few months to "see" whats in the pipeline and then make a move

Re: New system time!

But thats my point. New tech is coming faster and faster all the time. Soon after the new CPU's are out no doubt we'll be hearing of even better CPU's and memory. DDR3 is soon to implemented on motherboards, so we could wait for that too. But it'll be a constant waiting game.

Anyways, just splashed the cash on the P5W Digital Home. Intend it to be the basis for my new PC for a good 4 years at least. 8)

Re: New system time!

[quote]Thats the one word you should never use in the PC game. Everytime you wait for one thing, another advancement comes along in another. So you wait for that, then you hear of new advancements. So you wait for those as well. Then the price is a bit too high, so you wait for them to come down a bit. As they do, yet more new advancements are announced...

waiting... never do it. Just go for what you can afford at the time.[/quote]I do not agree with that Simon. If I took your advice I would be hurting. I was so close to buying a G5 system and dropping about 4 thou for the works. I am happy I am waiting. Apple went with Intel chips and now very soon will release quad core dual macs. Which will be a beast of a machine. If you are going to spend a lot of money you want to max your buck out. I agree on your statement for simple upgrades, but if you are going to spend $2,000+ do your reseach. I think there is no worse feeling then spending a lot of money and within a month finding that there is a better, faster and cheaper system. That hurts. ;) but so does love.

Re: New system time!

lol, unless AMD does something good to keep up I might switch to Intel if this keeps going on...would be next year earliest though.

Re: New system time!

[quote=asdf_admin;461318]I do not agree with that Simon. If I took your advice I would be hurting. I was so close to buying a G5 system and dropping about 4 thou for the works. I am happy I am waiting.[/quote]

Thats Apple. Where the tech is updated somewhat slower and machines with that spec are still king of the hill for a few years. In the PC market there are always new advances that are worth waiting for. If I wanted to I could wait until the E6300 has a 4meg cache, motherboards support DDR3, PCI-Express 2.0 is available and so on.

Anyways, might change my mind here slightly and go for an OEM copy of Windows XP Pro and a GeForce 7900GT. No point buying a DX10 gfx card if I won't have DX10 and the 7900GT is still bloody powerful. Then get Vienna and a more powerful card then. (Vienna being what Vista should have been... but then XP was meant to be what 2000 was supposed to be...)

Re: New system time!

Remember if you get dual pci-e, it is either for ati or nvidia, not both (for 16x)

Re: New system time!

Not really interested in SLI or Crossfire tbh.

Anyways, just won myself a Celeron 2.8ghz to go in my motherboard until the new Cores are out. :lol: Only ?20 tho.

Re: New system time!

I'm sticking with AMD because we have to support the little guy. If it wasn't for them, Intel wouldn't be where they are now and competition is healthy and lucky for me, I'm not running some intensive programs. Thanks to AMD, Intel has the drive and determination to try harder AND they had to slash prices which helps everyone out.

Re: New system time!

Very true. I've been with AMD for a good 6 years or so. Had 3 systems with Athlons in (Thunderbird 1.3ghz, XP2400 and XP3000) and one with a Duron. Only Intel system I had was the Pentium 4 system which ran alongside the 3000+. But I'm selling all that off now and going with the one machine.

Always been a supporter of AMD but at the moment when I'm building a new system Intel has the edge.

Re: New system time!

[quote=beanzncheez;462458]I'm sticking with AMD because we have to support the little guy. If it wasn't for them, Intel wouldn't be where they are now and competition is healthy and lucky for me, I'm not running some intensive programs. Thanks to AMD, Intel has the drive and determination to try harder AND they had to slash prices which helps everyone out.[/quote]

well said beanz, its true how often we tend to overlook the healthy benefits of competition for everyday consumers

Re: New system time!

[quote=Simon Preston;462482]Very true. I've been with AMD for a good 6 years or so. Had 3 systems with Athlons in (Thunderbird 1.3ghz, XP2400 and XP3000) and one with a Duron. Only Intel system I had was the Pentium 4 system which ran alongside the 3000+. But I'm selling all that off now and going with the one machine.

Always been a supporter of AMD but at the moment when I'm building a new system Intel has the edge.[/quote]

yes I'm really keen to build one now (seeing how the processing power is far exceeding the resource requirement of everyday software)

Re: New system time!

All ordered, barring the CPU which I'll wait til the new revisions are out. For now it will run a 2.8ghz Celeron. But this is what I've got.

Intel Core Duo 2 6420 2.16ghz Asus P5W Digital Home 2 x 1GB Corsair Twin 1GB RAM DDR2 1066mhz Foxconn NVidia GeForce 8800GTS 575mhz 320MB Coolermaster 600w PSU

Stuff salvaged from the old machine 2 x 160GB 7200rpm Hitachi Deskstar in RAID 0 1 x 500GB 7200rpm Western Digital HD Plextor 712A DVD-RW AOpen CD-RW Aluminium case

Credit card has taken a huge hit. But selling off the old motherboard and memory plus various other things will lighten that load a little.

That should last for a fucking long time. :D

Re: New system time!

[QUOTE=Simon Preston;462482]Very true. I've been with AMD for a good 6 years or so. Had 3 systems with Athlons in (Thunderbird 1.3ghz, XP2400 and XP3000) and one with a Duron. Only Intel system I had was the Pentium 4 system which ran alongside the 3000+. But I'm selling all that off now and going with the one machine.

Always been a supporter of AMD but at the moment when I'm building a new system Intel has the edge.[/QUOTE]

AMD is supposed to release the Barcelona core which is, opposed to the Intel ones, a veritable quad-core. It'll not be as much as they say, but it's supposed to beat the shit out of what Intel has by about 40%...I don't believe it but I do believe it might be a lot faster than the coupled dual cores from Intel. So I'm going to wait a bit....

Re: New system time!

Built the fucker this evening. All plugged up (barring harddisks, which I am waiting til I've backed up all my data off this machine) and working! Got into the BIOS first time... The GeForce 8800 looks like a battleship in dock once installed!

feck mine, this system is quiet!

Re: New system time!

Post the final config and pics Simon. If it's quiet, I'll pursue a new build myself. My new fans have just made the fucker even louder