Intel core 2 duo's and upgrading mobo, mem

S

Siejones2007

New Member
I have been in computers for an age it seems and have upgraded my home machine many times. Everytime I have felt the need for an upgrade I have researched the latest MB, memory and CPU's on the market. It's come around to that time again but I just can't get into researching it all again :)

Anyway my priorities have changed for my old ones and gaming is less of an issue than it once was. More important I want more processing poke for apps such as photoshop.

My current setup is:

-Athlon 64 4000+
-Asus A8N-SLI mobo
-A couple of no frills 1 gig kingston PC3200 ram

Leaving such issues as HD speed (scratch disk/virtual mem speed) aside and concentrating on raw CPU poke. Can you guy's that have kept up with the latest and greatest point me in the right direction?

CPU:
I am looking to pay about £150 (UK pounds) for a CPU. I left the intel camp way back when athlons began to rule the roost but it seems intel have the edge these days. So looking at the E6600,Q6600 range? In this area how much difference am I likely to see vs my current CPU? A huge amount or not worth the extra dollar for the MB/Mem/CPU replacement kind of difference?

Mobo:
Looking around £80-100 to pay. I want a good quality board that has a good chipset (I have no idea which are good ones at the moment). I have been bios (no pun intended :) ) to ASUS and Abit up until now and I would prefer to stay with one of those. Not sure if I should go for an SLI based board as it is very unlikely I will get dual cards but I do currently own A Geforce 7800 GT which is a PCI express slot card so I want to cater for that. Not overly concerned about fancy gigabit network speeds so just a 100mb is more than enough (if that's still the standard on home boards these days). errrmm I would prefer it to still have IDE as a few of my drives are still IDE and I don't want to replace them yet. Can't think of anything else.

Memory:
Now I know you can get very envolved with memory but I just want memory that's rated at the boards speed of Kingston kind of quality. Do I have to go dual to keep the speed up these days? or has that changed again :). I want 4 gig as the apps I use (e.g Photoshop CS3) are memory hungry. As I said I know there are variances in the speed of ram but I have never thouught the price justified the difference in speed and I would rather put that extra dollar towards the fastest CPU instead.

If I feel the need later I may upgrade my GFX card but gaming is of little importance to me these days (although Bioshock may have just changed that :) ).

All in all I want to keep the price below £400 uk pounds (the lower the better) and get the most punch for my money.

Hope you upto date guys can help me :)
 
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I had pretty much the same kind of setup as yourself a about a month ago, A64 4000+, Asus A8v mobo and 2gb ram.

I upgraded to the Q6600

http://www.ebuyer.com/UK/product/131950

Gigabyte P35-DS4 motherboard

http://www.aria.co.uk/Products/Components/Motherboards/Socket+775+%28Intel%29/Gigabyte+GA-P35-DS4+Socket+775+Motherboard+?productId=27305


and 2gb ddr2 OCZ 800mhz

http://www.ebuyer.com/UK/product/128015



Its a massive increase in peformance over the A64 4000 to say the least, coupled with an ATI1950XT its able to cope with pretty much anything i can throw at it (and i do test it pretty hard)

One thing though, almost all of the decent board now will only have 1 IDE channel on it. So you'll be able to hook up your IDE HDD but you wont have a channel for any IDE optical drives like a DVD-RW. I had that issue intially and so I just bought a SATA optical drive instead, only cost me about £25 from ebuyer for a nice NEC Optiaric.

Hopefully that will give you some idea of what to look for :)
 
hermeslyre said:
Q6600- $145 (Super!)
http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/ProductInfo.asp?WebProductID=530347

Asus PK5-e P35 chipset- $88
http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/ProductInfo.asp?WebProductID=615971

Corsair 4x1Gb Pc6400- $135
http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/ProductInfo.asp?WebProductID=585716

Look good?
Click to expand...

Thanks I wonder if the UK sellers are as generous with those deals :)

PabloTeK said:
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CP-161-IN - I'd go for this Core 2 Quad if possible as it's the G0 stepping variant which means better overclocking and efficiency.
Click to expand...

Well the obvious choice seems to be the quad's but isn't this the case of all this multiple core power and no apps written to use it. Like we have seen before or am I getting it completely wrong?

jimmymac said:
I had pretty much the same kind of setup as yourself a about a month ago, A64 4000+, Asus A8v mobo and 2gb ram.

I upgraded to the Q6600

http://www.ebuyer.com/UK/product/131950

Gigabyte P35-DS4 motherboard

http://www.aria.co.uk/Products/Components/Motherboards/Socket+775+%28Intel%29/Gigabyte+GA-P35-DS4+Socket+775+Motherboard+?productId=27305


and 2gb ddr2 OCZ 800mhz

http://www.ebuyer.com/UK/product/128015



Its a massive increase in peformance over the A64 4000 to say the least, coupled with an ATI1950XT its able to cope with pretty much anything i can throw at it (and i do test it pretty hard)

One thing though, almost all of the decent board now will only have 1 IDE channel on it. So you'll be able to hook up your IDE HDD but you wont have a channel for any IDE optical drives like a DVD-RW. I had that issue intially and so I just bought a SATA optical drive instead, only cost me about £25 from ebuyer for a nice NEC Optiaric.

Hopefully that will give you some idea of what to look for :)
Click to expand...


Ahhh this is the kind of thing I wanted to see :)

What clinched the decison on the motherboard for you?

I kind of had an idea they would be cutting down on the ide ports with the success and popularity of SATA. Skin flint that I am I didn't really want to shell out on yet another drive but it seems I have little choice.
 
Siejones2007 said:
Thanks I wonder if the UK sellers are as generous with those deals :)



Well the obvious choice seems to be the quad's but isn't this the case of all this multiple core power and no apps written to use it. Like we have seen before or am I getting it completely wrong?
Click to expand...

Scan.co.uk is a Uk seller..

True. But that's apt to change. Crysis, UT2008, HL2 episode 2 and more are quad supported. With the support of these games inference suggests that we are heading down a road different from years last. I, among others, expect quad-core support to increase exponentially in the coming years.
 
hermeslyre said:
Scan.co.uk is a Uk seller..

True. But that's apt to change. Crysis, UT2008, HL2 episode 2 and more are quad supported. With the support of these games inference suggests that we are heading down a road different from years last. I, among others, expect quad-core support to increase exponentially in the coming years.
Click to expand...

Lol I should have looked at the dns instead of seeing the dollar signs :)

I sincerly hope this is the case. I think we have all brought into the promises of the past with such things at some point or another ;) Saying that the big name app's such as the 3D rendering packages and photoshop are usually the first to offer support which is really what I am after (slowly but surely talking myself into it)
 
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