Motherboard and CPU

so i have come down to 2 combos of motherboards and cpu heres what i got (keep price in mind)

This
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16819116238
+
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813131578
OR
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813135010
+
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16819104317

the first is a bit more expensive and the 2nd is AM2 but im not sure what that does and if you have more combos to suggest plz give them ty (keep price around $200 or less)

try this

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16819115005

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813135022

Trying to keep within the price you had for the others, if you got more to spend get the e6600 cpu and a better mobo.
Core 2 duo is a monster well worth the extra cash.

if you have a little more money and want to overclock try this mobo

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813128012

Agreed, the Core Duo 2 blows away the other setups mentioned. With an E6300 / E6400 the DS3 or P5B-E work well, gotta love the Allendales.

The problem is that the Core 2 is far outside the budget listing. A decent Core 2 is gonna cost far more then $200. Whenever you are talking about a lower piced solution like this, AMD is almost always the better choice.

The E6300 is the "fastest 3 GHz CPU ever". Well, what does that matter when it is around the same cost as the Athlon 3800? When you look at it in that way, you are paying the price for the 3800, but getting roughly 3400 performance. And to stay in his price range, the solution would be the Pentium D 3 GHz, which has roughly the same performance then an Athlon 3200.

With that budget, I would definately go with a better board though. ECS is an OK "budget board", but I have never been impresed with their quality (especially components like capacitors, chipset heatsinks, and warranty). A board like the Asus A2MN-E might go over your budget by about $20, but would be well worth it.

If you have to go with a budget line MB, I always reccomend the AsRock line. They are made by Asus, and are of the same quality. They simply do not come with all the "bells and whistles" (gigabit ethernet, firewire, heatpipe chipset cooler, etc).

actually i will be willing to go up to around $300 hope that puts up more options...

For anything over a budget system, I always reccomend Asus boards. They come with a 3 year warranty, and have good quality chipsets and options. In over 3 years of selling them, I have never had one fail short of lightning damage or a poor quality power supply failing and killing the board. The Tyan is also a good solid board, but I normally only reccomend those in the case of file servers or CAD/CAM/AV systems. Not many people want to buy $200+ motherboards.

With that price, you would be with either a Pentium D 930 or the Athlon X2 3800 (both in the $170 range). The standard Asus SLI boards run around $80-90, depending on options (chipset, Wi-Fi, etc). Currently the Deluxe boards seem to be running around $200, so that places them out of your budget.

With that budget, I would go with the X2 3800. Pentium D is not bad, but the X2 is far superior because of the on-chip memory controller, and the 930 is only 3 GHz. When you compare an X2-3800 with a D 940, it is no contest. I would also stick with a single video card, and save the SLI until the next gen cards come out in a few months. The only way I would consider SLI (or Crossfire) at this time is if you get a super deal (something like "buy one get one free"). Otherwise you will be like the guy that got the high-ended P4 3.8, only to see Pentium D then Core 2 come out in the next 3 months for the same cost (or less).

you can always wait until the next generation best becomes something you can afford.

i decided what was budget now and if it would do what i wanted for a year or even 2.

Asus budget board A8N-SLI DELUXE 90 bucks
single core (San Diego core 1 MB) 3800+ 75 bucks
2 gigs factory matched Kingston value ram running in dual channel
2 (two) EVGA 7900 GS factory clocked at 500/1380 lifetime guarantee at 180 each in SLI
pair of WD 250 gig raid edition (5 year warranty) i had already

without overclocking i get 5550 on 3D MARK 06

the cards can be switched later and will still be good for the next upgrade with the SLI

know what you actually need to perform to what will make you happy and dont wait forever as the next big thing is already just around the corner.

i plan on skipping DDR2 completely as DDR3 will be the next cheap ram when i upgrade next

The computer I'm typing from has mrcake's post, and it hasn't failed me yet. If you can wait a little while, wait until the quad cores come out for retail and see a price-drop on the C2Duo's. I'll run 3DMark03 just to test out my specs for ya (running an eVGA 7900gtx also.)

I can only run 3DMark03 at the moment due to not having my CPU clocked at over 2ghz, so the score will be from 03 not 06.

3DMark03 Results: 18380

Well I have to say that you are a bit wrong here about the E6300. In my country the E6300 costs about the same as a 3800 X2 but you get the performance of a 5000 X2 or when you clock it then FX 62.
I don't know much about the Pentium D never played around with one myself but the D is a dual core and it will most certainly beat an Athlon 3200.

Don't get me wrong here I'm am not a Intel "fanboy" i prefer AMD's myself but atm nothing beats the c2d. If one is not looking for high performance cpu's but just needs something to get the job done then yes and Athlon 3200 64 is a good choice because they are cheap.

I have seen that a few times also. Unlike most people, when I check prices I go to one of my wholesalers, then add a "normal markup" to the price. And a major consideration here is availabliity and OEM vs Retail.

I have seen E6300's on-line for the same prices, but they are mostly OEM chips. And if I can give any advide, it is to never buy an OEM chip. They come without CPU cooler, and only have a 90 day warranty.

I have checked into a few others that list really low prices, and either the adds say "limited quantity", they are out of stock, or it is an OEM part. A lot of places do this to either upsell you to something else, or as a loss-leader, to get you to buy other items that are hopelessly overpriced.

And in most tests, I have seen the Athlon X2 4800 beats the E6300. Contrary to what a lot of people in here seem to think, you do not need to go to an FX series or an X2 5000 to beat an E6300.

http://www.digit-life.com/articles2/...duo-e6300.html

And the chip wars continue. Expect AMD's next gen (in about 6 months) to pass Intel up again. And it will bounce back and forth. The way it has for over 10 years, and will for the next 10. I still remember when the AMD386-40 came out on top, and nothing has changed since then.

I have nothing against the good old 939 platform. In fact, my system (built in 2004) is an Athlon 64 3500 939, with an Asus Deluxe board. And the prices you got a really great deal.

However, the Asus Deluxe is hardly a "Budget Board". Brand new (March 2005), your board sold for around $190 when it was new. I bought my AGP non-SLI version of the same board in November 2004, for around the same price.

If you can get a great deal, there is nothing wrong with getting a high-ended 939 or 754 and waiting a bit longer. It is similar to buying a 2 year old Lexus instead of a 2007 Camry.

that is my point.

it was expensive when it came out (as were the other items) and has gone through i dont know how many revisions/updated since release.

i simply know it is a solid board that will serve my needs with room to spare and the other components can be moved down to my older pc (the 2 gigs of DDR ram for instance) or moved up (the oc 7900 gs sli) to my next.

sure the cards will be smoked by the 8/9 series cards then but they will do what i want them to do until i upgrade again.

and i do think i got good value for the dollar

I guess it's hard for some people to get over the fact that AMD's current product line is hugely inferior to Intel's C2D and grossly overpriced. Everything is in Intel's favor right now.

Personally, I like the Core 2 Duo E6600 2.4GHz. It's a beast and Newegg is selling it for $312.99. That's amazingly cheap considering the performance it delivers.

How much money would you have to throw AMD's way to get similar performance? When AnandTech ran its benchmarks back in July, the E6600 beat the Athlon 64 FX-62 2.8GHz in every single benchmark.

And yet the same AMD chip still goes for $699.00 on Newegg as of today.

So how exactly does AMD offer more bang for the buck?

ANd here is a problem. The only motherboards that have full dual core support are the ones based on the Intel D975x chipset. No other boards can properly utilize the new CPU's. My suggestion is to go with an Intel D975xBX motherboard, that way you will be ensuresd full compatibility.

Mega Mouse

You are looking at the end of the last generation, and the start of the next generation of CPUs. In this case, Intel was simply the first out the door with them.

The Pentium D was largely just a modification of the older Pentium line. The AM2 is just a modification of the older 754/939 line. The Core 2 is simply the newest of the Next Gen CPUs. In reality, comparing a current Athlon to a Core 2 is like comparing a P4 to a P3. There are a lot of changes.

Intel and AMD constantly leapfrog each other. Who is on top bounces back and forth so fast it is sometimes dizzying. Intel is on top for the moment, so what? AMD will come out ahead of them soon, then Intel will be on top again.

To give an idea, the Next Gen AMD is expected to ship 1st-2nd quarter 2007, with the Quad Core chip (Barcelona). It is roughly double in every aspect compared to the current Athlon, and each core is comperable to the cores in the Core 2 Duo (but with 4 instead of 2 cores). It will then be reigning champ, but by 3rd-4th quarter Intel will release their own Quad Core (Clovertown), and they will once again be roughly the same (which is where we were from 2003-2006). At least until one of them wins the battle for the "next gen" chip after that (expected 2009-2010).

However, AMD does win when it comes to economy, with the lower end market. AMD sells retail box CPUs for under $100. The Sempron 2800 sells for around $65 retail. The lowest comperable Intel is the Pentium D 805, at $120, almost double the cost. Intel has never cared much for the low end of the market, and only tries to match it to take sales from AMD.

And not everybody wants or needs Core 2 (or the cost associated). If somebody comes to me and asks for a computer for word processing and internet surfing, I am not going to suggest a Core 2. For them I am gonna suggest a Sempron or lower ended Athlon. Most buyers are not serious gamers, and are happy with on-board graphics (or budget $60 PCIe cards), only want 512 MB RAM, and want a system for under $700. They will never play anything much more advanced then Solitaire. We serious gamers are much more on the "cutting edge" then 80% of computer users.

And this industry is about constant change. Every 3 months we have to re-evaluate the business model and make changes. CPUs, motherboards, even hard drive standards change. In 10 years we have gone from CDROM being an expensive option to having a DVDRW is almost a requirement. We have jumped from 40 MHz to over 4 GHz. Heck, my video card has 5 times more RAM then my first hard drive had in capacity! When I got 8 MB RAM in 1992, everybody thought I was insane, now that the amount of cache built into my hard drive.

"Who is on top" is like the weather in Alabama. Just wait a little bit, and it will change again (and again and again and again). I am not a "fanboy", I can't afford to be. And in the years, I have seen products come and go. To me, it seems like only a few years ago that Voodoo was the "king of the hill", and everybody needed one (and paid insane prices for them). Now, Voodoo cards sit unwanted in our $5 box, along with Pentium Pro, Pentium II, and AMD K6 processors.