Mother Board Upgrade Questions from a Noobie

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glowtraq

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Mar 10, 2006
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Hey guys, I’m planning on upgrading my motherboard. I’m currently running an ASUS A8N-SLI DELUX with an AMD 3000+ Barton and plan on going with an Intel processor, preferably the Intel Q6600 (good choice or not, should I wait for a better proc/motherboard combo?). I would like to over clock the Intel Q6600, however, I’ve been searching the forums and can’t seem to find a good board most seem to favor for reliability and overall performance when it comes to over clocking. There seems to be allot of random motherboard everyone's using, not like it use to be before, which is why I need some help choosing.

I’ve been looking at the EVGA 780i boards, however, there was a discussing about the 780i’s VS. x48, which didn’t really reassure me about the EVGA 780i’s. I also searched for POLL’s and couldn’t find any regarding current motherboards people really like to use. It would be nice to go all Intel this round proc/chipsets, but I need some pointers or any suggestions, which would be greatly appreciated.

- Thank You.
 
I would not buy an nVidia chipset board at this time, nVidia is leaving the chipset business. $0.02
 
Do you need the nvidia chipset for a reason? Are you going SLI? If not, then I'd recommend a P45 chipset board.
 
Nehalem is out soon so you might as well go for that since its a major upgrade.
 
rittia1962 said:
Do you need the nvidia chipset for a reason? Are you going SLI? If not, then I'd recommend a P45 chipset board.
Click to expand...

I really don't need the nvidia chipset for any reason, just have been used to buying nforce chipsets for a while, was thinking about getting another. However, if Nvidia is no longer going to be in the chipset market, I would prefer an Intel chipset.

abcdelight said:
Nehalem is out soon so you might as well go for that since its a major upgrade.
Click to expand...

How long untile they are out, will they be expensive or close to the price of say a Q6600? Normally, from what I've seen, allot of new proccessors especially from Intel are at first pretty expensive. I would not mind spending under 300 for a proc.

Thank You guys for your replies, I will use as much of it to perform additional research.
 
Nehalem, or Core i7 as it is now called, will be out in October I believe...It will probably cost quite a bit more than a Q6600 (just a guess). Add to that the fact that you'll need an x58 mobo (probably also expensive) and DDR3 Ram (a lot more expensive than DDR2)...And yes, if you plan to upgrade to Core i7 right away, it's going to cost you a pretty penny.

If you're looking at building a machine now and need quad core, I'd go with the Q6600 if you're looking for cheap, or one of the Q9xxx processors. If you want dual core, grab an e8400. As for mobos, I'd definitely go with the P45. As the previous poster stated, the Asus P5Q mobos are pretty great. I have firsthand experience with the P5Q-E and LOVE it! There's other manufacturers that make good P45 boards also, but I'll let others who have firsthand experience tell you about them.
 
That DDR3 you posted is $125 for 2gb...you can get a decent 4gb DDR2 kit from G.Skill for ~$80. Also, DDR3 isn't really providing real world gains, especially when it comes to gaming. So, unless you just run benchmarks on your system, DDR2 is cheaper and will provide pretty much the same gameplay experience.

So, you spend $300 for the processor, $250 for 4gb of ram, and probably $250+ for the X58 mobo...Grand total, $800, and that's if you get the 2.66GHz Bloomfield.

Yea, still doesn't make sense to me unless there's some reason you absolutely need Nehalem.

To the original poster: If your machine is used basically for gaming, internet, e-mail, etc...Then I think it's safe to upgrade now.

You can get a nice P45 mobo for $120-$150, the e8400 for $170, and 4gb of ram for $80...Grand total ~$370-$400. I don't know about you, but that sounds a lot better to me than $800...and you can put that extra $400 leftover towards a nice new video card.
 
Hey guys thank you for all your replies, I really appreciate it, I’ve made the decision to go with the ASUS P5Q-E http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131296, what do you guys think? Reading some reviews of the board, it has been suggested it competes with the more expensive boards but for less money. I already have an ASUS 4850 Video Card running on the A8N-SLI Deluxe, however it’s dramatically bottle necked.

With this motherboard I’ve paired it with a G.SKILL 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Dual Channel Kit, (is this a good choice? or should I go with another type of memory?) and an Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 Wolfdale 3.0GHz 6MB L2 Cache LGA 775 65W Dual-Core Processor. One question I can’t seem to put my finger on is why is the Q6600 more expensive than the Wolfdale, when the Wolfdale is a way faster processor?
 
The P5Q-E is a very good motherboard and the ram and E8400 are also good choices.

The E8400 is less expensive because it's dual core, the Q6600 is quad core. And the E8400 isn't way faster than the Q6600, the Q6600 is more than fast enough and in addition has four cores (I'm a quad fan) ;)
 
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