My Dilemma

[MJCfromCT]

I am getting ready to upgrade my machine, and have come to a bit of a fork in the road.

My current specs are in my sig. My original intent was to upgrade to a high end s939 dual core system. I've got 4x512 sticks of PC3200 that I could use, which would save me a ton on the final price. However, I learned that using 4x512 is a no-no, as you can only run at DDR333 and will have to run the 2T setting.

The cost of RAM is the only thing preventing me from going to a Conroe system. If I was forced to buy DDR2-800 RAM, I'd just as soon get a E6600 (whenever they come out) rather than a AM2 X2 4600+. However, going to Conroe, and buying a new mobo, vid card, PSU, and RAM all at once is going to be quite a squeeze on my wallet, considering I just got dual 2007WFPs...

So here was my idea:

If I really should go with Conroe, I could get the E6600 for ~300 when it comes out, get the Asrock VSTA motherboard for 60 bucks, x1900xt for ~370, and a PSU for around 100 bucks. I could pair all of that with 1GB of my current PC3200 RAM. I'd end up with a Conroe system running DDR1 RAM, and a graphics card running only at 4x PCIE.

Now, does this sound like a reasonable thing to do? Looking at benchmarks, it seems that the difference between 4x and 16x PCIE only really shows up in synthetic benchmarks. Gaming performance seems only to vary a few percentage points. I am concerned about only running 1GB of RAM on a system like this, though. Games like BF2 and GRAW, for example, I would think require >1GB to run smoothly, even with a Conroe chip and a x1900xt.

If I did go to the Asrock board, it would only be temporary, until b-day or xmas roll around, at which point I could spring for the 2GB DDR2-800 and a quality mobo (maybe when the nvidia or ati chipsets for conroe come out).

What do you all think? What would you do if you were in my shoes? TIA...

 

[MJCfromCT]

*slight bump*

After thinking about this a bit more, a few things come to mind...

If, for example, I were to buy a s939 nforce 4 board (a8n-sli, for example), and put 4 512 sticks of PC3200 in it, the board would have to slow the RAM down to 333mhz, and run at 2T. However, I could still run the CPU at its native bus speed, just by using a RAM divider, correct?

I am not too familiar with ram dividers, as in the past, I've just assembled machines with 400mhz FSB chips paired with PC3200 RAM, so no need for a divider.

Is there any performance hit that I would take comparing a system running DDR 400 RAM to a system running DDR 333 RAM with a ram divider that allows the CPU to run at its default speed?