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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...
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...