Several Intel questions

[j_gets]

I have several Intel questions, mostly general stuff. I am building a new system and have planned on going with AMD for quite a while, but with the recent price cuts for the D 900 series processors I'm going for the Intel I think. But, I have a few general questions, as I don't know too much about the Intel side of things.

First, is there a large performance gap between the D 940 and 950? It looks like a small enough gap that overclocking should be able to cover the difference pretty easily, but it'd be nice to hear from someone who knows.

Secondly, are there boards that support Conroe yet? I've heard the 975 chipset can support it in Rev. 304, but no one can confirm that they have received this chipset yet, correct?

How is the audio with the 975 chipset, specifically with the intel 975 BX board?

Finally, would I be better off just waiting at this point for Conroe? I could wait, but I really need a desktop system - Right now all my computing needs are filled by my laptop, but I'm not going to be away from home as much as before so I'd really like the added power a desktop can provide. I'm pretty antsy to go ahead and get a system now, but don't want to be kicking myself in a month or two when the new chips are released, so could I expect a significant improvement in performance at the lower price points (the 940D is like $260 right now) or should I just get the system now and worry about the new architecture next year after it's had a bit of time to breathe and I have a bit more cash and time to spare?


Thanks,



Josh

 

[StealthyFish]

If you've got the cash, you could go both the conroe and this 9 series computer. and I think you got it mixed up. There is a 950, 955, 960, and 965. The 950 and 960 you could probably overclock to with something like a 920 or 930, but the 955 and 965s are special. They are dual core and they have hyperthreading on both cores, so when you're lookin through windows, instead of seeing 2 CPUs, you see 4.

Audio on a 975 depends on the board you get and the company. If you go high end intel boards, they most likely have Sigma Tel audio, which is excellent :-D. Cheaper boards may go something like Realtec 883 Codec, which still has 8 channel support.

Conroe should completely devestate this processor in the end, unless you're thinking of sticking some sort of water cooling/nitro and just oc that processor to 5.5ghz. the E6600 conroe ( 4mb cache 2.4ghz Conroe) should come out around 300 something. It should have about 40% performance increase over the Pentium D series.