Time for an Upgrade!

Since my wife gave me an early christmas present of a game that my computer can't play, I get to put my upgrades into the fast[er] lane! I haven't been keeping up on chipsets though, and I also have no experience on the Intel side of things. I've decided on going with a Pentium D, likely the 925, and now I need to pick out a motherboard.

I don't need something that's going to overclock to the extreme, but I do want the option for it. I'm more concerned with overall stability and reliability. I'm undecided whether I want an SLI board or not, so maybe an option with and without SLI would be good.

Also, I've seen some boards that say the fsb is 1333/1066 and some that say 1066/800. The Pentium D is an 800fsb chip, so would it be bad to try and stick that in a board that was labelled for 1333/1066 at stock speeds?

if your getting a new mo why not get a core 2 duo ready board and a cheap core 2 duo cheaper then a 920 or 930 and twice as fast
Rich

Why in the name of papa smurf would you want a Pentium D? Get an E4400 or even E2160 instead, much higher performance per watt.

As has been said above, Pentium Ds are dead. Go with a cheaper Core 2 Duo if you want to save some cash (E2160, E4300). If you can though, spend a bit more and go with an E6550 or an E6750.

For motherboards, go with something that has a P35 chipset. This is an intel chipset and doesnt support SLI, but for most people SLI is not really necessary. I'd recommend an Abit IP35-E as a good budget board.

Then grab 2GB of DDR2-800, preferably something that uses D9GMH ICs that OC extremely well (eg. Crucial Ballistix).

For graphics you could pick up a cheap DX9 card off the classifieds or eBay (7900GS/GT, X1950 Pro) or wait for the insanely fast and cheap nvidia 8800GT 512mb to come back into stock. (Get EVGA for the lifetime warranty).

If you need a PSU then Corsair have started making some great units, for the above system you'd only need a VX450W, but if you wanted room to spare you could get a VX550W or a HX520W.

Hope that helps

What's the game you want to play?

Well, the reason I picked the pentium d is because I found the 925 at tigerdirect for like $88 shipped. Are you guys saying that a 1.8ghz c2d is going to outperform a 3ghz pentiumm d? Like I said, I"m completely out of the loop on intel stuff. If that's the case, i'll grab an e2160 faster than I can blink

E2160 with its slowish 1.8GHz can match Pentium D at twice the clockspeed in gaming:
http://www23.tomshardware.com/cpu_2007.html?modelx=33&model1=883&model2=890&chart=423
..but not in all games:
http://www23.tomshardware.com/cpu_2007.html?modelx=33&model1=883&model2=890&chart=425

Its quite overclockable too, but you may want to consider E4400 with its 2GHz and 2MB, the bigger cache is nice for games. and ofcourse the 4MB cache models are even better, if budget allows. E6750 and E6550 are real sweeties.

i would ask how much do you want to spend for this upgrade?

Yea, Tiger is known for selling stuff that is slightly out of sync with the rest of the world.
Go with a C2D, you'll never be sorry,they are cheap, fast and very overclock freindly.
Cheers,
Rod

Thanks for the links, th3. I'm definitely going to pick up either an e2160 or an e4300 as opposed to the pentium d.

Clockwork, the game is The Witcher. I'm an rpg nut persoinally, and the medieval/dark age setting is great too. http://www.thewitcher.com/ As far as the video card is concerned, the budget is only going to allow for either an 8600gt or gts right now. If I wasn't upgrading most of the computer, I probably would have been able to go for the 8800 of one sort or another.

Anyhow, I'm hoping to find a decent board for less than $150. That IP35-E looks really nice, and its only $89 at the Egg. A board at or close to that price could mean the difference between the e2160 and the e4300

Oh, back to one of my original questions now that i'm reminded of it. The IP35-E says the memory standard is 800mhz, and the c2d's are 800mhz fsb chips, but the board says the fsb is 1333/1066. What am I missing that will make sense of the difference in those numbers? I'm use to my Athlon XP that runs the RAM, CPU, and mobo fsb at the same speed.

get the abit ip35-e/E2160 with a 8800gt im sure you could manage that...

as to the last part of ur post... nothing really about 1333/1066.. not all c2d's are 800fsb thats just the lower end parts. the native cpu fsb it supports means that the board out of the box will run those..the cpu fsb is a quad pumped buss the ram is a double data rate. ie if you ran a 1:1 ratio fsb to ram, at 266 fsb your ram would be ddr2-533 and so on...

got it.. just wanted to make sure the cpu will work in the board.