Current best chipset to use. Bang/Buck

Hey everyone. Its that time of the year again. I use the tax refund to rebuild the rig and transfer the older components to my backup.

I have been doing the research and as usual the ideas that I originally had are out the window. Things have changed quite a bit in the last year.

The box I built last year was:

Asus P5K P35
Core2 Duo 6750 (wanted the 8400 Wolfdale, but was out of stock)
EVGA 9600 gt
Gskill 1gb x 4 DDR2(800)

As you can see from the above components you can see that I usually go a step down from the latest and greatest. In looking at all the options I figured I would ask here for your opinions on which direction I should go. Seems like the chipset is the biggest decision this year. The other decision is which CPU since intel has the new i7. I was thinking I would get the Wolfdale until I saw that the i7 was available. Now I'm not sure.

So I once again ask for assistance in making this decision here at OC.
i7 or LGA775? which chipset? nForce 780i or x48 or x58?

As far as what I can spend, its flexible. I try to go bang for buck and OC to get the extra performance. Also when I play games, I dont see a big enough difference between 140 fps and 100fps to justify spending twice as much money. Is it going to be worth it to spend the extra money to go i7? Am I going to see and extreme difference if I do go i7 or should i stick with LGA775 for this year? The GPU I am going to go with the probably GTX260.

Thanks for all the help everyone. This board is always a big help in filtering the information and getting real advice.

Well next year the i5 should be out, and it should have a nice price/performance ratio as it will be a lower end i7, and a i7 setup will be cheaper as well. I would stick with LGA775 for one more year and swap to the i5/7 next year.

As for the chipset, I would get a nice P45 board. No use for the x48 because it uses dual channel ddr3, so you would need more ram for a i7 and the stuff is expensive as snot. The nvidia chipsets just can't pull the kinds of speeds that the P45 can either, which matters if your getting anything 45nm.

I would look into selling your current ram so you can get some that will clock a bit better if you plan to get a e8xxx, as your going to need as much headroom as possible for it. Ram is dirt cheap right now, which works both ways I guess.

Also, when you get the gtx260, keep the 9600gt for folding.

The i7 isn't going to give you any kind of noticeable boost over a fast LGA775 setup when it comes to gaming, especially with a single GTX260. In single GPU testing, the i7 and high end LGA775 systems are very close performance wise.

To be completely honest, I don't suggest you upgrade your CPU or motherboard. You'll definitely get a worthwhile performance increase from upgrading your video card, but your CPU and motherboard are already more than sufficient to handle the most demanding games. Upgrading to a wolfdale, or even a 45nm quad, isn't going to result in a noticeable speed boost in many situations. This holds particularly true for gaming.

But if you definitely want to buy some new hardware and are most concerned about bang-for-the-buck, then something like an E8400 with a P45 motherboard and 4gb of DDR2 800 memory is the best choice. I'd peg that combo at about $300 give or take a little. You just can't buy an i7 CPU and motherboard for that much, and adding in the memory cost only makes the comparison more lopsided.

thank you for your suggestions. Defiantly good points made and helps greatly when looking into new gear. I am going to spend some time looking at the p45's and see what prices I can find. I agree that if I do upgrade the cpu and MB I probably wont "see" a large performance increase as games are the center of my computers use. I am defiantly going to get a one of the 260 series cards.

One of the reasons I was wondering about the chipset is if I decide to run SLI. But then again, I probably will get plenty of performance out of one 260. Its always nice to think about getting 2 of them, but in reality, way more than i need. Currently this 9600gt runs things pretty well.

I am leaning heavy on picking up a e8xxx cpu and a p45. Ill look around to get some ram that matched that set up well. At that point I will be left with some parts that will comprise of many of the parts that will make a real nice backup computer. Combined with what I already have laying around I may only have to purchase a power supply. The current PSU in my back up is a Vantec 470w. It may run it but ill have to look into it.

Once again thank you! Any further suggestions are greatly appreciated.

Cheers, Seaborn

Well I have keep on plugging away at the research so I want to bump this to get an opinion if possible. In looking at many articles and reviews of the P45's, it looks like its basically a P35 with PCIe 2.0. And the benchmarks are showing almost identical numbers between P45 an P35 in single GPU set ups. Basically a side grade. I am still considering getting a P45 to move the components of my main over to the back up so I can have two nice systems.

Am I wrong in the assessment that P45 is basically P35? If so, I am thinking I should buy a bargain P45 for my backup and keep the P35 Pk5-E as my main rig MB. Newegg does not even offer the P5k's anymore.

if i'm correct, p35 had a pci bandwidth of x16 x4 in crossfire, while p45 had x8 x8. not that it should matter if you're going down the nvidia route.

if there isn't much of a price difference, i'd go with the newer p45 boards. i've no idea about the compatibility of the p35 boards, anyway.