Whats the Conroe Bang-For-Buck deal these days

Current System:
P4 Northwood at 3.4Ghz on Air, 2gigs of Ram, 6800GT AGP board.

WANT:
Stupid Fast gaming system with SLI, only I wont go SLI right away...I'll either pick up a 7900GTX or one of the Quad-SLI boards in the short term.

If I go with Conroe 6400, what motherboard should I be looking at at this point??? And at overclocks in the, say, 3.2 to 3.4Ghz range on Air....how much faster is this chip than, say, what I've got now.

The box will be run mostly just for gaming so......I need to up to PCI-E to drive a 1080p monitor and need an appropriate chip to drive it.

Also, what speed ram am I looking at having to buy.....

Thanks all for any suggestions and input.

You prolly want an E6600. And if you want SLI you will have to get a crappy NV board that do not OC to well. Plus if you even want a decent crappy NV board you will have to wait a little longer for the newer boards to come out.

So at this time, Crossfire > SLI.

Crossfire would be a lot more conducive to higher overclocks, right now with the i975X chipset, and later on with the RD600 boards (or so the rumor mill grinds). In that case an E6600 would do the trick I'd say. 3.2-3.4GHz (356-378MHz) shouldn't be too much of a stretch.

And a rant on the whole "SLI later" (or "CF later"), I don't see the point without a big monitor (at least 1600x1200, preferably larger). Otherwise, by the time your 7900GTX or what have you is too weak, you could just sell it and buy the best single card available. The net cost would be about the same either way, and you'd probably spend less on the mobo.

The best bang-for-buck amoung Core 2 desktop configurations these days, in my opinion, is a P5B Deluxe and E6400. Might scratch a P5B, but I'm not sure how similar its recent BIOS update is to the Deluxe's 0507.

KJSatz said:

And a rant on the whole "SLI later" (or "CF later"), I don't see the point without a big monitor (at least 1600x1200, preferably larger). Otherwise, by the time your 7900GTX or what have you is too weak, you could just sell it and buy the best single card available. The net cost would be about the same either way, and you'd probably spend less on the mobo.

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My current monitor is a 37" LCD flatscreen, 1080p....so I gotta drive that.
A single 7900GTX even has some issues at that rez on a game like, say, FEAR.

And yes, there is a chance I'd go right for a couple of 7900GTX's right away, but I'd see how the box ran with just 1 first. I'm one of those people who is happy with 50fps...I dont need a constant 100+FPS to appease my gamer-geek side, unlike some folks.

So the 6400 isn't up to snuff? The 6600 is where its at? Are these chips alot faster than the single cores as far as games are concerned? I'm guessing no, but this is the direction its all heading in.

Part of me says the P4 3.4 I've got now is still plenty viable as a gaming platform, its the AGP slot thats screwing me

No way man the E6400 is definetly up to snuff.

I came from a 3.2ghz northwood and 6800GT AGP to my current rig (see sig). THis is leaps and bounds faster. Seriously you will definelty feel the kick in the pants. Yes E6600 is better, but allmost everyone is getting at least 400fsb with teh Allendales and 965 chipsets. 400fsb with the E6400 would put you right at 3.2ghz and to be honest you may get even higher. I'm 24/7 stable at 430fsb with only +.05 vcore.

Do it! you will be very pleased.

Hopfully fingers crossed... nvidia will release their drivers to allow SLI on intel chipsets seems as how they have been pretty much skrewed in the SLI market on amd systems

Someone else on another board told me to wait for the Nvidia 590 boards that are due out?

So right now Conroe on current motherboards means no SLI, or no Quad-SLI?

<confused>

i think there is a new sli board for conroe but havn't heard much about it, people say they will have some modified drivers that will let u sli on the p5w dh but idk if that is true. You might want to wait awhile to see if any good sli mobo's come out if u plan on going for a sli setup

Ok, what if I just wanted to go with a single 7950 board....and didn't want to bother with an SLI motherboard at this time, hmmm...is that ASUS p5 board still an option?

E6600 - Best bang for the buck with 4mb cache.
E6300 - Best bang for the buck with 2mb cache.

Since you are gaming I would choose the 6600. Mine clocked up to 3.2 ghz @ 1.35 vcore on STOCK HEATSINK AND FAN..

I am now on phase cooling and have the chip up to 4.2 ghz @ 1.62 vcore. So my vote will be for the 6600 retail. Welcome to the club.

Regards,

Normally I do buy bang-for-the-buck.....honestly, tho, this time I'm ready to spend some money...SLI if I can get it.

I'd go for the faster chip, too. Probably not the extreme edition tho.

Nice avatar..yours? Are those Cobra-R rims?

SLI + intel just aint going to happen on an NForce chipset. The memory controlers are too weak and they just cant clock like intel. If all you want to do is run stock speeds than your fine. Your only real choice is to go crossfire.

I am going to recomend that you DO NOT get crossfire or SLI as DX10 is comming out and no current generation of card will support it.

Get a good clocking 975 board, in the hopes that nvidia will open their drivers, or so you can use crossfire. Buy a $200 video card to hold you over for the next few mths till Vista and DX10 cards are availble the! and only then should you think about droping $1000 on graphics cards.

I believe there was a link posted in the Nvidia section to a post in the Xtremesystems forum that had a download for a hacked driver allowing SLI and intel to work.

infinitevalence said:

SLI + intel just aint going to happen on an NForce chipset. The memory controlers are too weak and they just cant clock like intel. If all you want to do is run stock speeds than your fine. Your only real choice is to go crossfire.

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Hmmm...I kinda don't want the ATI part......but honestly I hadn't recently looked into the ATI stuff either.

I am going to recomend that you DO NOT get crossfire or SLI as DX10 is comming out and no current generation of card will support it.

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True, but here's my take on the DX10 thing.

I've been through all the DX's. DX10 is "right around the corner" and has been for some time. Lets assume it ships with Vista in January.

First..anyone who buys Vista on launch day needs to back off the rock cocaine, because everyone knows you wait until SP1 before attempting to absorb a new Microsoft OS. Honestly I have no idea if DX10 requires Vista or not.....

Second, the first DX10 parts are going to cost an assload....and the DX10 implementations will be first generation. Pretty graphics at an enormous hardware hit (I am predicting here, and could very well be wrong).

Either way DX10 isn't really "here" in any appreciable way, to me, until well into 2007...if not 2008. What DX10 brings to the table is also up in the air, its another jump into first generation technology...it'll take awhile for it to be both effective *and* efficient.

In other words, I'm not excited about DX10....not enough that I'd be buying any first-gen parts to support it.

What I do have to do in the short term is game on a 37" 1080p monitor. I was thinking a pair of 7900's or even a Quad-SLI setup. Lots of money? Yes, but I seriously doubt we'll be seeing anything come down the line that wont look great on DX9 anytime soon...but look better on DX10.

My .02 cents.....I hear you, believe me, on the DX10 parts....but I also know that first generation anything usually winds up being...well....less than a bang for the buck investment.

Get a good clocking 975 board, in the hopes that nvidia will open their drivers, or so you can use crossfire. Buy a $200 video card to hold you over for the next few mths till Vista and DX10 cards are availble the! and only then should you think about droping $1000 on graphics cards.

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Right, because Crossfire doesn't require any special boards right? Or does it?
I need to do more research I guess

Simply...whats a good overclocking conroe board that I can slap one of those 7950 SLI-on-a-stick boards into? Or a 7900....I need high HP to drive this monitor is all, or else I'd look for a GT, etc.

A followup to my own post..bad form, I know

Whats the best bang-for-your-buck NON-sli motherboard now......the current DFI one, or the ASUS one...??

I guess I wont be doing a Conroe with SLI anytime soon.

I'll have to consider one of those 7950 GX2 boards.....

HeadRusch said:

I guess I wont be doing a Conroe with SLI anytime soon.

I'll have to consider one of those 7950 GX2 boards.....

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Actually you can do sli with nforce. I have an nForce4 intel board that can do sli. and the new intel 590 boards that will be released next week(which I plan to purchase actually are rated to support quad sli (which I will also be doing) Of course I have money to burn, so the best bang for the buck thingy isn't my bag.

Right now, for the most part, crossfire only runs at x8 and x8. Intel nForce runs at true pci-e x16 and x16

"Right now, for the most part, crossfire only runs at x8 and x8. Intel nForce runs at true pci-e x16 and x16"
And Crossfire still rules the ORB.

Check out what the X1900XTX 512MB can do, reviews, and rethink this whole SLI thing.

You are only pushing a HDTV res. not a high monitor res. I wouldn't be supprised if a single X1900XTX overclocked would be able to push a 37" HDTV even at 1080p though a game like FEAR.

infinitevalence said:

I am going to recomend that you DO NOT get crossfire or SLI as DX10 is comming out and no current generation of card will support it.

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Bingo. Spending big bucks on DX9 cards now is utterly pointless imo. Crysis struggles on Crossfire and SLI setups at 1024x768 resolution. I would wait and spend your cash on the biggest baddest Direct X 10 cards when they come out.

yeah i run 1920x1200 on all my games no problem off a X1800XL 512 that i paid $200 for, and now there is a simmilar deal if you check the forums.

and yes you can run SLI on intel... but you dont want to because they dont overclock at all.

as for the difference between Xfire/SLI Xfire tends to have better high res performance than SLI but SLI has higher FPS and its a toss up in benchmarks.

I still am going to suggest not buying 2 cards or even 1 high end card now.. be cause a 200 card can give you all the performance you need for any existing game for the next 6-10mths until vista is out, games use DX10, and the hardware is afordable.

HeadRusch said:

Someone else on another board told me to wait for the Nvidia 590 boards that are due out?

So right now Conroe on current motherboards means no SLI, or no Quad-SLI?

<confused>

Click to expand...

Don't wait for the 590, the DFI flavor is doing like 300FSB lol.

You can run SLI on any MB with dual PCI-E slots, with hacked drivers of course. It's being done right now, and works perfectly.

E6400 is definitely bang for buck, overclocks to 3+GHz no problem, only thing it lacks is the 4MB cahce, which makes 0-10% difference, closer to the 0.