Cheapest Decent Conroe Board

BillytheImpaler

BillytheImpaler

BillytheImpaler

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I'm building a Pentium D 805 system for a friend and I've decided that I need to get him a Conroe-compatible motherboard so that he can upgrade in the mysterious future. His budget is tight and as such I need to get the cheapest Conroe board that still has good performance.

Currently I've penciled-in the Intel BOXDP965LTCK as it's 800 MHz FSB, supports 8 GiB RAM, and is very cheap. I really don't know anything about it other than it uses the i965 chipset which I hear is pretty good. He's never going to so crossfire of SLi so there only needs to be one PCI-e slot.

Does anybody know if that board is any good? If not, what is another cheap board that fits the bill?
 
The Asrock ConroeXFire-eSATA2 might be a better bet. Its an Intel 945P based board so should still yield decent performance (memory bandwidth being the most important - VIA/Nvidia chipsets lack this).
 
I was under the impression that 945 could not handle Conroe. Is that a false impression?

How about the Gigabyte GA-965P-DS3? It's $10 more than the Intel I mentioned above. I really can't find any good information about either board. I suppose my Google-fu is lacking. I'd really like to have BIOS control over FSB, Multi, vCore, and vDimm.
 
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Nice! I think I'll go with that as that Asrock board seems to be trash for overclocking, especially with a PD805. Apparently there's a 150 MHz wall on the FSB when paired with 133 MHz chips like the 805.

So am I right when I say that with 800 MHz RAM I can just up the FSB to 200 MHz and call it a day? I'm a little rusty on my overclocking.
 
I was under the impression that 945 could not handle Conroe. Is that a false impression?
Click to expand...

Yes false impression, they can support conroe.
Didn't know you were after overclocking abilities though, in which case get the DS3.
 
Well I'm not looking for ultra-overclockability but if I can turn up the speed a little and put my AC Freezer 7 to work, I will. I figure that an 805 will do 3 GHz fairly effortlessly.
 
FirebarUK said:
Yes false impression, they can support conroe.
Didn't know you were after overclocking abilities though, in which case get the DS3.
Click to expand...

But not all of them!!
Making a blanket statement like "The 945 chipset supports Conroe" is bad as there are a lot of boards out there (the majority) that won't.
 
1) I didn't make a 'blanket' statement.

2) Its generally common knowledge that current 945 based boards cannot support Conroe. Newer boards that are now arriving can indeed support it.
 
Am in a similar boat. What would be able to take a 6300 as far as it can on PC6400 ram?
Really don't want to spend over £100 on a mobo unless it's really worth it.

Cheers
 
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