C2D on a budget

Substance

Substance

Substance

Soldato
Joined
10 Jun 2006
Posts
3,879
Location
Wigan
Hi, my system is starting to show its age and i can no longer avoid the inevitable upgrade to c2d,

my current specs are :-

Cpu :- AMD athlon xp 64 3200+
Mobo :- Foxconn NF4SK8AA
Gfx :- Nvidia 7800gtx
Ram :- 1Gb corsair VS
HDD :- 2x 300gb Sata
PSU :- Hyper Type R modular 580w
Case :- antec p180

That should be all that is relevent really

As stated i need to upgrade to C2D and am just wondering if i can upgrade using just these components

Cpu :- E6300 C2D

Mobo :- ECS NF650iSLIT-A NF650i SLi, S 775, PCI-E (x16), DDR2 533/667/800, SATA II, SATA RAID, ATX

Ram :- 2gb pc6400

Will everything here work together and will i notice a significant improvement?

*edit* also any recommendations within a budget also appreciated :p

Thanks
 
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Isnt the ds3 a crossfire board though? with my nvidia setup will this not cause problems, SLI may be an option for me at a later date,

my girlfriend is buying me the cpu as it is my 21st soon and i am just looking to pick up the other parts pretty cheap to make a complete system but would like a decent stable system and some overclocking potential
 
DS3P is crossfire supporting. DS3 is not.

I have a DS3P running a 8800GTS with absolutley no problems whatsoever. Sli is a waste of time. I have been there, done that. Never again. A single 8800 GTX will beat any Sli rig (apart from a pair of 8800's, before someone says it :p ) and is far less hassle and all games support it.
 
Hmm not sure where to go now, I have had so much trouble with asus boards in the past, the a8n-sli was a nightmare returned it twice and in the end just replaced it,

Also thinking about the gigabyte board, have they improved the post tests and how they implement sata into the bios? on the last gigabyte board i had it seemed to take forever until i got to the windows load screen, with all the little raid menu's and everything popping up, but this was quite a long time ago when raid was a little heard of practise
 
What kind of budget are you on? I too am looking to build a cheap Core 2 Duo system and have compiled this list with the help of fellow OcUK'ers:

CPU: Intel Core 2 DUO E6400 "LGA775 Allendale" 2.13GHz (1066FSB) - Retail (£146.86)
Motherboard: Asus P5N-E SLi nForce 650 (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 (£82.24)
RAM: GeIL 2GB (2x1GB) PC6400C5 800MHz Value DDR2 Dual Channel Kit (GX22GB6400DC) (£99.86)
CPU Cooler: Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro CPU Cooler (Socket 775) (£16.44)

£355.10 inc delivery :)

Matt
 
SuBsTaNcE said:
Also thinking about the gigabyte board, have they improved the post tests and how they implement sata into the bios? on the last gigabyte board i had it seemed to take forever until i got to the windows load screen, with all the little raid menu's and everything popping up, but this was quite a long time ago when raid was a little heard of practise
Click to expand...

I have sata hdd's and a sata dvdrw and have had no problems at all.

They still do the little raid bios thingy. Still get XP up and running in under a minute though. I love this board and have not found anything at all wrong with it.
 
Ok, i think you persuaded me to go for the gigabyte board, can anyone let me know what the differences are between the DS3 and the DS3p? is it just the crossfire compatibility? or is there an improvement for someone who isnt going to use crossfire?

Thanks again
 
SuBsTaNcE said:
Ok, i think you persuaded me to go for the gigabyte board, can anyone let me know what the differences are between the DS3 and the DS3p? is it just the crossfire compatibility? or is there an improvement for someone who isnt going to use crossfire?

Thanks again
Click to expand...

Theres a firewire port on the DS3P
Also the DS3P supports upto FSB 1333, for future cpu's and also quad core support.

Although on my DS3 box it says FSB 1333, and quad core support =/
 
The DS3 does support 1333fsb with the newest bios and it also supports Quad Core. According to the Gigabyte site anyway ;)
 
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