intel bad axe 2 upgrade time

[lancer]

well its 2.5 years since I got my system and I figure its time to upgrade a few bits.

I have an intel Bad axe 2 board (975 chipset) running a 2.4ghz duo core processor, a BFG 8800GTX, 2x1GB Geil 6400 ram

I'm not wanting to change the motherboard at all, it runs fine but I figure I can upgrade the ram certainly to 2x4gb sticks but I'm also tempted on the CPU.

I do quite a bit of video rendering and 3D work so the quad core would be a nice upgrade, but I'm now confused by the sheer number of quad cores that are out there.

I note

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CP-155-IN&groupid=701&catid=6&subcat=567

which is 2.66 and OC currently have both the 8mb and 12mb cache version on the site. I figure this should be a good buy.

a bit of extra speed and two more cores for my renders.

memory wise I was going to just add 2 more 1GB geil sticks to my machine but I remember a number of articles last year saying that bad axe 2 boards were blowing up memory sticks placed in slot 3.

was that correct?

if so, then I was considering

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MY-170-OC&groupid=701&catid=8&subcat=817

8500 memory as 2x2gb sticks. i realise running XP I'm not going to get the full 4GB due to limitations of the 32bit OS, but its still extra and faster.

but can someone say if the memory blow up is true or not, if so, I can always get some more 6400 memory 1gb sticks instead.

 

[HazardO]

Check the board manufacturer's website for the CPU compatibility list, you may need a BIOS update for a newer CPU (specifically penrin or wolfdale CPUs and especially ones with a .5 clock multiplier). If the CPU you had in mind isn't listed as supported, or there isn't an updated BIOS, you may be out of luck.

If you are planning on overclocking, using more than 2 sticks of RAM might be an issue*, but a 4G (2Gx2) dual channel kit should be relatively cheap. (Again you might want to check the motherboard manufacturer's qualified vendor list, or the memory manufacture's list of tested motherboards.)

* I had to significantly increase the voltage for my 1G GEIL PC6400C4 sticks when I moved from 2 sticks to 4, to maintain my E6600's overclock from 2.4->3GHz