New PC

McDaniel · 10 Jul 2006 at 17:48

Looking for an upgrade, as my pc is falling apart ...

Looking for new CPU/Mobo/GFX and maybe ram

Currently..

MSI K8N Neo2 Plat
AMD 3500+
PC4000 1GB Ballistix Ram (2x512mb)
580W Hyper PSU.

HDD are not an issue - current gfx card is a pci 5200 as my 6800gt blew up

Im hearing good things about conroe, so would like a conroe system that will be good enough to support Windows Vista and good for games - Graphics wise would like to run SLI/Crossfire eventually but not at this upgrade, so mobo should be able to support this for a later date - also the ram i have is good but would benefit from 2gb really as i game a lot but also multitask a lot.

What would you lot suggest.

No specific budget as such - jsut wanting an idea.

McDaniel · 10 Jul 2006 at 18:06

thinking of the 2,40GHz cpu myself. seems good though.

I forgot to mention ill be powering dual/tri maybe even quad monitors had bad experience with ATI's dual mon support - tend to prefer nVidia - or are they not the best these days?

Im a bit out of the hardware loop

McDaniel · 10 Jul 2006 at 18:10

Both - obviously the games will be one 1 monitor

McDaniel · 10 Jul 2006 at 18:18

Raikiri said:
You're gonna need 2 cards to run 4 screens, I know someone on here does it with 2 ATi cards. (one low end would be fine and a decent card for gaming).

The reason I didnt choose nvidia was due to the lack of motherboard that support both conroe and SLi which you said you might want to get later on.

I used to run 4 before, so im well aware - did have a 6800GT Dual DVI in AGP and FX5200 Dual DVI on PCI - but there support for dual mon is a lot better then when i tried it with ATI Cards

McDaniel · 10 Jul 2006 at 18:23

im assuming the PCI Express 16x is gonna be the standard from sometime - so come the new year when i get a faster SLI style setup up the mobo will be sufficient?

McDaniel · 10 Jul 2006 at 18:33

Raikiri said:
What mobo? Like I said there arent any that currently support SLi available, not offically anyway

?

What i mean is if i get a Conroe CPU and 975X Mobo now will it have sufficient PCI-X abilities for the future GFX Card (inc SLi Support)

Would this support SLi?

MSI 975X Platinum V2.0 (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard (MB-072-MS)

McDaniel · 10 Jul 2006 at 18:40

Raikiri said:
No, the 975x chipset DOES NOT support SLi. Only the Nforce 5 chipset whicha rent out yet support SLi. The 975x chipset does however support crossfire.

It has the required speed but simply does not support it.

Oh right, i get ya - sorry i be the n00b

So if i ever want a proper Dual GFX setup (SLi / Crossfire) - going conroe will mean Crossfire only?

Lets hope ATI dual mon support gets better if thats the case

McDaniel · 10 Jul 2006 at 18:54

do we have an ETA for them?

McDaniel · 11 Jul 2006 at 12:38

Thanks Rak, think i might go this route for now

CP-126-IN Intel Core 2 DUO E6300 "LGA775 Conroe" 1.86GHz (1066FSB) - Retail (CP-126-IN)
£129.95 £129.95
MB-020-DF DFI Infinity 975X (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard (MB-020-DF)
£129.95 £129.95
MY-014-GS G.Skill 2GB DDR2 NR PC2-6400 (2x1GB) CAS5 Dual Channel Kit (F2-6400PHU2-2GBNR) (MY-014-GS)
£114.95 £114.95
GX-080-LT Leadtek GeForce 7600 GT 256MB GDDR3 TV-Out/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail (GX-080-LT)
£111.95 £111.95
Subtotal £486.80
VAT £85.19
Total £571.99

Can always get a faster CPU in the future