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Upgrade from XP3200 to Core 2 Duo

BaggingMachine

BaggingMachine

BaggingMachine

Associate
Joined
4 Mar 2007
Posts
4
Well i've decided to upgrade my old ( but trusty) AMD XP 3200 and MSI motherboard to a ASRock 4CoreDual-VSTA PT880 Motherboard and Core 2 E6300. I'm utilising my existing Ram, 1 GiG DDR 400 and AGP Graphics card to save some dosh!- I will upgrade thses as funds become available

How much of an upgrade is this in terms of light gaming and video encoding?- Will i notice a big difference over the XP 3200?- I don't intend to overclock as of yet as i need 100% reliability. :)

Excellent Forum BTW :)
 
Should blow away your old setup, in respect to gaming and video gaming you should notice very improved performance jumps.
 
That's great!- Board and CPU will be delivered on Fiday and i'm looking forward to the build- First in a few years for me :)

I'll be selling the old board and CPU on a certain auction site and judging at what they still go for i may get my 2 Gig of new ram sooner rather than later!.


Regarding the ASrock motherboard i'll be using- Anyone here using this board, if so, any known problems or issues?
 
What graphics card do u have?

Btw, I went from a XP2800+ to my sig. Simply amazed with the performace boost.
 
My card is a very modest MSI AGP NX7600GS :) - With 512 Meg of DDR2

It's fine for what i need at the moment and will probably be a while before i can justifiy upgrading.

As an aside, i currently have a Audigy2 ZS 7-1 sound card and the ASrock MB comes with onboard 7-1 sound- Should i use my Audigy card or just use the onboard sound?
 
BaggingMachine said:
Regarding the ASrock motherboard i'll be using- Anyone here using this board, if so, any known problems or issues?
Click to expand...

Haven't got the board myself, but haven't heard anything, AFAIK there is a thread about that board on these forums somewhere.

BaggingMachine said:
As an aside, i currently have a Audigy2 ZS 7-1 sound card and the ASrock MB comes with onboard 7-1 sound- Should i use my Audigy card or just use the onboard sound?
Click to expand...

Onboard should be fine, but if you can stick in your Audigy you might as well.
 
I went from a SD3700 at 2.6 to the spec in the sig below and the performance hike is amazing.
My lad has a Barton 2500 based system running at 2.4ghz and after using my system he complains about how slow everything is on his.
You will be pleased.
 
BaggingMachine said:
I don't intend to overclock as of yet as i need 100% reliability. :)
Click to expand...


Overclocking does not mean instabilty.

I run my 6400 @ 3.8ghz and its 100% stable.

If an overclock is not stable then its done incorrectly
 
can I suggest a small change in plan? Get the E4300 and the ASRock 775i65 motherboard instead. It's a far better chipset (for a long time time, 865 was THE Intel performance chipset) and it actually allows the E4300 to be properly overclocked (albeit only up to 300FSB or 2.7GHz).

Normally, I would suggest an E6300 every time, but those ASRock PCIe/AGP and DDR1/DDR2 boards are a bodge. A good bodge, yes, but a bodge nonetheless. By using performance RAM and a good AGP card with the 775i65 you'll actually be able to make the most of the Core2Duo, rather than building a stepping-stone system. If you had a PCIe card, then I might recommend the VIA880 board, but with an AGP card, I think the 775i65 with the E4300 is a better combination.
 
BaggingMachine said:
I'll be selling the old board and CPU on a certain auction site and judging at what they still go for i may get my 2 Gig of new ram sooner rather than later!.
Click to expand...

Yeah i was aobut to say to do the same thing to you :) They go for SILLY money atm

Good work on the Core Duo, should be a great system :)

Ben
 
I just upgraded from an Athlon XP3200 to an E4300 and the difference is staggering, especially after I cranked it up to 2.4ghz. I also shifted my XP3200 CPU on the auction site for £87.50

I'm also using the 4core dual vsta mobo and my old DDR333 ram and my overclock is rock solid, granted it's not a huge overclock compared to what the 4300's can get up to but it really makes a difference in some CPU intensive games so it suits me.
 
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