Upgrade thoughts

Nicfish · 30 Nov 2007 at 14:44

Thinking about upgrading my AMD64 3400+ as it is getting a it old

After some looking i have come down to this spec.

Asus P5K Intel P35 Motherboard £64.99 (£76.36)

OCZ 2GB (2x1GB) PC2-6400C4 Dual Channel Platinum Revision 2 XTC Series DDR2 £29.99 (£35.24)

HIS ATI Radeon HD 3850 Pro 256MB GDDR3 £89.99 (£105.74)

Intel Core 2 Duo E2180 "LGA775 Conroe" 2.00GHz £46.99 (£55.21)

@ £283.07 inc shipping

(Plannin on buying an Arctic Freezer soon btw)

Hopefully i should see quite a boost in performance even at stock speeds!

ByteJuggler · 30 Nov 2007 at 14:51

Did something similar as a "tide me over" until I do a full rebuild next year (came from a A64 3200+ 754pin setup):

Abit IP35 (normal, not the Pro, not the "E")
Core2 E2180
Geil PC6400C4 2GB (2x1GB)
HIS 3850 Pro 256MB

I'm blown over with this combination to be honest. Currently still on stock cooling, will probably get something better as the CPU can clearly do more but temps are getting out of hand on the stock cooler if I push further, the system is currently running at 3.2Ghz ([email protected]), RAM at 1066Mhz (@2.1V). The system absolutely flies at pretty much everything I've tried so far and is Orthos/Prime stable and apparently Memtest+ stable. That said I've not done extended burn in tests yet, but it all looks good. Had it up to 3.5Ghz stable as well, but as I say, temps get to be a problem so better cooling is needed.

This type of combination must be the bargain of the century for building a cheap gaming rig... Pretty much all the games I play currently pushes 60 to 100+ FPS, can't be faulted really, particularly considering the cost. Team Fortress 2 for example at 1680x1050 pushes 120FPS much of the time. Damn impressive for the money. 3DMark06 currently around 9,600 if I remember correctly. SuperPi 1Meg time is about 18sec.

Nicfish · 30 Nov 2007 at 14:55

Does the Abit Mobo have any advantages over the Asus or vice versa?

ByteJuggler · 30 Nov 2007 at 15:03

Don't know offhand, will have to check, I suggest you do some googling for reviews of both, and also pull up the exact specifications for each from the manufacturers websites to help see different features on each.

If I remember correctly however, the Asus is also a well respected and well clocking board, so you should be fine going with it. I usually have a preference for Asus myself but decided to go for the Abit in this case as an experiment. I do know that the IP35 & IP35 Pro are 2 of the best clocking boards out there, with the Gigabyte P35 DS3/4 and DQ6 boards being hot on the Abit's heels. Both of these I know can sustain pretty high FSB speeds, around (or even sometimes slightly beyond) 500Mhz. (The normal FSB is only 200Mhz normally...) If I remember correctly, the Asus is also one of the better clocking boards but can't remember how close it gets to the Gigabyte and Abit on that front.

Edit: It looks like the P5K is good for about 485Mhz FSB speed or so, which should be more than enough with an E2180 (thus giving you headroom to a theoretical 485x10 = 4.85Ghz - you'll need special cooling long before that clock rate...), see here:
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/mainboards/display/asus-p5k_9.html#sect0

Edit2: Just to confirm, even at stock I saw quite a big jump from my old rig, largely due to the graphics card being so much better and having 2 cores instead of one, I suspect.