Worthwhile upgrade?

celliott · 3 Mar 2007 at 22:52

I currently have:

AMD Athlon 64 @ 3Ghz
2GB PC3200 DDR
X1800XT etc etc.

Considering upgrading to:

Intel Core 2 Duo E6300 Retail
Asrock 775DUAL-VSTA Motherboard.

Reason for choosing this board is that it supports DDR400 as well as DDR2, and looking at some performance charts there does not seem to be much in it.

Do you think I will see any noticible improvement at stock speeds? I use my pc mainly for gaming and also sometimes encode movies for DVD.

Also can I expect any overclocking from this board. From the specs it sounds like there is overclocking features but thats it like. Any rough ideas on what sort of clock I could achieve?

Thanks.

clocka · 3 Mar 2007 at 23:28

i wouldnt get this board! you wouldnt be getting much more speed @ stock. you should overclock and get the gigabyte ds3 or asus 650i board instead, both around £75 ish. go with ddr2, overclock it to 450+ and you will def notice the difference over 200. my timings are 4-4-3-4 even at 475!

celliott · 3 Mar 2007 at 23:35

Sure thats a better option but I cannot afford a new £80 motherboard and new ram too which is why I am looking for something I can use my old ram with. There has to be at least a little bit of overclockability in this board?

mishima · 3 Mar 2007 at 23:38

At stock speeds you would still see a considerable improvement especially in windows with multi-tasking, and other operations. It would be a good board to use as a transition to core 2 duo. I have found the following quote regarding overclocking potential for this motherboard:

We did not expect much in the way of overclocking with this board and this is about what we got. However, the board did overclock further than we expected - a pleasant surprise - and we almost reached the 300FSB level with our test components. The board actually reached a 303FSB setting with an NVIDIA 6800 Ultra AGP card and some inexpensive DDR 333 memory. However, anything higher resulted in a no boot condition and clearing of the CMOS. In the end, you get what you pay for, although sometimes there is a surprise in the box of chocolates. We were surprised by this board, first for its ability to operate fine with a Core 2 Duo, and secondly that the general performance of the board was actually very good overall considering its heritage. It was kind of slow at times, but it still managed to consistently finish the race.

Source: AnandTech

mp260767 · 4 Mar 2007 at 01:05

depending on whether to plan to upgrade to another mobo/ddr2 memory fairly soon it may be better to look at the 4300 with the higher multiplyer.

decto · 4 Mar 2007 at 09:45

celliott said:
Sure thats a better option but I cannot afford a new £80 motherboard and new ram too which is why I am looking for something I can use my old ram with. There has to be at least a little bit of overclockability in this board?

DDR, Especially 1GB sticks is fetching really good prices at the moment.

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