In a couple of weeks I'll have some cash handy so I figured I'd upgrade my system a bit...
I've currently got a 2.53 GHz Northwood P4, 768MB DDR266, ASUS P4B533 (i845E) and an 80GB Western Digital SE (8MB cache), with an AGP ASUS GeForce 6600GT.
I want to get a 3.2 GHz Pentium 640 (Prescott, 64bit, 2MB cache, HT, FSB 800, LGA775), an ASUS P5P800, 2x512MB DDR400 and a 300 (or 400) GB, 16MB buffer SATA harddisk.
First of all, the mobo seems very interesting: my Audigy died a couple of weeks ago and the P5P800 has a very unique 20$ upgrade option: http://www.soundblaster.com/mbupgrade/
I'm still a bit unclear on what it does, but by the looks of it it offers (probably software) SB Live! level music/surround effects, with the VERY nice added bonus of EAX Advanced HD for games...these are basically the things I miss the most with my onboard C-Media at the moment.
This motherboard does not support NCQ or dual-core CPUs, but I think it wouldn't be much of a problem, it seems that the 2MB cache & HT are pretty useful for multitasking even with a single core. It also supports CPUs up to 3.8GHz, so I think I'd be pretty safe even after Vista shows up.
What do you guys think?
schmosef, I seem to remember that you were considering getting the same mobo at some point, did you ever get it? There's precious few user reviews (and no full reviews) of it online
Also, about the hard-disk brand, I'd like to rule out Hitachi (unless their QA has gone way up since the IBM days) and Maxtor (had nothing but problems with them on several systems), which would leave Western Digital and Seagate, with comparable offerings...would it make any difference to get a SATA-II compatible model?
Thanks in advance for any input
I've currently got a 2.53 GHz Northwood P4, 768MB DDR266, ASUS P4B533 (i845E) and an 80GB Western Digital SE (8MB cache), with an AGP ASUS GeForce 6600GT.
I want to get a 3.2 GHz Pentium 640 (Prescott, 64bit, 2MB cache, HT, FSB 800, LGA775), an ASUS P5P800, 2x512MB DDR400 and a 300 (or 400) GB, 16MB buffer SATA harddisk.
First of all, the mobo seems very interesting: my Audigy died a couple of weeks ago and the P5P800 has a very unique 20$ upgrade option: http://www.soundblaster.com/mbupgrade/
I'm still a bit unclear on what it does, but by the looks of it it offers (probably software) SB Live! level music/surround effects, with the VERY nice added bonus of EAX Advanced HD for games...these are basically the things I miss the most with my onboard C-Media at the moment.
This motherboard does not support NCQ or dual-core CPUs, but I think it wouldn't be much of a problem, it seems that the 2MB cache & HT are pretty useful for multitasking even with a single core. It also supports CPUs up to 3.8GHz, so I think I'd be pretty safe even after Vista shows up.
What do you guys think?
schmosef, I seem to remember that you were considering getting the same mobo at some point, did you ever get it? There's precious few user reviews (and no full reviews) of it online
Also, about the hard-disk brand, I'd like to rule out Hitachi (unless their QA has gone way up since the IBM days) and Maxtor (had nothing but problems with them on several systems), which would leave Western Digital and Seagate, with comparable offerings...would it make any difference to get a SATA-II compatible model?
Thanks in advance for any input
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