Hardware People - Upgrade CPU suggestions & Video card too

[jmmijo 1]

Ah, APK, according to Abit's site they do support Prescott core CPU's up to 3.8, hmm, those will only be engineering samples I gather but who knows for sure

 

http://www.abit-usa.com/products/mb/prescott_cpu_support.php

 

However I don't see mention of the Extreme Edition, just the standard Northwood and the newer Prescott core CPU's.

 

Here's something to ponder, there is a give and take on the latest 600 series Prescott core CPU's, they do come with 2MB of L2 cache however, the newest Extreme Edition CPU's only come in LGA-775 so that leaves your current board out. Also, will the older Galatin core Extreme Edition go down in price any with the recent announcments ?!? A 3.4EE based on the Galatin core would be better in that it has the standard trace cache for L1, then 512K of L2 cache and that huge 2MB of L3 cache, loverly

 

Now as for the graphics card, I would consider the Gigabyte or Asus Radeon X800 Pro cards for AGP. Very nice indeed, not the cheapest of course but I think the pricing has gone down a bit due to the latest X850 releases.

 

As for nVidia in the AGP form factor, there are both 6600 and 6800 available now too, not just in PCIe.

[jmmijo 1]

APK, the reason I said 3.4EE is that's the fastest I've seen available. Does this mean Intel didn't release a faster version of the Galatin core EE, don't really know for sure.

 

The issue is that Intel, in their not-so-infinite wisdom, want's to push their LGA-775 CPU's and motherboards, hence why should they continue to produce socket 478 stuff anymore

 

Also, Intel is pushing harder now for their BTX form factor, this I think is long overdue. It's a much better chassis and motherboard design, especially for the Prescott core space heaters.

 

http://www.intel.com/cd/channel/reseller/asmo-na/eng/95346.htm

[ScinteX 0]

Just for the record I was reading an interesting article earlier today about how Intel have stopped putting effort into their processor-in-progress and diverted its efforts towards multicore.

Sun have a processor planned with 8 cores!

 

Anyhow, this site tells all:

http://www.devx.com/Intel/Door/6409?trk=Leftnav_FP_Intel

 

S

 

 

[jmmijo 1]

@Scintex, that's all well and good but for those of us wanting to run Windows for say a gaming rig, then the mention of Sun's multicore CPU's is pretty worthless

 

 

However, that being said, it's nice to actually see both AMD and Intel coming out with some multi-core x86 cpu's in the not so distant future just for those of us wanting to run a Wintendo box

[ScinteX 0]

haha yes ok mentioning Sun is a bit pointless... who knows what we may see in the future from Intel and AMD.

 

On Intel's site they are mentioning an EE at 3.8Ghz.

 

Did some shopping around and the 800Mhz jobbie is retailing at £686 here in the UK....

I'm still hunting for that 1066Mhz!