Best bang for my buck?

[CoRPS]

I want to spend less then $150 on both a motherboard and a processor. Hopefully going to get into 64bit but it really doesn't matter one way or another.

Needs:
AGP 8x (I have FX6200)
DDR (I have Kingston HyperX PC3500 512MB)
SATA and IDE (I have both formats)

What do you guys suggest?

 

[engiNURD]

$90 - Intel Pentium D 805 Smithfield 2.66GHz
$56 - ASRock 775Dual-VSTA Socket T (LGA 775) VIA PT880 PRO

Here's some reviews on that AsRock board:
http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.aspx?i=2810
http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.aspx?i=2813
http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.aspx?i=2814

Summary: DDR400 is fine for now, it won't slow performance. The PCI-E 4x slot only slows down high performance cards by about 10%, which isn't much.

 

[Celestial Avenger]

You can also upgrade to Conroe later with that board, with or without a bios flash I'm not sure.

 

[darktiger]

You should look in the for sale thread. You can pick up some pretty good deals...

 

[engiNURD]

You can also upgrade to Conroe later with that board, with or without a bios flash I'm not sure.

The conroes should be fine with the current BIOS. The newer core2's (allendale) might need a BIOS flash if they are compatible.

 

[CoRPS]

What is Conroe?

 

[Rob Black]

What is Conroe?

 

[CoRPS]

Yeah, I've been out of the loop for quite some time. Most of my posts stopped around 2004. So what is it? I did a google search and came up with a shitload of links about a city named Conroe and rivers or waterfalls and whatnot. Wanna let me in on that?

 

[vincentxweb]

Yeah, I've been out of the loop for quite some time. Most of my posts stopped around 2004. So what is it? I did a google search and came up with a shitload of links about a city named Conroe and rivers or waterfalls and whatnot. Wanna let me in on that?

Intel's Core 2 Duo

 

[CoRPS]

Intel's Core 2 Duo

And that's just a dual core processor? Anything special about it? AMD has been doing it for a while now.

 

[vincentxweb]

It blows the Athlon 64 X2 out of the water, and overclocks like mad. Just like the Athlon 64 was superior to the Pentium 4, this is better than the A64 X2.

 

[vincentxweb]

IMO, if there's a Fry's electronics near you, they always have great mobo/cpu combo deals in your price range.

 

[engiNURD]

Introducing, Intel's Core2Duo:
http://anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=2795
http://anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=2802
http://anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=2903
http://dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=5414

Thank you, AMD, for pushing intel to build such a great CPU. Maybe soon we'll be thanking Intel for pushing AMD to build such a great K8Late... we'll see.