Help with mb and cpu

[imported_twolf]

Hi all have been out of the loop for a while...starting to look for new motherboard/cpu combo. Have had the Asus p4c800-e and a northwood 3.2ghz for a few years now.

Asus just said they don't and won't support vista on this motherboard, so told them that they just lost a customer...

So what is out there that is as stable or more stable than what I have, faster, and so forth for multitasking.

I do not over clock, no interest....i run system intense programs, such as photoshop CS3, Adobe Premiere and so forth, photo and video mostly. So I need something strong stable and prob that will take at least 4 gigs of ram.

I am running vista on one of the p4c800's I have and it SUCKS.....very sloooooooooow..and that is with 2 gigs of ram.

Don't mind sata, but still need the old ata connections for those drives I do have.

SO what suggestions do you have that will run easier, smoother, faster and the most stablest and will last a few years with what I do...I may have CS3 and a video encoding and something else running at the same time, so that is what I need it to do..no gaming.

And I got screwed by dell a couple years ago when I bought into the intel centrino thing..they said o the 2.0 dothan is as fast and good and can handle things beter than the 3.2 ghz northwood...that was crap....my laptop bogs down from the start.and it has 2 gigs of ram. Sooo I need a powerhouse for multitasking which matches or exceeds 3.2 ghz and so on, if that makes sense.
I don't know anything about the dual core thing, but I am skeptical that it sounds similar to the centrino dothan scam.



I am not against AMD. I started with AMD, but the heat factor just drove me away from it...so I am open to amd or intel(IF AMD has the heat probs of the past, controlled like Intel. And I don't mind going 64 bit if that makes it better.

Or is one of these coming out with something that is better and faster in the near future and I should wait?

THanks for any advice....I just need a strong stable system that will handle what I do and not bog down and take forever, that runs smoothly.

Hope this makes sense...the p4c800 did pretty good with XP, so looking for something that will do better with xp and as good or better with Visat...thanks all..t

 

[Ozoneman]

Since you have been out of the loop so long you may find that you will need to replace your entire system. You didn't mention your vid card so I assume it is an AGP card. Your memory is DDR, right? Well new mobos are PCI-e video so you will need a new vid card. The memory for the mobos are DDR2 (good for you that DDR2 is real cheap now). If your power supply isn't much already, you may also need a new one of those. New mobos have 24 pin power supply connectors and your's is probably 20 pin. The new mobos usually only have one IDE port so that will take care of your optical drives but you may need new hard drives that will use the SATA connectors on the mobo.

The dual core thing is the real thing. You will find that they perform a lot better. In fact for what you will be doing, you may consider a quad core like the Q6600 which is only now just under $300.

What I'd recommend is what I have in my sig. You may want to consider bigger hard drives but I think my system is a good choice. And as I mentioned before, you may want to consider the Q6600 cpu. Gigabyte makes quality boards that are known for their stability and quality parts. If you don't want the high end board like I have there are other models that are about $150 that you may want to consider. Oh, and if you play games you will want to get a better graphics card, like a 8800gtx or gts.

 

[Ozoneman]

One other thing, you may want to consider this cpu cooler if you rather not use the cooler that comes with the cpu. It is on sale now. Save $25.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16835185038

It is an excellent cooler and will fit the P35-DQ6 mobo well. I had to mod my Arctic Pro 7 to fit my mobo.