MB w/ onboard video supporting E4300 OCing?

[jeffspam]

I've managed to scrape up some limited funds to upgrade an old A64 2800 system. I was about to pull the trigger on an X2 4600 setup, but the E4300 reviews have me thinking about going over to the dark side.

What makes the X2 4600 setup so affordable is a GeForce 6100-based system with onboard video. I'm not a game player, so I really don't need anything more than the bare minimum to run Aero. So I'm now looking for an inexpensive board, with built-in video, that I can run an E4300 on, OCed to at least 3.0GHz (pref the 3.37MHz Anand got in his Jan review of the chip, with DDR2-800 RAM). Is there such a beast? The AMD setup (cpu, mb, 2gb ram) can be built for just under $350 -- I'd like to keep any similar Intel system under $400.

Thanks!

 

[renethx]

abit Fatal1ty F-I90HD, ~3.3GHz
ASUS P5L-MX, ~2.9GHz

 

[jeffspam]

Hmm. The abit looks interesting, though I'm not a big fan of JUST released boards. What about a cheaper MB w/o onboard video and a low-end video card? Aero is my only requirement, but being able to decode HD H.264 would be a nice plus, if possible. Maybe a cheap 7300LE or GS? How does that compare to the onboard RX700? Thanks!

 

[renethx]

Budget motherboards with discrete graphics is not good for overclocking E4300. The best I have seen is

GIGABYTE GA-945P-S3, ~2.7GHz

If your goal is 3.0GHz, the minimum requirement is GIGABYTE GA-965P-S3 or ASUS P5B (vanilla). X700 is equivalent to GeForce 6xxx. GeForce 7300 should be better than the abit onboard video and enough for decoding H.264 contents if CPU is > 2.0GHz.

 

[Binky]

What about a 775Dual-VSTA (~2.7ghz from a E4300) plus a cheap video card? You could even use an old AGP card on that board, and even use your old DDR memory. If you're looking for cheap, you really can't beat it.

An E4300 at 2.7ghz will smoke anything you can do with the 4600+.

Look here and you will see a $40 6200TC beat the 6150 and X1250 graphics performance. Add that to the $60 MB cost and you have a pretty cheap C2D solution that is better than onboard video.

 

[jeffspam]

Hmm... that ASRock board is *very* tempting. Just not sure if it's worth trying to keep my Radeon 8500LE on life support, but I suppose I can always upgrade to PCIe later and then reuse the card on my next mobo. Will OC to 2.7GHz (or more, if I go with hardware vcore mod) be a prob when using an AGP card? And any reason why I should/shouldn't go with the 4CoreDual-VSTA instead?

Thanks for the tip, Blinky.

 

[Binky]

No reason at all to not go for the 4core version. It's slightly upgraded with the newer "ultra" southbridge.

If you can use your old DDR and AGP card, this board should work great. The versatility for the price is amazing.