Motherboard to go with 8800 and E6850

[ITGL72]

Helping a friend put together a PC. Budget right now around $1200 or so. From researching we are going with the Intel Core 2 Duo E6850 Conroe 3.0GHz over the Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 Kentsfield 2.4GHz despite being about the same price. Seems the dual core scores better in games from what I have seen. Also going with either an 8800 GT or GTS 512MB video card and 2GB ram, type will be determined by motherboard we end up with.

There are so many motherboards, may I ask a suggestion on a few you like in order to cut down the amount of motherboards needed to review? I don't believe we will be doing any SLI or over clocking. Just need a good stable board with some nice features.

 

[MegaVovaN]

Abit IP35-E (medium cost)
MSI P35 Neo2-FR (most expensive)
GIGABYTE GA-P35-DS3L (medium cost, little cheaper)

 

[DSF]

Any of those boards should be good. I have the Gigabyte DS3L and it's running fine for me.

I would recommend that you get the E6750 instead of the E6850. You'll save almost $100 and won't notice any difference in games for a couple years at least.

 

[ITGL72]

Thanks for the help, allowing me to fine tune my research. Below we are talking our list so far between myself and the user. Still need to get case fans, but those not too expensive. Probabaly going to change seagate to just a WD. Any comments on the RAM or Power supply?



Intel Core 2 Duo E6850 Conroe 3.0GHz 4M shared L2 Cache LGA 775 65W Dual-Core Processor

ASUS P5K-E/WIFI-AP LGA 775 Intel P35 ATX Intel Motherboard

CORSAIR XMS2 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Dual
Channel Kit Desktop Memory

EVGA 512-P3-N802-AR GeForce 8800GT 512MB 256-bit GDDR3 PCI Express 2.0
HDCP Ready SLI Supported Video Card

Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 ST3320620AS (Perpendicular Recording
Technology) 320GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive

PLEXTOR Black 18X DVD+R 8X DVD+RW 8X DVD+R DL 18X DVD-R 6X DVD-RW 12X
DVD-RAM 16X DVD-ROM 48X CD-R 32X CD-RW 48X CD-ROM 2MB Cache ATAPI DVD
Burner With Replaceable Beige Bezel

CORSAIR CMPSU-520HX ATX12V v2.2 and EPS12V 2.91 520W Power Supply 100
- 240 V UL, CUL, CE, CB, FCC Class B, TUV, CCC, C-tick - Retail

Ultra Black Aluminus ATX Mid-Tower Case with Clear Side, Front USB,
Firewire and Audio Ports

 

[MegaVovaN]

Corsair makes quality RAM. Why only 2 gb though? Go for 4!
PSU is also great.

 

[ITGL72]

Originally posted by: MegaVovaN
Corsair makes quality RAM. Why only 2 gb though? Go for 4!
PSU is also great.

Well its going to be an XP system, and XP doesnt allow more than 2GB per program if I understand correctly. Don't quote me on that 100% just going from memory but I know there is a limitation.

 

[MegaVovaN]

Never heard of "per-program" thing, but XP (32 bit. 64bit XP is teh SUCK!) will be able to use up to ~3.2 gb of RAM.
extra 1.2 gb may be helpful, especially in games.

I am going to be using Win XP 32bit e6750/4gb/8800gt/Abit IP35-E myself (holiday shipping takes 10 days :roll: )

 

[DSF]

The limitation is that 32-bit systems have a maximum of 4GB of address space, some of which is eaten up by things like your video card and PCI cards. So even if you have 4GB of RAM physically installed in your motherboard, only 3-3.5GB of it will be visible to Windows. For the most part, programs aren't going to make use of more than 2GB. This isn't because they can't, it's because they have no use for it. Some applications, like Photoshop I believe, can make use of the extra memory.

I would reiterate my recommendation to save yourself some money on the CPU and get an E6750 instead.

 

[ITGL72]

We may very well do that. We may go with the E6750 and go from the 8800 GT to the GTS.