I'm out of touch -- what's a great value in board and cpu these days?

[TrevorS]

The last two or three years I've been using, not building, so I'm really out of touch with pretty much everything following the demise of the original socket X2 series processors.

Seems like AMD is a little under the weather these days and AGP video is history (plus AMD now owns ATI). Likewise, my DDR memory has been replaced with DDR2 which I thought would be supplanted by DDR3, but it seems like that still hasn't happened (except with video cards of course).

My workhorse X2 machine's mainboard appears to have died, and since it is hard drive intensive, I need to swap in an identical board from a lighter duty PC. That means I could do with a replacement for the other box -- which translates into board, cpu, RAM, and either a video card or integrated video. Since cash is tight, but I'd like reasonable flexibility, I'm wondering what the lay of the land is these days (or should I be in the Intel forum asking this question ?)

Thanks for any assists !

[Rondog]

Newegg.com - Intel Pentium E5200 Wolfdale 2.5GHz 2MB L2 Cache LGA 775 65W Dual-Core Processor - Processors - Desktops
Newegg.com - ECS NF650iSLIT-A (V1.0) LGA 775 NVIDIA nForce 650i SLI ATX Intel Motherboard - Intel Motherboards
Newegg.com - Kingston HyperX 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory - Desktop Memory
Newegg.com - MSI N8400GS-TD256H GeForce 8400 GS 256MB 64-bit GDDR2 PCI Express x16 HDCP Ready Video Card - Desktop Graphics / Video Cards

All reasonably cheap and should do the job for what you have said quite well.

[TrevorS]

Whoops! Intel, eh ! Thanks for the suggestions -- I'm looking into it even now! (Wonder how it compares to my old gaming box with my pride and joy 2.45GHz Venice and X800 Pro VIVO 500/545MHz?)

[TrevorS]

Originally Posted by Rondog

Newegg.com - Intel Pentium E5200 Wolfdale 2.5GHz 2MB L2 Cache LGA 775 65W Dual-Core Processor - Processors - Desktops
Newegg.com - ECS NF650iSLIT-A (V1.0) LGA 775 NVIDIA nForce 650i SLI ATX Intel Motherboard - Intel Motherboards

Oops! It looks like 45nm processors aren't supported on that board !

Originally Posted by Manufacturer Response:

Dear JR,

I am sorry you had this issue. Just to let you know this motherboard does not support any 45nm CPU, which the E8400 is.

A CPU support list for this motherboard can be found at the following link.

ECS Web Site

If you ever have any questions regarding issues you are having or support hardware we can be reached at the following number.

510-226-7333 option 6 Mon-Fri 9am-6pm

ECS

Newegg.com - ECS NF650iSLIT-A (V1.0) LGA 775 NVIDIA nForce 650i SLI ATX Intel Motherboard - Intel Motherboards

However, since the CPU looks pretty interesting at the price, I wonder what would be a good board for it (also allowing for price considerations)?

[Yo Spiff]

I'm still a bit of an AMD fanboy. I tend to stay about 18-24 months behind the bleeding edge and go for the bang for the buck. So who has the top performance at this moment doesn't matter much for me. I just put together a new machine using an Athlon X2 6000+ and Asus M3A78-EM for about $160 on Newegg.

[Rondog]

Newegg.com - Foxconn ELA LGA 775 Intel P45 ATX Intel Motherboard - Intel Motherboards

Oops sorry. Try one of these, P45 is an awesome chipset. Great value, $170 with a $70 rebate. The CPU I showed you earlier is awesome, runs really well.

An X800 would almost certainly out perform an nVidia 8400GS. 8400GS is very basic, only good for putting the picture on the screen.

[ccperf721p]

What is the budget you have to work with?

What is the rigs primary role going to be?