Im in abit of a predicament...

[Montoya]

hmmm what to do.... Ive got to build 2 machines. A gaming machine for myself which i would like to try and OC. Im a little more flexible in the amount of time i can wait for this one.. someone hold me back . The 2nd one is for my brother\parents. They would like this one within the next couple weeks perferably. OC'ing really isnt on there list but games are.

I guess ive got to decide which way to go then finalize on models. Im gunna go Intel for the CPU and likely an Abit mobo unless otherwize convinced.

A month ago i would have been convinced with going for :
P4 2.4B with an i845 mobo (most likely Abit BH7).

But now ive fortunately or maybe unfortunately got more decisions to make . Instead of the above, Should i go for:
P4 2.4B with Counterwood or P4B with Springdale,
OR wait for
P4 2.4C with Counterwood or P4B with Springdale

Any recommendations. Im looking for performance for my dollar for my new gaming machine keeping in mind the idea of OC'ing is alluring .
While the 2nd machine i'll be getting for my brother\parents needs to be purchased sooner rather than later with no OC interest. They can be totally different machine configs.

 

[melvin13]

With those choice of Processors, you could go with the 655 Chipset. (Asus, Gigabyte and MSI all have 2 versions of these boards) You can get a deluxe version of this board that comes with some extra's or you can get The non deluxe version for a very good price. I think this chipset would quench both you and your parents needs.

I have the Asus verion of the board. (P4SDX non deluxe version). Out of box it gives you onboard sound and network connection. And its rock stable. If your starting to get into overclocking and in a learning phase, this board is great. If you put in a setting thats to high and it crashes all you do is power off for like 2 seconds and it resests to default values. Very cool.

Depending on your exact needs and what features you want or dont care for I say this board is great. Resarch the 3 brands, but I recomend the Asus.

 

[shadus]

I would say go with canterwood, it's a bit more future proof and will give you an opportunity to upgrade later if you need to without replacing the mainboard. You can get an abit ic7-g (think thats it) for about 150.. well worth it for both pcs... and personally I'd try to get the 800 mhz just to squeze a bit more performance but shrug. The abit board and the 2.4c/2.8c chips are supposedly very overclockable even on air.

Shadus

 

[Crashman]

IC7 is $150 and is the same as IC7-G ($220) except that it only has one SATA RAID controller and no gigabit LAN controller.

<font color=blue>Watts mean squat if you don't have quality!</font color=blue>