Ultimate Budget Conroe System

[muddleclass]

When I went to buy my Conroe 6300 at Microdirect they only had 3 Asrock boards which could actually run it. I didn't fancy any of them and it seems that even when they come in stock it will be a little while till they are optimised. As a stopgap I have used their 775i65G which uses old DDR ram and AGP. This allows me to split the upgrade costs over 6 months. The board is cheap and nasty but works surprisingly well apart from the fact it didn't like SCSI, SATA and IDE at the same time. Benchmarking is difficult but PCMark05 scored 4622 using an FX5900 and midrange Geil DDR memory this compares to 4200 that someone using a 939 AMD 4600 X2 with FX5900XT scored.

I know this may sound like heresy but (apart from rendering) who needs the faster chips with their overblown price tags. As far as I can see the majority of us will be perfectly happy with either an AMD or new Intel chip for almost everything so is there any possibility of some of the more childish behaviour ceasing.

If anyone has any constructive comments about the system I'd be glad to hear them.

 

[TechnologyCoordinator]

Hmmm... I don't like AGP and DDR. When you get the new mobo you want you'll have to buy:

Mobo
RAM
Video card

 

[muddleclass]

I don't either but didn't fancy wasting £60 on the least bad Asrock

 

[TechnologyCoordinator]

Make sense if you already have DDR, an AGP card on hand.

It would also help you to wait out to buy a DX10 card.