Help needed for building a new system

[samuel]

Hi everybody my name is Samuel and I needed some upgrading advise.
Knowing that similar topics are already available in the forums, I noticed that it didn’t give me enough info to satisfy my needs, so here I go….

I’ve already made up my mind to buy a C2D (E6600) but I’m stuck on the other essential parts, what motherboard should I buy? What graphics, ram and psu should I get?

I have heard that the Asus P5W DH Deluxe is good but is there anything that is better? Don’t get me wrong the P5W is a good mobo but I’m not too crazy about the 2 Marvell Gbit Lans on it (imo dual intel Gbit lan’s are much better but I can be wrong), and that if it supports ATI crossfire does it also support Nvidia SLI? Are the two graphic PCI-E ports both true 16x in crossfire and sli mode or they only 8x in dual graphics mode? Is dual 16x speed available in Nvidia chipsets only? Is there a Nvidia chipset available for the Conroe now and if not when will there be?

I also noticed that the southbridge of the P5W is ICH7R, how does this compare to the ICH8R chipset (older or newer, better or worse).

In my search of a good mobo I also saw the Gigabyte GA-965P-DQ6, in comparison to P5W which one is better? Is a 965+ chipset better or a 975 (performance wise and in over-clocking).

Aside from these two I also saw the Intel D975XBXLKR, how is this one in terms of performance and over-clocking although I will not buy this mobo for it is too ill-packed (amount of ide and sata ports) but one thing that shocked me in the specification page of this mobo was this:

One Primary PCI Express* x16 (electrical x16 or x8 ) bus add-in card connector
One Secondary PCI Express* x16 (electrical x8 ) bus add-in card connector

Now does this mean what I think it does? Having one graphics card will operate at 16x full speed (obviously) but having a crossfire or sli setup will down-grade the speed to 8x for each card giving a total of 16x ???? Is this the same for the Asus and Gigabyte mobos also ??? If this is the case then imo those intel mobo designers should go f**k themselves for installing old technology on their new products, its been a while that Nvidia designed 32x sli technology why cant ATI (or Intel, whoever’s fault it is) do the same for crossfire.

Moving on to graphics I can only be honest and say that I am stumped! Should it be 2x7900GTX 512, 1x7950 1gig, 2x1900crossfire 512 or 1x1900XTX 512 ? From which vendor should I buy ? Powercolor, Xfx, Asus, Ati, Gigabyte, Evga, … ???? Performance and scalability is a must !!

Going on to the next item I want good, fast ram that I can also use for overclocking but I don’t want to achieve record speeds, just enough to reach 3GHz with my E6600.

And finally what kind of psu and case should I buy?

Please take into consideration that I want the best price-per-performance (bang-for-buck)

Thank you for your support

 

[muffins]

well if u want best bang for your buck dont go sli or crossfire.the added preformance they give you is not worth how much more you pay for the extra card, espaecially if your lookin for a good preforming system at a good price.
As for a mobo supporting both SLI and Crossfire. I havent seen any out on the market right now but i hear some companys are developing them, but since SLI or Crossfire wont get the bang for the buck theres no need for you to worry about that.
As for which card you wanna get, thats pretty much yer call. check out some of the comparisons between the two(or more) and see which ones work the best for whichever games/apps you use.

 

[The_Prophecy]

Suggestions:

Mobo: Abit AB9 Pro, or if you want Kentsfield support, get the Gigabyte GA-965P-DQ6

RAM: OCZ Gold 2GB (2 x 1GB) DDR2-800

Video Card: eVGA Geforce 7900GT KO, or if you can afford it, Sapphire Radeon X1900XT

Power Supply: Antec Truepower 480W

Hard Drive: Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 320GB SATA2

Like muffins said, SLI and crossfire is a waste of time and money. I will add that i agree with him, but only if you're not going to be gaming at screen resolutions over 1600 x 1200, and if you can't get both cards within 2 months of each other. The 975 based boards are said to be better for overclocking, but I did hear that a tech review site (Anandtech I think it was...) got the FSB on a Core 2 E6600 chip up to 500Mhz or some other insanely high number on the Gigabyte GA-965P-DS3.

Any motherboard which doesn't have 32 PCI Express lanes will automatically switch both video cards to x8 mode. The ones with 32 lanes (like the Asus M2N32-SLI) will retain x16 mode for both cards. The dual x16 mode SLI setup is totally pointless though, as the cards don't even come close to using the amount of bandwidth that setup provides. That setup is basically for bragging rights, and nothing more.

 

[samuel]

Awesome! Thanks for the info, if there are any updates, I'd be happy to know for it will be at least a week or two before I upgrade

Thanks again