I got all my parts in Monday night minus the power supply which came yesterday. I put everything together and crossed my fingers when I flipped the power switch. It turn on and posted without a hitch. I went into the bios of my Asus P5B, and it was the old version. It did recognize my dual core but only saw one of the cores so i promply went online and got the bios update. I put it on a USB and and problem solved with easy flash.

I didn't have too much time to install things last night but my stock E6600 with my stock x1900xt scored a 11492 on 3dMark05!. I almost pooped my pants(figuratively speaking of course) when I saw that.

I will run 3dmark 06 tonight. I got battlefield 2 up and running and my average FPS is 85+ @1280x1024 With everything maxed plus 4xAA and 8xAF, which was on a 64 man server(about 50 people on). Simply put i'm a very happy camper right now. Below are the specs

Mobo:Asus P5B
Video: Asus X1900xt
Ram: Patriot DDR 667 2x1GB at 4-4-4-12 timing (stock timing)
Sound: X-FI Xtreme Music
The usual peripherals - even a floppy for nostalgic value (cheap too)

I will eventually overclock the beast but for now it flys as is... I was going to get the Asus P5B delux, but I dont think SLI is the right choice for me because I dont have a uber monitor, though built in wireless would be handy.

Other benchmarks when I get home later this evening from work.
Later
-][nCiNeRaToR-

I appreciate hearing the numbers from your new system... but I think it would be helpful to everyone if you told us what your old system was and what numbers it scored doing similar tasks...

Just a thought!

My old crappy system was a P4 2.6 at 400fsb with rambus RAM... YEah it blew... Talk about an FSB bottleneck. My video card was a 6600GT and I had 768megs-o-ram. To say the least it was a huge upgrade. The original had a 1.7ghz 423pin and had to convert it to 478 socket just to get a faster proc. I was cpu limited in most applications. I got 3200 ish in 3dmark05 and about 30 to 45fps in BF2 @1024X768 with everything on low execpt textures(medium). The biggest pain was the huge hit in FPS in battles because the proc got hammered so my min FPS blew. Not the case anymore. I also built my dad in march a amd 64 3700 939 system which is pretty bad ass.

Back in the day(july 2001) when i bought my P4 1.7ghz from dell(yes before i started to build computers) it was blazin fast and in a few years my current pc will suck too, such is life with technology.

Ill hopefully post some pics tonight when i get home and such... still have a bunch of stuff to install.

-][nCiNeRaToR-

P.S. Dell's suck ass now and will never buy a prebuilt computer again (besides a laptop maybe)

GREAT, but give us some real-world benchmark data please; kinds of superPI, render times, FPS etc... whoever cares about those stupid 3Dmark and PCmark ratings; we all know they're crap numbers.

I'll get some better numbers this evening when I get home... Hard to do that from work...

-][nCiNeRaToR-

hi lol it seams that we we both were and will be in the same situation? lol i am still using a (modified) sony vaio PIV 1.7 with 512 ram, and i will be building a pc with :core 2 duo e6600, asus p5w dh deluxe, 2 gigs of ddr2 800 ram(5-5-5-12), and radeon x850xt(ill be geting the dx10 gpu) when it comes out, so i gues/hope that this will be a huge performance upgrade , the only think im woried anou tis that i might have a problem with the e6600 and the mobo, since You used a P5B there might not be so much of an issue just a simple usb flash will do it, but in my case i might have to wait till asus will send me a new bios chip , which honestly i dont know how long itll take ...hopefully not longer than a week.

Theres a pretty good chance that your asus p5w dh deluxe will not post without the new bios (depends on the bios version it ships with). I guess i would order it now(if you already haven't) and start the waiting game. Your rig will do very well especially, when you get your DX10 card.

I was debating getting a crappier dx9 card for now then waiting for the DX10 to come out. I would have to get vista to use DX10 anyhow and i want to wait a little while to see some user feedback on Vista before going that route.

-][nCiNeRaToR-

I catualy was thinking on doing the same with the gpu, but after a long (couple weeks) time i decided to just get the cheapest pcixpress gpu i could find and wait till the dx10 cards come out, because i knew some games that will come out in 2007 or begining of 2008 which i definitivly wanted to play just beacuse of the amazing graphics, those games are : Project offset, Haze, 2 more that i forgot the title lol, but just looking at Project offset, fear looks like a crapy old dos game compared to dx9 games...seriously lol that game will have visuals like in the movies like that hary poter goblin creatures, or lord of the rings ...what was the name of that ugly thing that said "precious" all the time(i really forgot lol...darn im geting old ),

btw does anyone know how long would i have to wait for the bios chip to come in? can i just order the mobo and simultaniously call asus to send me the chip, or do i need to actually get the mobo? , and then wait...again...with all the hardware... :?

Since you know the Mobo make and model i would imagine you could order the bios chip beforehand. As for how long ... if it ships from the US no more than a week or 2.

The new games that will be comming out next year are going to rock! Im looking forward for Cyrsis

-][nCiNeRaToR-

lol yup in all the excitement i forgot about Crysis lol , and finaly i will be able to play far cry and c how it will look lol, thx ill call up asus and ask them about it today.

I just ran Super PI and got 21.297 seconds on my stock E6600.
My checksum is 1339E524 to prove my score on their website.

-][nCiNeRaToR-

I posted this in the mobo forum but since there is a thread going on here I'll ask...

I will most likely get the Asus P5W but not for another 3-4 weeks. What are the chances that the board I buy then will have the updated BIOS? How do I find out what BIOS it has on it when I buy it aside from building my machine and booting it up?

Also I am curious as to why you need to get a bios chip instead of just flashing it. And how do you flash a bios without a floppy drive? From a CD or within Windows?

Thanks..

im ordering mine probably this weekend and i wil probably have to wait till asus sends me the bios chip, in regards to You r wuestion the new asus mobos can be flashed with a USB flash drive, and after you get the system running You can do it from within windows there is an app lication that comes on the cd with the mobo that alows You to do so.

sounds pretty cool dude. Congrats on nice build.

NOT BAD!!! (This chip is a monster)

This chip is pretty ridiculus to say the least and im very impressed. I just fired up CS source last night... The chip plows through the crappy CS source code and im usually around 100+fps(I cap my fps at 100) and in big battles it can drop into the 70s. On the cs source vid test I got 154fps @1280x1024 4xAA and 8AF max settings.

-][nCiNeRaToR-

I found this tidbit on the NCIX forums, gives you the instructions to get the bios sent right to you without serial numbers and whatnot. I hope its of help to people but if not you can just ignore it.
Oh yeah, this pertains to the P5W-DH Deluxe boards

If you do not have a CPU to do the BIOS update, you can contact Asus for it. 1-502-995-0883 then press 0 for the operator. Specfiically ask for the Bios Department (if you go through tech, they'll redirect you there anyways), and tell them you need the updated bios. They don't even ask for serial # or anything, just an address (no creditcarrd or billing info unless you're doing overnight).

To tell which version of the BIOS you currently have, look at the 2nd PCI slot from the bottom, and you'll see the BIOS at the end of the slot. Mine is 0502 atm, and i believe you need 0801 or higher for Core2Duo.

I have this board w/ the E6400 and you can flash the BIOS in the BIOS with the built in utility called Asus EZ flash. Or you can do in when you boot into windows. Good luck!

Thank You for the ingo, much aprecieated, lol this should have been a sticky , i will probably order from newegg, and just looking at the rate in which the boards "dissapear" from them i might be lucky and have the new bios, i heard that 2 other sites begun to offer the new bios in their mobos already, so there is hope , but if not, i will definitevly use You'r advice, thx again

Good luck to you on your future build... Keep us posted

-][nCiNeRaToR-

thx, will do im planing to order the components this Sunday, if the mobo and cpu will be in stock, if not i will probably order the rest, and just wait by the pc till i see a add to cart instead of out of stock icon