Any ideas for a half decent budget mboard for a e6300?

I dont know what your question is but if your looking for a cheap motherboard for a conroe cpu then your best off going with the gigabyte S3. Its very good for OCing and a good all round board and very cheap.

If you'd like a really cheap board that supports your processor plus two graphics cards, consider the ECS P965T-A. It performs well but sux as an overclocking board. Fortunately, the one higher bus speed it does support (FSB1333) can be selected manually, and your E6300 should overclock that far.

I have that ECS Board, satisfied. It does let you control the memory though, timings, speed, and voltages.

Ebuyer 775 list

I can't find the s3 on here. Trying to find something that might do some overclocking (although i probably don't need to) but is pretty stable. Any ideas from this lot?

I don't think i'll bother with ddr2 ram, already have a gig of 3200 ddr1.

e6300 and a 7600gt should be fine for anything i might play!

those four are junk. The best of those four uses a chipset that only supports 800MHz FSB natively.

is there anything on that site you'd recommend that is close to being under £50? or would i have to go above. I'm not looking for much, just something half decent

I don't think you'll find anything decent for less than 60 quid. The cheapest boards I'd use are the Foxconn P9657AA-8KS2H and ECS P965T-A.

P965 is the cheapest decent chipset I can think of at this time.

If I get one of the boards below that spec, what disadvantage other than, inability to overclock well, would i actually face?

Lower performance, fewer useful features, possible lower stability, often no overclocking options, and many of the "ok" chipsets below that price aren't even validated for 1066FSB. You also have to make sure the board actually supports Core 2 Duo processors, not just P4's.

If you want budget budget, try the asrock 775 dual vsta, it'll take AGP and PCI-E (x4 but that appears to be OK), and DDR and DDR2.

It will not Overclock much 285fsb seems to be about the max.

But it'll let you step up to DDR2 and PCI-E at your own pace.

I've got one, its ok, witha 7900GTO it scores well, and so the x4 doesn't seem to be holding it back.

Its a good basic board with upgrade options. Anandtech have a number of reviews comparing memory speeds to DDR2 and agp vs PCI-E question on this particular board. They all look good and generally with 5% of a 'proper' solution.

fair enough. I'm just thinking, do i really need to have the most featured motherboard if i want games played only at a reasonable level and i'm moving up from a crappy sempron 2800 in the first place.

E6300
7600GT

although i see now what you mean about actuall c2d support
hmmmm, may need a rethink

the MSI and ASROCK series i think are good for budget overclocking and save a lot of money .Try getting a faster ram if your budget permits .

I got the AsRock 775i65G m/b (Rev. 2) with the E6300 and am very happy with it. The m/b cost only $45 on NewEgg and you can reuse your DDR ram and AGP card from your old computer, like I did, and save much money. The 775i65G has onboard 7.1 sound, lan, modem, video, dual-channel memory, ect, and has the Intel 865 chipset which I would prefer over the Via chipset in the comparable 775dualVsta m/b which most budget builders have opted for.

It overclocks very stably to 300FSB. There are many other boards (965) which will o/c much higher for $60 more, but would require DDR2 and PCIE gpu.

My new system is about 50% faster than my old P4 2.4 computer and cost me only $250 to put together.

ok, thank you

Thanks invader. I am going to get a PCI-E 7600GT so will need a pci mboard but thanks for advice

The 775 Dual Vsta is PCI-E, and works fine with many cards (haven't heard about any it doesn't work with yet)

I'm surprised that the previous poster can get to 300fsb and stable, I could get to 300FSB boot and windows stable(ish) but not prime stable, this didn't happen till 285, but that could be normal variation. But don't expect it to OC.