To Upgrade from 965P-DQ6/E6600 or to Not to E6850?

suzukii

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Feb 5, 2006
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Hi guys/gals.
Is this topic in the right place? I had in the Motherboard section but I got no response.

Now my girlfriend wants me to build her a system like what I have. You guys helped me with mine last summer & all your advise was great.

Now I'd like to just give her my existing system & I'll get something new. My Budget, $1000.
I use my system for Video rendering with Pinnacle Studio v10.0, Nero 7.x, Flight Sims, Ms Office 2003, Surfing, Quake 3 (I know, I know, it's old gaming), Doom3, Age Of Empires, etc.


Here's my existing system


GIGABYTE GA-P965-DQ6 Mobo, Rev 1.0, BIOS F11
3GB RAM using OCZ DDR2 800
Seagate 750GB Hard Drive
PSU 500 W
Antec Silent Case
ATi 1900 All-in-Wonder PCI Xpress 256MB/512 (if they make one)
Dual Pioneer 16x DL Burners
Windows XP Pro S2

What's a good viable upgrade from here?
Please list your suggestions and where I could get them on the i-net.

CPU: E6850, (worth upgrading from the E6600?), Suggestions, anyone?

Mobo: I was thinking some P35 Mobo, with 45nm support, able to upgrade to at least to 8GB RAM, probably something Gigabyte or ABit makes, They're good so far with me. (Gigabyte's tech supp. sux, though),
Ports: 1GigaBit Ethernet, Firewire, USB 2.0, e-SATA (like the DQ6 Mobo), at least 4 internal SATA ports,
Built-in graphics chipset:Don't care, Built-in Sound: 5.1 or higher, Suggestions, anyone?

Case: A case with built-in water cooling this time, Antec, etc..., Suggestions, anyone?

Hard Disk: WD 150GB Raptor drive for booting into Win XP SP2

Video Card: Another Ati Card with 256MB/512MB or higher (if they make one), I like having the All-in-Wonder features, too., Suggestions, anyone?

RAM: 2GB RAM to start with. (What type DDR 1333 or stick with DDR2 800?), Suggestions, anyone?

OS: Will be using Windows XP Pro SP2
.
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Well, that's it, I think.
Thanks guys.
 

chookman

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Mar 23, 2007
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CPU: E6850 is worth it over an E6600 you will notice an increase
Mobo: I wouldnt get Abit. P35 is good choice Giga GA-P35-DQ6 or Asus P5K
Case: Antec P1** and 900 are meant to be good water cooling. Lian Li have one set up for water cooling
HDD: I went a 74Gb and a 400Gb for storage but raptor are awesome
GPU: Id be looking at the 2900XT (thats if you want ATI)
RAM: Id go low latency DDR2 800

Good luck mate