Old-school system builder switching camps to Intel. Few questions...

I have been using Amd Cpu's/chipsets for about 5 years. I finally have to move over to intel because AMD just can't seem to get it together, even with the Phenoms... My trusty 5000 black edition seems to have topped out at 3.0 ghz and is getting long in the tooth.

I want to get a Wolfdale e8500 and overclock it on air to 3.8-4.0ghz ish.

My question is, should I go with a P35 based chipset board? What would be recommended out of that lot?
I currently have 2gb of DDr2 800 ram from OCZ that I got a long time ago. Should I be looking to buy new ram rated at 1066 or should I not bother? Also, should I be aiming for 4 gb total? I have windows Vista 64bit and mainly enjoy Oblivion, CS:Source, World in Conflict etc...

One other thing. I have the option to buy either an Ati 4870 512, or a GTX260 for 200 dollars. Which would you recommend? I don't mind over-clocking etc, so take that into consideration.

Thanks,

Christopher

NOOOoooooooooooooo! Oh well not like I can blame you. Anyway go for a P45 motherboard. They are generally better and it's a cost effective way to get a motherboard with two PCI-E 2.0 slots. Like this one

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6813128344

If you haven't built LGA 775 systems before, be mindful that the pins are on the motherboard. AMD systems are easier for me to build for this reason, but you get use to it ^_^. Buying another 2bg of DDR2 800 would be fine for now, but if you don't mind paying alot more then go with some good DDR2 1066 RAM. . If you already have Vista 64-bit, then the more RAM the better

Go with an ATI 4870 1GB. Radeon 4870s are generally faster than the GTX260s, and the 1GB version will prove useful with future games. It already shows a decent increase in some current games over the 512 version, like in GRID.

Howdy,

If you know that your never gonna want to Crossfire, then get the p45 board.... However if you think you'll want more power in the form of crossfiring two 4870's later down the road, then I'd suggest going with a motherboard like this:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6813136051

It will give you full x16 bandwidth on both PCIe 2.0 slots when running 2 cards, whereas the p45 will have to half the bandwidth to x8 speed when crossfiring.

Here is a review showing the difference between crossfire on a x48 (basically the same as the x38 chipset) and a p45.

http://www.tweaktown.com/articles/ [...] index.html

EDIT: The 800mhz ram would get an e8500 to 3.8ghz before it would hold you back and need to be overclocked itself.

And trust me, it pains me to be abandoning Amd for Intel. I just can't believe how the tables have turned from about 2-3 years ago when Amd was king and Intel was playing catch-up! What a difference a year makes... Sorry Amd, you will be missed!