Got a Pentium D, should I keep it?

[Primus462]

I have a friend with a Dell Precision Workstation 380. Here mobo appears to be flaky and Dell wants $250 for a new one. It has a Pentium D 830 (which is a 3.0 GHz power hog @ 130W TDP) and 2 x 512Gb @ 800Mhz. I suggested to her that maybe it would be better to replace it with a different board (something much, much cheaper). Then I got to wondering if she would be better off getting a new board and also replacing the processor while she was at it. I am more familiar with AMD than Intel processors, but I was considering recommending an E6300, with only a 65W TDP and a faster FSB, as replacement for her Pentium D, but I am not sure of the E6300 would provide any better performance. Then I thought she might also be able to go with an AM2 system, too.

Any thoughts or suggestions?

Thanks in advance!

 

[Helloworld_98]

the E6300 would easily beat the P4, any Core 2 Duo over 1.8GHz will beat any P4 at stock speeds.

then just add a new mobo and maybe some ram and then it'll be running fine, oh, except you might have to reinstall the OS, and you can't use the one which came with the Dell.

 

[Primus462]

Sounds like the E6300 might be a good recommendation then.

I actually rebuilt this PC a couple of weeks ago. Long story short, I thought I would run into a problem with the OS provided by Dell, too. But I was able to install it on my AM2 system with no problems at all.