ECS NF650iSLIT-A and Intel Celeron E3200

[cookies]

I'm looking to upgrade my wife's computer.

Current:
P4 1.8ghz (Socket 478)
Dell Motherboard
PCI 256mb Radeon 9200 (yes, PCI)
768mb RAM (RDRAM - Bad idea on Dell's part)


Really, I suppose that's all that is really necessary. I have a PSU that is up to snuff for some newer hardware, though I know you'd all scoff at the brand. It powered my current rig for a year with no problems.

Anyway, I upgraded my motherboard earlier in the year from an ECS NF650iSLIT-A to an ASRock P43Twins1600 and I'm very happy with it...but I have a capable motherboard sitting unoccupied!

Right now I'm looking to throw a Celeron E1500 into my unoccupied board, slapping 2gb of DDR2 into it and a NVIDIA 7300LE (I think) PCIe card. This should be adequate to hit 60 - 90fps in CS:S, which my wife would like to play with me. However, while I was combing Newegg today, I found this little gem, the Celeron E3200, based on the 45nm Wolfdale process. If I'm not mistaken, this would trump the clock of the E1500 by 200mhz, double the L2 cache and reduce temperatures for a mere $3 increase in price. My only worry is that it's not listed on the ECS CPU compatibility site, and for some reason I'm recalling that when I originally bought the board I had read something about lack of support for 45nm chips. It didn't bother me at the time, because the E6550 I wanted to purchase was 65nm.

I figured I'd hit up my friends at Tom's Hardware just to make sure before I went ahead with the E1500. If you know anything about the capabilities of this chipset / board (North Bridge: NVIDIA nForce 650i SLI, South Bridge: NVIDIA MCP51) I'd appreciate your input. Thank you for your time.

 

[daship]

Well right now I'm on my moms p43 with a e1200 stock cooler. 1.6GHz is stock and I got it cranked up to 3.2 100% overclock perfectly stable.

Tomorrow my G31 and e3200 will arrive and I will see what kind of a gem it really is. I am expecting it to do 3.6-4.0 without issue. 12x multiplier That only requires a 333 FSB and my little g31 supports up to 1600 "400" fsb, I have used these boards before with a 250FSB max on ddr2 800 ram, the ram dividers suck so you really need the 1066 ram, which "I have right here on the desk

Tomorrow shal be fun to see what she can do. I know the chip can do 4.0 for sure but I'm not sure if the G31 will do it, I suspect it will, but I have to wait and see.

 

[cookies]

I don't know much about the G31, but I got up to 420 on my P43 with my C2D E6550 (2960mhz from 2333mhz), pretty sure my DDR2 800 is limiting me.

 

[daship]

Ya I got the e1200 on the p43 right now, good little chipset. I like the g31 cause it makes a cheap easy hackingtosh.

running 400 on the e1200 now with plenty more voltage room to go.

 

[Gradis]

Dunno what the above poster above is posting for, give a answer if not then tell your hardware upgrades somewhere else.

I owned that board and since it doesnt claim any support for any 45 procceccers (last i checked 6-9 months ago but i doubt it) i would not get your hopes up for any chip of that type. I ran a e6750 and then a q6700 on that board ut they were based on 65nm tech.

Never had any probs with the board at all apart from overclocking quirks shall i say. For the e6750 chip to overclock (normal fsb 1333) to do 1600 i had to do with 1599. For the quad (fsb 1066) it would go to 1332 but i kept multi low cos volts scared me for 24/7 use had reduce the multi . Well i upgraded the bios and handed it to my bro so i didnt test what/if was fixed. I keep saying i will overclock it for him but ah time.

My thoughts are mate go for a second hand 65nm chip that will run and overclock to the above ratio if the last bios fixed didnt fix it. It may be 2nd hand but depending what u get im sure u can ramp it up. I think if you get a 45nm part it wont work on this board. Just check ebay for a cheap 65nm part.

my thoughts any hows

 

[cookies]

Thanks for the reply Gradis - I think you're right.