Intel mobo recommendation

[Mr Ham Cake]

My brother law wants the ultimate gaming machine for a price-tag of 800-1000 dollars. I said it was possible and asked what was the very best CPU, I answered Core 2 Duo. ...thats about it, thats all I know, thats its the best. I don't know anything on the intel side, all the motherboard model numbers confuse the hell outta me compared to what AMD has from Nvidia and AIT. So i wanted anything I should look for in features in the mobo. So far I have:

 

 

 

Intel Core 2 Duo E6400 Conroe 2.13GHz

POWERCOLOR X1950XT 512MB GDDR3 PCI Express x16 VIVO Video Card with Artic Cooling Fan

G.SKILL 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 667

SAMSUNG SpinPoint T Series HD501LJ 500GB 7200 RPM

LITE-ON 20X DVD

Edited March 11, 2007 by Mr Ham Cake

[Bosco]

Ummmm ultimate gaming machine with an X1950

 

What is he exactly looking for from this gaming machine?

 

What is the budget for the motherboard?

[Uber]

8800GTX is the fastest card you can buy, a single one beats most dual card setups.

 

check into the Asus line of 775 boards they are pretty solid.

[Bleeble]

The Gigabyte 965P-DS3 is one heck of a mobo for a very good price. The Asus P5B Deluxe is also very good, but it's more expensive.

Edited March 11, 2007 by Bleeble

[ccokeman]

I would take a look at getting a better power supply. Is he going to be overclocking? If not one of the Gigabyte boards i think a ds3 or dq6 would be good. Even though both boards are OC friendly. If he is not go with one of the boards that features a 975x chipset. The Abit aw9d or aw9d max do quite well.

[fire_storm]

Well I don't know how much of an ultimate gaming machine you can build for only a $1000 dollars.

 

But I would get a 8800GTS 320mb version there only about $30 dollars more then your current ( I assume this is the card you want to get) card plus more future proff with DX10 support. Also I'm not sure on this one but I think it out preforms the X1950XT or wait until may when ATI releases there R600 series.

 

Also if you want to do some OC DDR667 may not be the best thing to get at least DDR800.

[Bleeble]

Also if you want to do some OC DDR667 may not be the best thing to get at least DDR800.

I didn't notice that otherwise I would have said something. I'd definitely pick different RAM.

[Ziggy54354]

if you get ddr667 you should probably stick with the e4300. also get the 8800GTS 320mb its better than the x1950xt in most cases even at high res. DS3 is a good/cheap board, you just have to tame it.

[Mr Ham Cake]

I suppose when I say "ultimate" there was a tad bit of sarcasm. Reason I went with the 512mb card was for the high res on the TV, would the 8800gts 320mb still out perform it? I've never really had any chance to learn Ram overclocking though I understand dividers and volts, thats about it, and I can't really tell the difference between ddr 333 and ddr400. Could I tell with DDR2 677 and DDR2 800? I guess what I should have said was I want to go Core 2 Duo and I have a budget of 1000 dollars at the most. What do you have in mind for the power supply? And I wasn't sure if the 8800GTS could fit in my budget.

[Mombo]

I agree with everyone else as well I would grab the 8800gts since its only 30 more. Also jump up to ddr2 800 ram g.skill has some stuff thats good and still relativley cheap. As for a board I ended up getting the Evga 680i and love it but it seems like you would do great with the DQ6 by gigabyte which was my second choice. Or the DS3 if you need to save some cash to upgrade the ram instead which is important in my opinion!

 

Also maybe 2 smaller hard drives and put them in a raid 0......I dont know just something I would do. I have 2 x 160's for my gaming rig and its plenty. Unless he is going to have a ton of movies on there or something....

Edited March 11, 2007 by Mombo

[Bleeble]

Any of the RAM on this list will be good. The Geil at the top of the list is a fantastic deal. DDR2-1000 for $207! The cheapest DDR2-800 kits are $170.

[fire_storm]

I suppose when I say "ultimate" there was a tad bit of sarcasm. Reason I went with the 512mb card was for the high res on the TV, would the 8800gts 320mb still out perform it? I've never really had any chance to learn Ram overclocking though I understand dividers and volts, thats about it, and I can't really tell the difference between ddr 333 and ddr400. Could I tell with DDR2 677 and DDR2 800? I guess what I should have said was I want to go Core 2 Duo and I have a budget of 1000 dollars at the most. What do you have in mind for the power supply? And I wasn't sure if the 8800GTS could fit in my budget.

 

The difference is the speed of the ram ddr333 runs at 166mhz and ddr400 runs at 200mhz. ddr667 runs at 333mhz and ddr800 runs at 400mhz. With noticing performance increases there probably isn't a huge increase in performance between ddr667 and ddr800 but when your OC it helps to have ram that can run fast because there is more head room to overclock.