Check this out...

[ctjoyce]

Yeah, except a good 939 mobo costs $90 to $150, but a Conroe mobo with the same features will be $200 to $300.

Not true. You can get a P5N32-SLi from ASUS for Conroe for just $210, where as the A8N32-SLi is $230. So the Conroe upgrade is still cheaper.

@wealthysoup: The E6400 is the Core 2 Duo E6400. Its the baseline of the high end processers.

Cheers
Cameron

[cheesegrater]

Not true. You can get a P5N32-SLi from ASUS for Conroe for just $210, where as the A8N32-SLi is $230. So the Conroe upgrade is still cheaper.

@wealthysoup: The E6400 is the Core 2 Duo E6400. Its the baseline of the high end processers.

Cheers
Cameron

The P5N32-SLi has to be the SE Deluxe edition for $240 because the regular doesn't support Core Duo 2.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductLi ... 22&Go.y=29

A8N32-SLi is $170.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6813131568

[ctjoyce]

Sorry, had my prices mixed up, was thinking of the worng boards. However the M2N32 has droped price since I looked last.

Cheers
Cameron

[NicksFXHouse]

Sorry, had my prices mixed up, was thinking of the worng boards. However the M2N32 has droped price since I looked last.

Cheers
Cameron

In order to get anything in NV for SLI or other upgrades your spending bucks Cam.... on top of that you did not even mention the MEMORY REQUIRED to run Conroe. No one is going to want to run anything less than 2gigs or it would not be worth the upgrade with VISTA and FSX.

You also failed to mention that to be able to overclock Conroe on a decent NV board (which is not available in 590 as of yet) your looking at memory rated higer than DDR2 PC800 because the NV boards that are available for core 2 SUCK for overclocking and need the higher spec memory to do it. That purchase ALONE is 400-500 bucks.

The bottom line with Conroe is you can buy a stripped down VW for top dollar or you can do it right and spend the money and have a GREAT rig.. That rig will cost you TOP DOLLAR no matter how you look at it.


AMD at least gives options. Intel forces you into the top dollar parts.


You cannot argue that... not even for a second and get away with it.

EDIT: And there is one more tid-bit you left out... On motherboards that do not come with a BIOS which will BOOT with Conroe,.. in order for the older Intel boards to even BOOT with Conroe installed you must have an temporary intel processor to put in the board and FLASH the latest BIOS. This is a issue that has been noted in many, many forums. Anyone with AMD that buys a cheap Intel board that does not include the Conroe stepping information in the BIOS is screwed.

[NicksFXHouse]

http://www.starwars.stopklatka.pl/sounds/udontknw.wav


Yes I do... It is very powerful


but at what REAL cost?

[congo]

The E6400 is the Core 2 Duo E6400. Its the baseline of the high end processers.

So what's that make the E6300 ?

[NicksFXHouse]

[quote]

So what's that make the E6300 ?

[congo]

I just read about a guy who's getting up to and over 500mhz fsb on his conroe o/c's, he has access to some Engineering Sample cores as well, and is running them without vcore increase at his max bus speeds.

I'm sorry I don't have the links, I was away when I read about it.

Ahh, but the point...... he was using G.skill PC6400 (800mhz) cas4 stuff  (HZ) and he wasn't loosening the timings, I wish I could recall what speed his memory was at  

[NicksFXHouse]

[quote]I just read about a guy who's getting up to and over 500mhz fsb on his conroe o/c's, he has access to some Engineering Sample cores as well, and is running them without vcore increase at his max bus speeds.

I'm sorry I don't have the links, I was away when I read about it.

Ahh, but the point...... he was using G.skill PC6400 (800mhz) cas4 stuff

[congo]

He was running combinations of 6300, 6400, 6600 cpu's on an Asus P5 series board, and a gigabyte (S3?) board.

He was verifying with a full 32mb run in super PI, which isn't the be all end all of course. Still, pretty darn good results.

Also, I saw some early conroe adapters here in aussie forums getting great results with the g.skill PC6400 ram, though one of the best results was obtained with an Engineering sample 6600.

I'll probably be going back up to my friend's place in a week, so I'll check the explorer history on his PC and see if I can get you a link. Unfortunately, my friend isn't proficient enough to search out that info for me.

Some of the expensive g.skill ram uses late technology chips, and the cheaper PK designated modules (the oveclocker in question was using HZ modules), probably use the older ic's. However, the cheaper PK modules still rate 4-4-4-12 @ 800mhz, so they are my choice at the moment.

I couldn't find any locally available OCZ with the same spec, at least not in a "normal" price bracket, and I don't generally research the very best available.
I figure if they have that much money to blow, they can do their own research! This is in line with my attitude of helping the majority of users, not the elite enthusiast. I guess we all need a niche

[PisTon]

Dosn't the Conroe work on DDR2-533? I found benchmarks comparing DDR2-533 to DDR2-800, and there was barely a diferance

[cheesegrater]

Dosn't the Conroe work on DDR2-533? I found benchmarks comparing DDR2-533 to DDR2-800, and there was barely a diferance

Yeah it does, but let's see how it overclocks.

[congo]

Barely a difference in some applications and compared to some memory modules.

Going from 533mhz to 800mhz modules can mean as much as a 15% performance boost in some cases, and typically the difference is around 5% overall in gaming type apps, (stock speeds).

5% isn't much on it's own, but add together four or five such improvements and you start to get a significant advantage with a carefully chosen and balanced system.
Of course, if the faster memory is very expensive, it loses it's appeal to most people.

In Australia, we pay what the market will bear, there are few major distributors and price fixing appears to be the norm, so good deals on ram are difficult to sniff out.

A good PC hardware search engine with price based results is essential.


First, a disclaimer:
I don't own or haven't used Conroe cpu's or attempted to O/clock them, the following is only my current understanding of the issue when extreme overclocking that type of system.

Memory dividers (speed ratios compared to the FSB) are used when overclocking to give the ram more upper range as the cpu and front side bus are overclocked, otherwise the memory would fail as it gets too fast.

The problem with Conroes, is that they overclock so far that the risk of memory running out of useable range is very real indeed, hence the desire for ram that will clock beyond what would usually be required.

Ram timings can be significantly lowered so the ram will work at high FSB speeds, but lowering the timings reduces part of the overclock advantage.

[NicksFXHouse]

He was running combinations of 6300, 6400, 6600 cpu's on an Asus P5 series board, and a gigabyte (S3?) board.

thats why

The P5 is the best overclocking board for Conroe. No Sli or other goodies though.  the Gskil memory is another reason as I think they are the only company that makes the better low latency sticks for DDR2

But they ARE expensive

Still a 500MHz O/c is impressive

I would be curious if he would be able to complete a 3Dmark06 run @ that speed

[congo]

G.Skil was readily available here when Conroe arrived.

There were, I think, at least three different designations of G.Skil PC6400 4-4-4-12 modules with a gradient in price. The lowest price one had some odd compatibilty issue and wasn't compatible on all mainboards, it was advertised as "Intel Only" or similar.
http://gskill.de/product_sp2625.html

I was enquiring about them when supply ceased and they were replaced/superceeded by a slightly more expensive module supposedly without the compatibility limitation.
http://gskill.de/product_sp2630.html

The other types of GSkil PC6400 4-4-4-12 stuff jumped dramatically in price.

The ram is easily identified by the colored heatsinks, the colors are different for the various quality modules.
http://www.gskill.de/productsddr2.html