So I saw a post in this forum that Inti made about getting a new machine to run WAR.... Well, Im in the same boat. I, however, am building my own. Ive built every machine Ive ever owned. I'm usually up to speed with all the technology but Ive been out of the loop for the last year or so. Usually, when I decide to build a new machine I spend a day or two reading all the articals and forums on Tomshardware.com, Anandtech.com and newegg's but I'd like to skip all that and get some advice from some of you IT guys. Just feeling a bit lazy you might say So this is what Im looking at.... my budget is SMALL as I can make it but getting the best bag for my bucks. I have the case, power supply, CD and hard drives, OS, sound card and GFX card (its an older PCI-e v1.0 card, good enough for now -will upgrade at a later date). The things I need are the processor, memory and Mobo. I know Im going to go with the intel e8400 (maybe e8500) chip. great value. The memory isnt that big a deal to figure out. My question is about the Mobo chip sets. It's been along time since I've read about them. The last I heard intel was making the best chipsets. I dont know if thats still true or not. Some input on that subject would be great. Cause with all the P and X series chip sets on neweggs site I cant make heads or tell on whats the newest best and whats old or if Nvidia's chipsets are worth looking at. It's not like the old days where you could hit "sort by price" and get an idea as to whats new and whats old. Thx for any advise you guys might have about mobo chipsets.
I'm using the basic P35 board from intel themselves (I'm not an OC'er) and it's been a rock solid board for me. Just look for the only intel mobo that has a firewire port in it and you'll find mine (I have an iSight Web Cam.... best damn webcam in the world, but needs firewire) -KM
What about the Gxx and the Qxx series.....are they older chipsets then the Pxx and Xxx or are they just another lvl of performance? One more question about intel's nomenclature...they (intel) has numbers like p31 .. I would assume this is a base chipset and one of the oldest?? p35 .. this one is the same as the p31 but with a few more features?? p43 .. this one is a little newer/faster then the p31?? p45 .. this one is the same as the p43 but again with my features?? Am I assuming the right things when looking at the nomenclature? And still another question... Should I be looking for anything special in reguards to the south bridge? I'm not going to skimp on the mobo I'll spend top dollor to know I can scale up with a processor and memory and GFX card later on.
If you can afford to wait for another 2 months, I recommend you do so. With the release of the X58 motherboards and the i7 Intel CPU's, the prices for prior generation stuff should drop in price. Unless you want to go all out and get and X58 motherboard. http://www.tomshardware.com/picturestory/471-nehalem-x58-motherboard.html