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Post by Nostra1 on Jul 24, 2007 17:01:32 GMT 1
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Post by osiris on Aug 13, 2007 17:31:11 GMT 1
It's stricly for Neverwinter Nights' fans, right?
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Post by Nostra1 on Oct 9, 2007 6:28:14 GMT 1
Not really a deal but with the lowering of price, if anyone is interested in upgrading their rig to a C2D system, some of the components are pretty inexpensive these days (due to the drop in RAM price, low price of CPU and some decent motherboard deals). Assuming all you want is to upgrade the motherboard, RAM (to DDR2) and CPU here is one example of a quick upgrade. CPU: Intel Pentium E2160 Allendale dual core Core processor: $85 (free shipping) Its called a Pentium but it is in fact a C2D chip. It has lower lvl 2 Cache than Conroe but it is dirt cheap and you can basically overclock this to 3.0 Ghz easy with stock voltage and HSF (so no worries of shortening the lifespan due to the overclock). This would make its performance equivalent to a Conroe E6700 @ stock speed and faster than any AMD chip at stock (and even most overclocks). You could get a E2140 for even less money but I like the higher multiplier of the E2160 for the easy overclock. www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819116036Mobo: Abit IP-35E P35 chipset socket LGA775 motherboard $97 (including shipping) Abit's IP-35 PRO is one of the most popular and best reviewed motherboards using the Intel P35 chipset. The IP-35E is its little brother with less frills (not all solid state capacitors, simpler BIOS, no firewire, no RAID) but it still functions very well. It is an Intel Chipset and not NVidia or ATI so no SLI or Crossfire. Overclocks well and easy set up (though it has a weird dual boot characteristic...which many P35 mobos do). At $90 + shipping it is dirt cheap and a nice budget motherboard. www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813127031RAM: GSkill 2GBNQ DDR2-800 (2 x 1Gb) $66.00 (free shipping) Not the best overclockers but still solid 2 x 1Gb sticks and very low price. GSkill is a nice brand and the NQ's have been pretty popular. Now even though these may not be the best overclocker RAM, since the CPU was chosen as the E2160, one can easily go to 3Ghz with this RAM. The E2160 has a multiplier of 9 so for a 3 Ghz overclock, one only needs 333 Mhz core speed or 1333Mhz FSB. For a 333 Mhz core, the RAM speed at 1 to 1 is 667 Mhz double pumped. So one does not even have to run the DDR2 at 800 Mhz speeds but only at DDR2-667. This of course means one can actually get an even cheaper RAM and still do this (2Gb sometimes sell for as low as $45 these days). I just chose the GSkill due to its quality and good reviews and relatively cheap price. www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231098So for less than $250 shipped, you can upgrade your rig to a Core2Duo system with 2Gigs of ram and a decent motherboard with one of the newest chipsets available (the P35). This can then be overclocked to similar performance as a C2D Conroe E6700 former Extreme Edition CPU (about a $1000 chip 8 months ago) system. Great for a budget gaming machine. Note: The price above uses sale prices for the RAM and mobo. This is only effective currently and may change anytime. However, the mobo sale price is only a $10 reduction and as stated above, one can always go with much cheaper RAM if one wanted without any problems getting to 3Ghz. RAM is still cheap these days .
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