I started gaming back when the console mainstream was Atari 2600. No, I'm not ashamed that I still do game as a hobby as I approach my 40's, because I know I'm not alone. Anyway, I've converted to PC gaming since the late 80's and been PC ever since. I built what was near cutting-edge PC back in 2002. I had really no need to upgrade until the last year or so. In my opinion, the Core2Duo family of processors demonstrates a Return On Investment (ROI) factor worthy of investing in some upgrades. I spent a bit of money experimenting with my 2002 era system before going to the Core2. I had a P4 2.4 400FSB system. I found a 2.6, and started experimenting with liquid cooling and overclocking. Something I wanted to try on a system I deemed on the way out in case I toasted it or got a leak. Liquid cooling was a snap with a Swiftech H-120 kit from Newegg.com. Which I believe is the Mecca of PC hardware enthusiasts, incidentally. I got it up to 3.2 with decent stability. I also tried to breathe some video life by trading in my GeForce 5700 AGP for a 7900 GS AGP. This was not one of my better moves, as it's a pricey card in AGP form factor, but I was trying to breathe life into the dinosaur. A while back I had upgraded my 2GB max memory holding to two identical DDR 400 chips at 1GB a piece. I also had two 250 GB IDE drives that I added a couple years ago and had them in onboard RAID0, which gave me a boost in speed. A few months back I replaced my power supply as well, so that was fairly new. The standard DVD+RW drives and whatnot for family video editing and burning also. But the old single core just wasn't cutting the mustard for me anymore, even with the overclocking and whatnot. So what do I do now that I had some fairly decent stuff in this dinosaur? Was there something I could do to salvage some of this value? Yes there was. Enter the ASRock 4-core dual Vista.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157107
http://www.ocworkbench.com/2006/asrock/4coredual-vsta/b1.htm
I bought the board for $60, a 200 GB SATA $85, an E4300 $117, and an OEM copy of XP Home $89 (good enough for me). So for another committment of approx $375 shipped,I put myself in a Core2Duo with up to Quad Core compatibility. I like to start with the lowest end that will get me where I need to be I guess. The reading I did said the E4300 was an impressive little thing, especially to OC. I totally agree. Besides, I could live with toasting a $117 chip through experimention. Icouldn't be happier with the performance level I have now. The board is only SATA I compatiblethough, however, a cheaper SATAII drive works backward compatible. Going from IDE to SATA I is an impressive leap anyway, 1.87 times faster I guess. Using the board stock without OC options yielded impressive gaming results for me. I now use the 8X capability of the 7900GS whereas I was choked to 4x previously. The ability to use one's DDR rather than buying new DDR2 is also nice, and according to the above link, not really a performance hit. I've maxed out all settings on every game I've played so far, with no hitches that I can see. I'm not a First person shooter however. More RTS, strategy turn based, simulatorkind ofguy. Wolves of the Pacific looks much better than before, fluid in time compression with the Core2 chewing through the code, instead of myjerky slug of a single core dinosaur PC. Company of Heroes is beautiful and fast. I'vetaken the FSB up to 270now and ran forquite some time now at that without any hits. This bringsthe E4300 to 2.44Ghz vs it'sfactory 1.8Ghz. The board hasup to 340 FSB tweaking capability, but reported only stable to 300. 300 will run the 4300 at 2.7Ghz, and thatshould be plenty enough for me, for now until a Quad core becomes feasible.
So if you're in a situation like I described, where you bought parts that are still decent performers, and don't want to scrap your entire systemjust yet, there isa path that allows you to bridge the old with the new forgreat performance results.
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