What's up everyone, first time post, long time listener.

Right now @ Fry's, they have this deal for a C2D E6300 processor & ECS P4M800Pro-M V2 Motherboard combo for $199.

It's a pretty old board, it supports only agp 8x and sata 1. The main reason I'm interested in this mobo combo is because I'm giving my current mobo/cpu to my pops because he needs a new computer.

My question is, if I pop this c2d mobo/cpu combo in to my existing setup, how much of a real difference in terms of application speed and gaming will I see?

I mainly do light audio encoding and I play a few FPS's here and there.

My current setup is this:

AMD Athlon 64 3000+ socket 754
ABIT KV-85 Motherboard
XFX Nvidia 6600gt 128 mb agp8x
1 gig of Kingston pc3200 ddr memory (how much of a bottleneck will this cause)
Maxtor 250 gb ide 7200 rpm hard drive

I'm just wondering if it's worth 200 bucks to get this deal, or are my parts so old that they cause such a bottleneck, preventing me from seeing any real difference.

Thanks, sorry if this was unclear.

ECS is horrible. I don't see how the hell that board even supports C2D. I would avoid that deal like the plague my friend.

Haha, I know they're horrible! How about as a temporary solution, do you think it's even worth it? Because eventually, yeah I wanted to make the switch to PCI-e and sata and new ram, so I'd get a new motherboard and drop the e6300 in there.

But I'm def. in the market for a mobo/cpu combo that can use my existing parts.

Haha, I know they're horrible! How about as a temporary solution, do you think it's even worth it? Because eventually, yeah I wanted to make the switch to PCI-e and sata and new ram, so I'd get a new motherboard and drop the e6300 in there.

But I'm def. in the market for a mobo/cpu combo that can use my existing parts.

Core2 requires DDR2 memory. Your current RAM will not work. If that board is DDR1 it CANNOT support Core2 Duo.

It looks like a VIA chipset. Via is horrible too. Save your pennies man, and get a real motherboard. It will really be better for you.

The chipset is what accesses the memory so actually core 2 does not require ddr2. I dont know that board but the asrock that uses that chipset was rated ok. The asrock supports ddr1 or ddr2, Great minimal upgrade board as you can take your agp card and ddr1 memory with it instead of buying everything at once.
And that is an excellent price as core2 6300 sell for about 199 by themselves. its like getting the mboard for free.
Worst case scenario you just buy a new mb and your not out anything.
But yea ecs are pos their qc sucks.

As far as cpu goes theres a big difference, memory is not going to be much of a bottleneck at all as current ddr2 doesnt really outperform ddr1 by much at all. There was a review at hexus I believe of the asrock board and they said the memory difference was negligable.

Whats the link for that deal ? I might buy one at that price.

I guess you haven't seen the hundreds of posts in the THG Forums about this mobo..

ASRock 775Dual-VSTA:
http://www.asrock.com/product/775Dual-VSTA.htm

Sorry, you're wrong, and the RAM actually doesn't hurt performance much.

http://www.anandtech.com/mb/showdo [...] i=2810&p=4

http://www.anandtech.com/mb/showdo [...] i=2810&p=5

Haha, I know they're horrible! How about as a temporary solution, do you think it's even worth it? Because eventually, yeah I wanted to make the switch to PCI-e and sata and new ram, so I'd get a new motherboard and drop the e6300 in there.

But I'm def. in the market for a mobo/cpu combo that can use my existing parts.

Core2 requires DDR2 memory. Your current RAM will not work. If that board is DDR1 it CANNOT support Core2 Duo.

It looks like a VIA chipset. Via is horrible too. Save your pennies man, and get a real motherboard. It will really be better for you.

Core2 doesn't require DDR2 on all boards. I know the asrock board does DDR (or DDR2) and agp (or PCI-X) it's one or the other, not both. That board does support conroe. HERE

well my guess would be that encoding would see some performance increase but games you will be gpu limited. It also sounds to me that you dont have a choice if your giving your current setup to your dad.
also from what i understand that motherboard is useless for anything but stock speed

I stand corrected. Thanks guys.

ECS is not that bad...its the chipset... even asus with via chipset sucks... got 70pcs of ASUS P5VD2-MXSE that sucks... it reboots once u plug usb in one of the ports at the back .Asus P5PEVM is one of the boards i hated when i repair clients pc... those crazy stores paired them with Pentium D and board fries after a few months.. Will with this setup from newegg

AMD Athlon X2 4850e 2.5GHz 2 x 512KB L2 Cache Socket AM2 45W
$77.00
GIGABYTE GA-MA78G-DS3H AM2+/AM2 AMD 780G HDMI ATX AMD Motherboard - Retail
$89.99
CORSAIR XMS2 1GB $27.00
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6820145153

sell parts not in bunch but by items as the need arises... I sold my 2pcs Hynix 1GB sticks to get a 2GB kingston DDR2 pc6400 here in philippines. its cheaper to get DDR2 parts

bottleneck. Next time go with an intel board