Help on new system

[Eredell]

I'm working on finding parts for a new system I want to build (first time building a system), and I've come across a delihma. While searching for a motherboard I came across the ECS nFORCE 570 SLI Tech Intel motherboard (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16813135026) and the Asus A8N-SLI Premium AMD  (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16813131540). I know overall that Asus is a more Revered company than ECS is, but the thing is one of them is a Nice Cheap SLI INTEL and the other is a nice cheap SLI AMD board. I would feel more comfortable going after the ECS nFORCE 570 simply because it is Intel, and the Asus is AMD. Though ECS is known as a cheap brand but I really dont understand AMD processors compared to Intel... Intel is all I've known and I dont know whats another thing to be looking at besides GHz when buying a processor :-?, because AMDs GHzs are usually lower. Also the AMD board is a 939 Socket type and I've heard the 939 PSUs are gonna "dissapear" or something in the future.
So maybe if someone could help me come to an understanding and help me in choosing a nice board, that be great.

P.S.
I'm building this system towards Gaming.


Eredell

[Track]

CPUs are no longer measured only by their clock speed (Ghz). Thats why an Athlon 64 CPU working at 2.2Ghz performed better than a Pentium 4 CPU working at 3.0Ghz.
Today however, Intel dominates the market with their new Core 2 Duo CPUs wich are a lot better than even AMD best CPUs - the FX series. They offer much better performance at a much lower price. For instence the lowest end Core 2 Duo, named E6300, clocked at 1.86Ghz is abt as powerfull as AMD's flagship FX-60. The E6300 costs 175$ and the FX-60 costs 800$.
So obviously u want a motherboard with socket 775 for Core 2 Duos. That solves that..
Now onto the rest of the motherboard.

Currently u are looking at two SLi motherboards for nVidia graphics cards, and u can choose beetween ATI and nVidia. If u want to buy an ATI card, u will want to buy a CrossFire motherboard, instead of an SLi.

It depends on how much money u are willing to spend on the graphics card (the graphics card is the ONLY thing that matters). You can either spend 250$ for the ATI X1950XT, 450$ for the nVidia 8800 GTS or 600$ for the nVidia 8800 GTX. If u buy the X1950XT ull want to buy a motherboard that supports CrossFire instead of SLi, for future upgrades - buy a single card now and another one later on when the price comes down, and instead of replacing the card, have them both working together for more value and performance.

CrossFire motherboard -http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16813135218
SLi motherboard - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16813135026

[Eredell]

Thanks man! Your really cleared away some fog with this! thanks!

[Mstephens]

Today however, Intel dominates the market with their new Core 2 Duo CPUs wich are a lot better than even AMD best CPUs - the FX series. They offer much better performance at a much lower price. For instence the lowest end Core 2 Duo, named E6300, clocked at 1.86Ghz is abt as powerfull as AMD's flagship FX-60. The E6300 costs 175$ and the FX-60 costs 800$.

Is there any chance you can provide a link to where ever you found that information?

[Neil]

It does seem a bit of a fantastic claim to make. There must be some catch or problem somewhere.

[Calum]

Track has a lot of opinions, not all based on fact.
He's almost correct this time.
See here.
There isn't a catch, Core 2 is much better than anything on the market.
However, they can be a bit more expensive, so if you want a budget PC it's not the best choice.  So there is a small catch.

[GX1_Man]

From the review listed above:

So, to give you an idea of how much faster the Core 2 Duo architecture is, we've compared our benchmarks from the Core 2 review with those we recorded for our FX-62 review. [highlight]The numbers aren't directly comparable because we used slightly different system configurations. And there's the matter of platform differences. However, the FX-62 system only used 1GB of memory, compared to 2GB for the Core 2 Duo. This is likely to have the biggest impact on the overall performance scores presented here[/highlight], and judging from past experience this would have an positive impact on the Intel chip's SYSMark 2004SE in the region of around five points.

The [highlight]hard drive would have an impact on the scores as well, as the Core 2 Duo setup used a Western Digital Raptor X rather than a Caviar SE16, and the extra speed is likely to add a couple of points too. [/highlight]The remaining differences, such as graphics card - an ATI Radeon X1800 XT vs the X1900 XT used in the Intel test – won't have such a big impact on the more general-purpose application benchmarks we've compared.



Which does not really support the Trackster's claim that:

Today however, Intel dominates the market with their new Core 2 Duo CPUs wich are[highlight] a lot better [/highlight]than even AMD best CPUs - the FX series. They offer much better performance at a much lower price. For instence the lowest end Core 2 Duo, named E6300, clocked at 1.86Ghz is abt as powerfull as AMD's flagship FX-60.

It depends on how much money u are willing to spend on the graphics card ([highlight]the graphics card is the ONLY thing that matters[/highlight])........

As usual there is some substance and a lot of "editorial license". (I just love that quote that the graphics card is the only thing that matters, by the way.)