Hey all So, I am thinking, maybe I should upgrade to AMD dual core rather than Intel (£££££ is the main driver here). The truth is I know what I am looking for when trying to support a S478 or SL775 CPU, but I never had any exposure to AMD technology. So, what am I looking for in a mobo in terms of bus speed, chipset etc. I know I will need new memory (DDR2) and new Gcard. I found this mobo on eBay Gigabyte GA-M57SLI-S4 How does this one fair? Has it got what it takes for a good reliable AMD dual core platform? What has it got that is good? What is not so good? Thanks all!
Hi, it appears that item's bid has ended. However, I can help you out. For the newer AMD Dual Cores, you want an AM2 socket design. The video card slots, and RAM slots are the same as on an Intel board. AMD based boards can have Nvidia cards or ATI cards as well. Some even have SLI or crossfire. For FSB, this is the way they are usually written: 1000MHz Hyper Transport (2000 MT/s) Nvidia makes a good chipset: the nForce series have worked well for me. I'm not sure what kind of use the computer will have. For a normal, word-processing, web browsing machine, I think any dual core over 2.5ghz will work fine. BTW, since you aren't familiar with AMD, the dual cores are called AMD Athlon X2. Then they have a number after them, which is the combined ghz speed. So it would say: AMD Athlon 64 X2 6000+ which is a 3.0GHz dual core. For gaming and such, I would go with a quad core if you can find one, usually $260 or so. But, if you want dual core, then there is an AMD Athlon 64 X2 6400+ which is a 3.2Ghz dual core. Let me know if you have any more questions. Here is the board I have, an Asus M2N-SLI. It costs $90, and has worked almost 6 months for me flawlessly. I love it. Newegg.com - ASUS M2N-SLI AM2 NVIDIA nForce 560 SLI MCP ATX AMD Motherboard - AMD Motherboards
