I was out trying to price some components for an upgrade of my desktop
system (Athlon XP 1900+ system with AGP) to something with a PCIe
connector. Of course that now means I'll have to swap out the processor,
RAM and motherboard too. I am open to an Intel Core 2 Duo, it would
probably be my first Intel system in a decade. I found the choice is not
that easy. The CPU choice is dead simple: only the 2MB C2D E6300 or
E6400 are really available now, and nothing else. But then if you have
to choose a motherboard, you are screwed. Not all Socket 775
motherboards will work with C2D. And you can't even go on chipset model
numbers to figure it out: some revisions of 975, 965, and even 945
chipsets will work with it, while others won't. Even some motherboards
have revisions that will or won't work, and they don't even bother to
change the model naming on it! It's an absolute mess! Is there a list of
compatible motherboards (and revisions) that will work with C2D?
You don't have this problem with AMD, you can mate any chipset to any
CPU, just so long as the motherboard socket is the right one.
I'm also looking for a motherboard with the 2 traditional PATA channels,
some of the recent Intel chipsets are removing all PATA support in
favour of SATA only. I will go with SATA eventually, but in the meantime
I still need full PATA support.
Yousuf Khan
