please suggest Q6600 mobo

I haven't been keeping up with motherboards for a year. What now is a good
overclocking mobo for the quad core Q6600? It is used mainly for video
editing and encoding: one 2D video card with dual link (for 2560 x 1600
monitor), 2 to 4G DDR2, winxp or vista (may also setup a virtual pc), many
hard drives. I'm not looking for extreme overclocking, just the most bang
for the buck kind of overclocking (none or slight voltage increase, but be
able to increase voltage more if I want to). Probably something under $150.

It is also nice to be able to put in a faster quad core CPU (the ones
selling for $1K now) a few years later when they become cheap, and then be
able to increase oc more.

Should I get 800Mhz ddr2 (very common and cheap) or something faster? When
oc the board, am I going to hit the CPU limit first or the memory?

'john' wrote, in part:
I haven't been keeping up with motherboards for a year. What now is a good
overclocking mobo for the quad core Q6600? It is used mainly for video
editing and encoding: one 2D video card with dual link (for 2560 x 1600
monitor), 2 to 4G DDR2, winxp or vista (may also setup a virtual pc), many
hard drives.
_____

I suggest you rethink your approach. No $1000 US non-Xeon Intel CPUs
will EVER be 'cheap'. These CPUs are all 'Extreme' models with unlimited
multipliers, strictly for enthusiasts. There is no market pressure on Intel
to EVER reduce these prices. Also, with the tick-tock Intel schedule to
produce a new architecture every two years and a die shrink for each
intervening year, a two year old 'Extreme' CPU provides less performance
than a two year newer CPU that is not an 'Extreme' version.

Other points:
The performance difference between DDR2-800 and DDR2-1066 memory is
single digit percentage points. BOTH speeds are very cheap now. $30 US vs.
$45 US for 2 X 1 GByte, $100 vs. $130 US for 2 X 2 GByte DDR2.

A 45 nm Yorkfield Q9550 with a 12 MByte L2 cache is already less than
$325 US.

In a few years, hell, in a few MONTHS, any motherboard any memory
suitable for a Q6600 will be obsolescent; in two YEARS no new CPU or memory
will work in such a motherboard (different CPU socket, memory controller
combined with CPU, DDR3 memory).

'Many hard drives'; modern motherboards usually have only one IDE
controller (two drives max) and provide 6 or more SATA connections.

'am I going to hit the CPU limit first or the memory?' With modern
motherboards it is not necessary to lock the CPU clock to the memory clock.
Thus you will hit a CPU limit or a motherboard limit before a memory limit.
DDR2-800 memory can be run at spec with a 1:2 ratio with a 400 MHz CPU
clock, DDR2-1066 at spec with a 1:2 ratio 533 MHz CPU clock.

Motherboard recommendation? Almost anything within your price range
that has good reviews. Whatever you can buy today will not take a 'Nehalem'
anyway.

Final suggestion - choose your video editing software first (good
software will cost more than your CPU), then choose your hardware and
operating system accordingly. Today that might be Sony Final Cut Pro, Intel
Q9550, 2 X 2 GByte DDR2, ASUS P35 motherboard, four 500 GByte SATA II hard
drives, 8800 GTS class display adapter, Windows Vista Home Premium. Guess
which of these is by far the most expensive (and will have the least painful
upgrade path)?

Phil Weldon


"john" wrote in message ...
I haven't been keeping up with motherboards for a year. What now is a good
overclocking mobo for the quad core Q6600? It is used mainly for video
editing and encoding: one 2D video card with dual link (for 2560 x 1600
monitor), 2 to 4G DDR2, winxp or vista (may also setup a virtual pc), many
hard drives. I'm not looking for extreme overclocking, just the most bang
for the buck kind of overclocking (none or slight voltage increase, but be
able to increase voltage more if I want to). Probably something under $150.

It is also nice to be able to put in a faster quad core CPU (the ones
selling for $1K now) a few years later when they become cheap, and then be
able to increase oc more.

Should I get 800Mhz ddr2 (very common and cheap) or something faster? When
oc the board, am I going to hit the CPU limit first or the memory?

On Aug 23, 6:30*pm, "Phil Weldon" wrote:

*I suggest you rethink your approach. *No $1000 US non-Xeon Intel CPUs
will EVER be 'cheap'.

The exception to this is ebay. Unopened box factory sealed QX6850
sell for $300-$350. It's more a a risk than say Newegg, though both
ebay
and paypal offer buyer protection. I haven't read the fine print.

two year old 'Extreme' CPU provides less performance
than a two year newer CPU that is not an 'Extreme' version.

Less heat for sure.

Performance? Maybe. The thing with unlocked CPUs is you can overclock
_only_ the cpu. The rest of the motherboard can stay stock.
These ebay cpus are priced the same as Neweggs Q9550 today. They are
next gen (45nm VS 65nm, 12MB cache VS 8MB) but locked at 2.83GHz.
As soon as you overclock them, the FSB/Northbridge/Southbridge get
overclocked too. It sounds like the QX6850 goes to 4Ghz easily with no
stress
on the rest of the mb, not so with the Q9550. You won't be able to use
stock cooling.

It's not an easy call, IMHO.

*Motherboard recommendation? *Almost anything within your price range
that has good reviews.

The 48X chipset has good reviews, from a overclock friendly
manufacturer
like Abit or Asus (there are others)

"john" wrote in ...
It is used mainly for video
editing and encoding: one 2D video card with dual link (for 2560 x 1600
monitor), 2 to 4G DDR2

I would get 8GB for video editing, pretty cheap these days.

Should I get 800Mhz ddr2 (very common and cheap) or something faster? When
oc the board, am I going to hit the CPU limit first or the memory?

Then trend in OC seems to be not to OC the memory. Perhaps the
CPU caches make this less important. You could just buy
the fastest memory supported by your mb for not much more money.

HTH

Andrew