Intel questions....

[LA_MERC_th33_r00k]

My future motherboard unless someone wants to post some more options:

http://www.intel.com/products/motherboard/D975XBX2/index.htm

I have a few questions on processors though.
What is the major difference between these 2?
http://www.intel.com/products/processor/core2quad/specifications.htm
^^The 2.66 GHz Quad^^
http://www.intel.com/products/processor/core2xe/specifications.htm
^^The 2.66 Ghz Quad^^

The cost difference is about $600.00, but the specs are the same in the charts. Waht am I missing? Does it allocate resources differently or something?

I am going with the board and 2.4 Ghz processor for the present. I need to upgrade vid card ( http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814143108&Tpk=BFGE86256GTSOC2FE%2bVideo%2bCard ) at the same time since it has only PCI-e availability.

Board = $219.00
Process. = $280.00
Vid. Card = $249.00
-------------------
Total = $749.00

[LA_MERC_T4rg3T]

The extreme version has an unlocked multiplier giving you a way to overclock your chip instead of just increasing the front side bus which might cause other issues with ram and such.


For about $30 more, you can get the 8800 GTS
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814150171

Or for $50 more, get the overclocked 8800 GTS
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814150173

[LA_MERC_Captain_Obvious]

Toby's exactly right with the vid card. spending $20 to get the 8800 series over the 8600 series will pay off in the long run when you're able to use the card for longer period of time while getting better frame rates in games now.

for the CPU, if you're mostly playing games with this PC and you don't intend to do heavy overclocking, go with the E6850 instead of the Q6600. they are the same price, but the 6850 is dual core at 3.0ghz. the faster speed will be much better than the extra cores in games, however if you are going to do a lot of video editing, encoding, etc. then the extra cores would be better.
E6850: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115028

[LA_MERC_YellowDog]

Guys... unless I read somthing wrong here.. I dont think the Intel board supports a 1333Mhz Front side bus,

The E6850 is great for what Rooks trying to do, but it requires a Mother Board that can handle 1333 mhz.

Thats one of the reasons I went with the Abit P35 Pro board. It supports 1333mhz FSB.

[LA_MERC_Captain_Obvious]

you're right yeller, I didn't look at his board, just assumed it was either a P35 or 650/680i chipset since most people buying a new system get the newer boards and not the ones that are already out dated. the 975 (along with 965 and 945) chipset will not support higher than 1066. there are quite a few nice P35 chipset boards that cost quite a bit less than that 975. You can even get a very nice 680i with dual 16x PCIe channels for that price range.

[Rollout]

I love my EVGA 680i board, best board I've EVER owned, most stable, easy to overclock using E6700 and 8800 GTX