advice for MB supporting Q6600
 

Hi,

what would you buy as cheap MB for a Q6600b barring the Asrock 4core dual VSTA (the VIA PT880 chipset leaves much to desire)?

Thanx

Excellent question; if the 1333 board works with Q6600 will bring it to 3G for cheap. This is OCing all about in my book.:)

Any decent P35 board?:)

the P35 boards I've seen all "force" you to switch to DDR2/SATA/PCI-E. While they are not overly expensive (120 euros range) in itself, they all force you spend upfront money for memory/disk/video cards: I'd have preferred a softer path to evolution (AGP+PCI-E, DDR1/2, IDE/SATA) that is the main appeal of transitional boards like Asrock.

Ideally a board costing between 60 and 120 euro with correct/decent performance that allowed the use of "legacy" components... is Asrock unique in such approach?

Any recommendation for a brand/model of P35 based MB in terms of performance/reliability/overclocking?

Thanx

Asrock is the only one allowing you to mix S775 C2D with DDR1/AGP, all other PCIe boards go for DDR2/PCIe

I bought an Asrock 775DualVSTA with good succes, tried 7900GT PCIe, 6600GT AGP, DDR1 and DDR2 sticks, it does it's job, and not too bad at OC either, got P4 3.06 at 3.6Ghz. With C2D it's even better "I have read"
check my thread here: http://www.madshrimps.be/vbulletin/f...erience-27992/

Asrock is the only one I know who has value boards with those features, bought mine for <€50

The cheap Asrock 4coreVSTA supports the Q6600, but it's poor in fsb overclocking. The Q6600 should run fine on it, but you won't be able to overclock it as it's a 266mhz fsb (1066) processor, and the max stable fsb for most 4coreVSTA boards is somewhere between 266 and 300mhz.

check the VR-zone link in my other thread; with the correct mods you can go over 300 ;)